National+Origins+Act

=** __The National__ __Origins Act also known as The Immigration Act Of 1924__ **=

===The Immigration Act of 1924 created a permanent quota system (that of 1921 was only temporary), reducing the 1921 annual quota from 358,000 to 164,000. In addition, the Act reduced the immigration limit from 3 percent to 2 percent of each foreign-born group living in the United States in 1890. Using 1890 rather than 1910 or 1920 excluded the new wave of foreign-born from southern and eastern Europe from quotas truly proportionate to their new numbers in the population. Finally, the act provided for an enormous reduction of the quota to 154,000.===

===A more thorough law was signed by President Coolidge in May 1924. It provided the quota for immigrants entering the U.S. was set at two percent of the total of any given nation's residents in the U.S. as reported in the 1890 census. It also providede that after July 1, 1927, the two percent rule was to be replaced by a cap of 150,000 immigrants annually and quotas determined by "national origins" in the 1920 census. College students, professors, and ministers were exempted from the quotas. Initially immigration from the other Americas was allowed, but soon measures were developed to deny legal entry to Mexican laborers.The main reason of this law was to restrict the entry of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, while welcoming relatively large numbers of newcomers from Britain, Ireland, and Northern Europe with open arms.===

===The new law cut the quota for northern and western European countries by 29 percent, but slashed that for southern and eastern Europe by 87 percent. Italy's quota, for example, was reduced from 42,057 to 3,845 persons. In addition, all immigrants now had to obtain what they call a visa from an American consul in their country. Since part of the thrust of the 1924 law was to select those best suited to American society, this system permitted an initial screening of immigrants.The quota system did not apply to countries in the Western Hemisphere. The United States did not want to alienate its neighbors, and it needed workers, especially those from Mexico. During World Wars I and II, the U.S. recruited thousands of temporary workers from Mexico to harvest crops in our labor-short farmland. In 1929 the quota system based on national origin and took effect. In the 1930s, immigration to the United States markedly decreased, in part because of the 1929 Act, but also because of worldwide economic depression therefore, large portions of most quotas were unfilled. At the same time, thousands of people wanted to flee totalitarian regimes like that in Nazi Germany. Since American immigration policies failed to distinguish between immigrants and refugees in the quota counts, most of the refugees (particularlly Jews) were barred from coming to the United States.===

The following two maps illustrate how change from a 3% immigration restriction law to a 2% immigration restriction law would affect the flow of immigration to America from each European nation.

**[|The Immigration Act of 1924] You Tube Video that describe how the Red Scare was a factor in the Immigration Act of 1924.**