On February 4, 1917, the United States Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1917 (also known as the Asiatic Barred Zone Act) with an overwhelming majority, overriding President Woodrow Wilson's December 14, 1916 veto. This act added to the number of undesirables banned from entering the country, including but not limited to, “idiots,” “feeble-minded persons,” "criminals" “epileptics,” “insane persons,” alcoholics, “professional beggars,” all persons “mentally or physically defective,” polygamists, and anarchists. Furthermore, it barred all immigrants over the age of sixteen who were illiterate. The most controversial part of the law was the section that designated an “Asiatic Barred Zone,” a region that included much of eastern Asia and the Pacific Islands from which people could not immigrate. Previously, only the Chinese had been excluded from admission to the country. Attempts at introducing literacy tests had been vetoed by Grover Cleveland in 1891 and William Taft in 1913. President Woodrow Wilson also objected to this clause in the Immigration Act but it was still passed by Congress on the fourth attempt.
Anxiety in the United States about immigration has often been directed toward immigrants from China and Japan. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 barred Chinese from entering the U.S. The Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907 was made with Japan to regulate Japanese immigration to the U.S.[1] The Immigration Act of 1917 is one of many immigration acts during this time period which arose from nativist and xenophobic sentiment. These immigration laws were intentional of the composition of immigrant flow coming into the United States.
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The McCarran-Walter Act
The bill was later altered, and Congress put the alterations into a bill called the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952, the Immigration and Naturalization Act. It “extended the privilege of naturalization to Japanese, Koreans, and other Asians.”[2] “The McCarran-Walter Act revised all previous laws and regulations regarding immigration, naturalization, and nationality, and brought them together into one comprehensive statute.”[3]
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Footnotes
- ^ Frank Van Nuys, Americanizing the West: Race, Immigrants, and Citizenship, 1890-1930, (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002), 19, 72.
- ^ “Commentary on Excerpt of the McCarran-Walter Act, 1952,” American Journal Online: The Immigrant Experience, Primary Source Microfilm, (1999), Reproduced in History Resource Center, Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group, February 9, 2007.
- ^ "McCarran-Walter Act," Dictionary of American History, 7 vols, Charles Scribner's Sons, (1976), Reproduced in History Resource Center, Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group, February 9, 2007.
External links
- Timeline of Asian Pacific Americans and Immigration Law
- Closed Borders and Mass Deportations: The Lessons of the Barred Zone Act
- Text of the Act describing the limits of the Asiatic Barred Zone
- “Immigration Act of 1917, Literacy Test”
- Helen F. Eckerson, “Immigration and National Origins”
- Immigration of Illiterates over Age Sixteen Prohibited, May 1, 1917,"
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