The 1924 Johnson-Reed Immigration Act, enacted by Congress on May 26, 1924, dictated the following:
"Immigration visas to quota immigrants shall be issued in each fiscal year as follows:
(1) Fifty per centum of the quotas of each nationality for such year shall be made available... to the following classes of immigrants, without priority of preference as between such classes: (A) Quota immigrants who are the fathers or mothers of citizens of the United States . . . or who are the husbands of citizens of the United States by marriages occurring on or after May 31, 1928 of citizens who are citizens of the United States who are twenty-one years of age or over; and (B) in the case of any nationality the quota of which is three hundred or more, quota immigrants who are skilled in agriculture, and the wives, and the dependent children under the age of eighteen years, of such immigrants skilled in agriculture, if accompanying or following to join them.
(2) The remainder of the quota of each nationality for such year... shall be made available in such year for the issuance of immigration visas to quota immigrants of such nationality who are the unmarried children under twenty-one years of age, or the wives, of alien residents of the United States who were lawfully admitted to the United States for permanent residence..."
The U.S. Library of Congress, in a section entitled "American Memory - Immigration," from its website (accessed Apr. 24, 2007), offered the following:
"The 1924 Immigration Act would tighten the noose even further, excluding all classes of Chinese immigrants and extending restrictions to other Asian immigrant groups. Until these restrictions were relaxed in the middle of the twentieth century, Chinese immigrants were forced to live a life apart, and to build a society in which they could survive on their own."
The Lower East Side Tenement Museum, a National Historic Site property of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, in a section entitled "Tenement Encyclopedia - Chapter Nine - Immigration," retrieved on Apr. 24, 2007 from its website, offered the following:
"Following the First World War and the Red Scare of 1919-20, the restrictionists achieved a long-lasting victory. In 1921, the Quota Act, passed by Congress, placed ceilings on the number of immigrants admitted from each country outside of the Western Hemisphere. Then the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 limited the total European immigration to 150,000 per year, and reduced each nationality's allowance to 2 percent of its U.S. population in 1890. Because significantly fewer Southern and Eastern Europeans were recorded in the 1890 census than in 1920, this effectively reduced immigration from these regions while making more room than was necessary for countries like Great Britain. In 1929, when the quota system was finalized, the ratio of immigrants admittable from northern and western Europe versus southern and eastern Europe was roughly five to one.
In 1924, America had effectively shut its 'Golden Door.' Fewer than 350,000 Europeans immigrated to America during the 1930s, and a high percentage of these were political refugees, particularly from nazi Germany and, at the end of the decade, occupied Europe. In general, these immigrants came from a much higher socio-economic class than their predecessors."
Illegal Immigration Around the World: 13 Countries Compared to the United States
