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(JTA) — In Might 1924, President Calvin Coolidge signed laws, often known as the Johnson-Reed Act, that severely restricted the variety of immigrants by placing quotas on their nation of origin, and fully excluded immigrants from Asia.
Amongst different issues, the act dropped at an finish a historic migration of Jews to america, and set in place restrictions that will preserve Jewish refugees out when the Nazis rose to energy a decade later.
Jews weren’t the one targets of nativists who pressed for immigration quotas — the legislation drastically minimize the variety of Italians, Greeks and Jap Europeans who might enter the nation. Nor was the act unprecedented — in 1882, Congress handed the Chinese language Exclusion Act banning Chinese language laborers, and in 1921 imposed an Emergency Quota Act placing a cap on European immigration.
However Johnson-Reed cemented a change in how America considered immigration, from a coverage of largely open borders to a brand new emphasis on “desirables” and “undesirables.” Its Senate sponsor, David Reed of Pennsylvania, wrote within the New York Instances that the legislation’s objective was to make america a extra “homogenous” nation.
It set the phrases for a debate that if something has develop into extra intense precisely 100 years later.
Daniel Okrent, writer of the 2020 e-book “The Guarded Gate,” a historical past of the Johnson-Reed period, has characterised anti-immigrant sentiments of the final century that sound acquainted in the present day. “‘We will’t let this occur to us. We will’t let this occur to our cities. We will’t let this occur to our faculty methods,’” is how he described them to an interviewer. “There was an overtly prejudicial view that they wished to avoid wasting themselves by holding out ‘the opposite.’”
The anniversary of Johnson-Reed is an event to recollect America’s fraught relationship with immigration, and the way Jewish historical past was formed by migration and restrictions. On Sunday, April 7, the Heart of Jewish Historical past in Manhattan is internet hosting a symposium, “Reconsidering Jewish Migration to america: A Century of Controversy.”
I spoke to some of the students and activists who will likely be talking on the symposium, asking in regards to the historic context of Johnson-Reed and its legacy. I edited our conversations right into a digital roundtable on immigration and its discontents, then and now.
The contributors:
Hasia Diner, professor emerita at New York College and co-editor of “Immigration: An American Historical past.”
Mark Hetfield, president and CEO of HIAS, the Jewish group’s worldwide refugee company.
Deborah Sprint Moore, Frederick G. L. Huetwell Professor of Historical past and Professor of Judaic Research on the College of Michigan.
Beth S. Wenger, the Moritz and Josephine Berg Professor of Historical past and Affiliate Dean for Graduate Research within the College of Arts & Sciences on the College of Pennsylvania.
Our conversations had been edited for size and readability.
From left: Mark Hetfield, Hasia Diner, Deborah Sprint Moore and Beth Wenger. (Andrew Rozario/HIAS; Courtesy)
The anti-immigrant fervor after World Conflict I climaxes with the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924, often known as Johnson-Reed after its Congressional sponsors. What had been the components that introduced it about?
Deborah Sprint Moore: Johnson-Reed occurs on the time of the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and notions of white supremacy, and the brand new Klan is anti-Catholic in addition to anti-Jewish. Most of the tensions in our society, particularly notions of white supremacy and Christian nationalism, discover their roots and assist on this period of restrictive immigration.
In Europe, individuals used to not simply come, additionally they used to return; there was motion backwards and forwards. That’s why we speak about transnational identities, they usually might have a number of allegiances consequently — which led many to vilify immigrants, which I feel was a part of what produced Johnson-Reed.
Hasia Diner: There are a number of forces at work. First, I feel “Individuals” — the white, Protestant, Anglo-Saxon — had been actually disturbed by World Conflict I. Ethnic teams had been lining up with their house international locations, so all people needs their voice to be heard, based mostly on what they thought was good for his or her ancestral house. And simply because the Austro-Hungarian empire was breaking apart, many “Individuals” actually feared that america was changing into balkanized in the identical manner. I consider the 1924 act as an effort to finish that means of balkanization.
By way of the financial system, proper after World Conflict I, there was transient panic, and numerous labor agitation. Unions had been seen within the white creativeness as mistaken, violent and unlawful. This upsurge in union exercise within the aftermath of the battle was possibly icing on the cake. However within the lead as much as restriction, it was manner much less vital than racism, worldwide politics and a sort of understanding which grows out of each of them that there’s such a factor as an excessive amount of range. Theodore Roosevelt ran round within the early twentieth century, telling white American girls that it was their job to have extra infants to offset the immigrants. He in reality referred to as it “race suicide.”
Let’s speak about that racism. Journalist Daniel Okrent has written about how elites would convey eugenics — the thought of genetically superior and inferior races — “into large public consciousness, introduce it into the nation’s political debate, and elevate it into the realm of scientific respectability.”
HD: The yr 1894 is for immigration historians nearly as necessary as 1924. That’s when the Immigration Restriction League was based by three Harvard College alumni pressing for the exclusion of the lesser races. The rise of “scientific racism” actually got here to dominate mental and political discourse. It stated that peoples of the world could be arrayed alongside a spectrum from civilization, with white Europeans on the prime, and, on the backside, Asians and Blacks. There are books and dictionaries and discovered articles saying, “Nicely, ought to the Italians be ranked larger or decrease than the Greeks? The place do the Jews match on this?”
Sen. David Reed of Pennsylvania explains the laws proscribing U.S. immigration in a New York Instances essay, April 27, 1924. (New York Instances Archive)
The place do the Jews match on this? There was loads of antisemitism expressed by supporters of limits on immigration.
Beth Wenger: There was such huge Jewish immigration on this interval and Jews had been one of many key teams who had been among the many “undesirables.” In america there’s a vacillation in some Jewish organizations between desirous to defend open immigration towards quotas, and in addition a worry of being related to the “undesirable.”
HD: It was 1922 when Harvard instituted its quota on Jews, and there was speak about Jews as revolutionaries, but in addition as unscrupulous businessmen. There was some speak about them being soiled and tubercular and loud, noisy, all the time speaking with their arms.
However I’m going to say one thing that in all probability a lot of my fellow American Jewish historians wouldn’t agree with, that it wasn’t the Jews however the Italians who had been the actual focus of xenophobic hysteria. And earlier it was the Irish. It’s a extremely fascinating comparability between america and Nice Britain, the place the dialogue round the 1905 Aliens Act denying entry to “undesirable immigrants” was all about Jews.
Between 1880 and 1920, greater than 20 million immigrants arrive, Together with 3 million Jews. What does Johnson-Reed change, beside turning off the spigot of immigration?
DDM: It adjustments how america understands immigration. Previous to Johnson-Reed, though you had the Chinese language Exclusion Act, and also you had numerous assessments for whether or not any individual is mentally ailing or bodily sick, or impoverished, you all the time had the belief that immigration was open. And now the belief is the reverse, that immigration is one thing to be managed, one thing to be restricted. And that’s an actual basic swap in fascinated by america.
And, in fact, immigration drops by 80%, which has a extremely massive influence on immigrant teams within the U.S., as a result of abruptly, there aren’t any newcomers, or hardly any newcomers. And that signifies that these immigrant teams are going to be made up of the second era after which third era.
Mark Hetfield: Within the Nineteen Twenties, ’30s and, ’40s, because of the Johnson-Reed Act, HIAS turned a global company. Previous to 1921, we might keep on Ellis Island and ensure they bought into the system. That was our job. Immigrants needed to show that they wouldn’t be a public cost, that they weren’t radical, however they didn’t should do any advance work. It was all executed at Ellis. After which we made positive they bought kosher meals on Ellis Island whereas they had been ready and bought the authorized assist that they wanted. After which as soon as they bought off, we both gave them shelter, largely in what’s now the Public Theater on Lafayette Avenue or we’d get them prepare tickets to another locations in america the place they might typically be part of kinfolk. That was the best way we functioned for our first 20 years.
When Congress slammed the door shut in 1921 and 1924, we needed to develop into a global group as a result of Jews couldn’t come right here anymore for essentially the most half. So we needed to discover different locations for them to go. We needed to function in Europe and Asia and South America, to attempt to discover some locations that will settle for them.
BW: Let me provide you with one other particular instance: It creates the Border Patrol, and the entire concept that the U.S. as a nation gate-keeps who is available in. This laws firmly implanted that notion and adjusted some sweeping concepts about nationwide id about citizenship, who’s a great American. The rhetoric you see round immigration in the present day, whereas clearly influenced by up to date political and different developments, may be very a lot a consequence of the lengthy historical past of the best way the U.S. got here to consider immigration within the twentieth century.
Immigrants ready to be transferred to the U.S. mainland from Ellis Island, October 30, 1912. Congress considerably tightened its immigration insurance policies in 1924, making immigration tougher for Jews fleeing Nazi Germany within the Nineteen Thirties. (Library of Congress)
One other main consequence is that because the Nazis got here to energy within the ’30s, most Jews in Europe had a really slim probability of having the ability to immigrate to america. And we all know the tragic penalties.
MH: HIAS needed to function in locations like Shanghai, Tokyo, South America. We couldn’t get them right here. We couldn’t get them to Canada. We couldn’t get them to South Africa. We couldn’t get into Australia anymore.
HD: Antisemitism actually ratchets up within the Nineteen Twenties and the Nineteen Thirties, when you could have Henry Ford and America First. However once more, each opinion ballot executed after 1935 reveals that the American public doesn’t need immigration, interval.
What adjustments caused by Johnson-Reed are nonetheless with us, or can we maybe say that so many issues have modified that the durations surrounding 1924 and 2024 can’t be in contrast?
BW: A problem that’s actually so painfully with us as a nation is this concept of who’s a deserving and worthy American and the issues that decide that. Anti-immigrant proponents used pseudoscience to find out who’s unassimilable not solely culturally however supposedly scientifically, and that immigrants would corrupt the pure western heritage of America. That notion has been, sadly, fairly sturdy.
Politicians and people will say, “We’re a rustic of immigrants” and another person will say, “No, it was completely different then. All these individuals actually wished to adapt and alter and now they don’t.” It’s one other model of who belongs right here, and who doesn’t. It’s additionally a false notion that there was an easier America, and it largely started earlier than the Eighties. It was not true then and it isn’t true now.
DDM: The Hart-Celler Act [the 1965 legislation that abolished the quota system] doesn’t change the belief that america goes to regulate who enters and isn’t going to. However it does permit for household reunification. It opens up alternatives for individuals in japanese and southern Europe who had been disregarded. It removes the Asian exclusion.
However the basic pondering isn’t modified. The legislation creates completely different sorts of classification schemes to differentiate between fascinating and undesirable immigrants. We’re within the midst of a awful immigration coverage.
MH: Perhaps 10 years in the past I’d say we had been in a completely completely different period. And now I must say that if historical past doesn’t repeat itself, it actually rhymes. I may need stated that below President Obama we lastly had completely different attitudes in the direction of race and the opposite on this nation, however now we’re clearly just about again to the place we had been within the Nineteen Twenties, sadly.
How do you characterize these attitudes?
MH: Nicely, xenophobic. “America First” was a slogan in 1920 within the days main as much as the Emergency Quota Act of 1921 [which limited immigration “scientifically” by imposing quotas based on immigrants’ country of birth]. The otherization of individuals. None of that is new to America. In November 2015, after the terrorist assaults in Paris, the response on this nation was to name for a complete shutdown of letting Syrian Muslim refugees into this nation, however that there have been no Syrian Muslim refugees, or Syrian Muslims concerned in that Paris assault. It was pure scapegoating. And that’s precisely the perspective that led to Johnson-Reed in 1924.
What would a greater immigration strategy appear to be?
DDM: One criticism of immigration in america is that almost all people who find themselves making an attempt to return try to return below the asylum class, which isn’t a typical immigration class supposed to create pathways for a dependable workforce. Asylum has its personal separate guidelines: It’s a must to be fearful of what’s going to occur to you should you return to your property nation, and many others. And it’s a must to show that you just want it. Are these actually the varieties of the way wherein we wish to take into consideration individuals transferring from one place to a different?
All of us inform tales about Jewish immigrants who get off the boat and the subsequent day, they take you to the garment store, and signal you up for shifts. Now we’ve got people who find themselves in search of asylum in New York and different locations, they usually wish to work, they usually’re not allowed to work. What sort of a dopey system is that?
Central American asylum seekers wait as U.S. Border Patrol brokers take them into custody close to McAllen, Texas, June 12, 2018. (John Moore/Getty Pictures)
One legacy of Jewish immigration and the period of restrictions is that Jewish teams on the primary turned main advocates for immigrants, each their very own and different individuals. On the similar time, even some liberals say this nation can’t take in all of the world’s poor and others “craving to be free” — or even when we might, it’s a dangerous political problem. Can the Jewish assist for immigration be sustained? Ought to it?
MH: It’s a great query. We have now a duty to immigrants and refugees, and we’ve got a duty to ourselves to fulfill the safety and financial wants of this nation. A part of that’s border administration. And a part of border administration and a part of selling a great financial system and a powerful nation is to make it possible for we’ve got the labor that we have to gasoline the financial system and we don’t have that proper now. There’s an enormous labor scarcity, and Congress has completely abdicated its duty on regulating immigration. They haven’t up to date the immigration legal guidelines since 1986.
On the finish of the day, why is historical past necessary to the immigration debate? What can we achieve by wanting on the previous?
BW: I preserve going again to this transformation of the nation in some ways. There’s one story we inform about American historical past, after which there’s this different story, they usually don’t match very comfortably collectively. We have now to grasp the place nativism comes from, and there’s no query nativism motivated this laws and all of the issues which can be linked to it, together with pseudoscience.
MH: We live nearly precisely what they had been residing within the Nineteen Twenties in the case of attitudes towards refugees, and immigrants, and the opposite, and it’s actually harmful and unsettling. And we noticed what got here after the Nineteen Twenties in the remainder of the world, with the rise in xenophobia, the rise of populism. All of this stuff that had been occurring within the Nineteen Twenties are with us proper now, throughout us. And we noticed the place that took us within the ’30s and ’40s. Immigration is only one piece of that puzzle, however it’s a really telling one as a result of the best way that you just deal with refugees actually is the canary within the coal mine. And that’s why we imagine that the commandment to welcome the stranger is repeated 36 instances within the Torah — as a result of it’s so simply forgotten.
is editor at massive of the New York Jewish Week and managing editor for Concepts for the Jewish Telegraphic Company.
The views and opinions expressed on this article are these of the writer and don’t essentially mirror the views of JTA or its mum or dad firm, 70 Faces Media.
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