Eugenics and Resistance to Immigration in the 1920s

Eugenics was a pseudoscience that emerged around the beginning of the twentieth century. It promoted the idea that the population of the United States could be improved by excluding people of various races and nationalities considered inferior to the white race. Supported vigorously by leading members of the U.S. Congress, the Supreme Court, intellectuals, and private sector leaders, the fundamental belief was that a person's bloodline determined their intelligence, work ethic, criminal potential, and essentially every other human trait imaginable.

Bad Science, Bad Politics

It was a ridiculous belief system intended to promote what was then known as the Nordic Race, which was limited to people from Northern Europe and Great Britain. It gained traction in the wake of World War I, after more than two million British and German soldiers were killed and it was feared that this shortage of eligible male Nordics would lead to the mixing of races and an inferior society in the next generation.

In 1917, which was, not coincidentally, the year of the Russian Revolution, the U.S. Congress passed a law requiring immigrants over 16 years old to pass a literacy test. It also raised the tax new immigrants had to pay when they arrived in America. Significantly, it excluded Asian immigration completely, except for people from Japan and the Philippines.

As bad as this was, it was destined to get worse.

The First “America First”

During the 1920 presidential election, Warren G. Harding was the first to coin the phrase "America First" in a political campaign. He played on the emotions of whites who feared the revenge they might face for past misdeeds if too many "undesirables" were allowed to enter the country.

Meanwhile, immigration opponents considered it national suicide to bring in large numbers of people from inferior countries, because they provided cheap labor.

And in his address to Congress in 1923, President Calvin Coolidge said, "America must be kept American," and "it would be well to make such immigration of a selective nature with some inspection at the source."

So it was not surprising that the Immigration Act of 1924 lowered the quota of allowable immigrants to two percent of the total foreign-born population in America. This was based on the total number of foreigners that lived in the United States in 1890, when there was much less third-world immigration.

Finally, the new quota included naturally born citizens primarily of British descent. It ensured immigration from Britain and Western Europe increased, while it decreased from areas like Southern and Eastern Europe, and prohibited outright the Japanese, as Asian people were excluded completely.

All to maintain an American way of life the nation's political leaders and business titans in the 1920s did not want to change.

Amazingly, it was not until 1952 that Congress revised the 1924 Immigration Act!