U.S. Immigration Restrictions of the 1920s
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After World War I, America faced hard times so that the immigrant became the scapegoat for hard times. A tight national-origins policy was instituted in 1921 as a temporary measure, and total immigration was limited to about 350,000 per year, with immigration from each country in a given year limited to 3 percent of all nationals from the country who were living in the United States during the 1910 census. The system was made permanent with the National Origins Act of 1924, now based on the ethnic composition of the United States as reflected in the 1920 census, with entry limited to 2 percent of the number of people living in the U.S. (Chan 55). The law thus reduced the total number of immigrants each year to 150,000. The object of the law was also to favor certain kinds of immigrants and to keep out others. More immigrants were permitted from western Europe and fewer from southern and eastern Europe, and Asians were totally excluded, primarily to prohibit Chinese, Japanese, and Filipinos from acquiring U.S. citizenship. These restrictions would be relaxed after World War II. The experience of different Asian groups differed from that of other Asian groups, and the Japanese experience can be differentiated from the Chinese on the basis of family formation, among other criteria. The immigrant experience in America has been varied, and those who are of very different ethnic or racial background have had a more difficult time as immigrants than those who fit into the
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toward the immigrants also had a role in what occurred, as Chan notes when she refers to the fact that immigration policies of exclusion were imposed rather suddenly on the Chinese who had been brought here first to work on the railroads, while the government restricted the immigration of Japanese in stages. This allowed Japanese men more time to decide whether or not to bring women to America. An agreement in 1908 encouraged Japanese men either to send for their wives or, if they were note married, to have relatives send a wife from home. They could also go home and get married, but for legal reasons, many chose not to do this (Chan 107). This is referred to in the novel Five Years on a Rock by Milton Murayama:
The government had agreed in 1907 not to issue any more passports to laborers seeking work in America. But those already here could send for their wives and children. Those married by proxy qualified as wives and were called "picture brides" (Murayama 9).
The character in this novel is a picture bride who comes to Hawaii to meet her husband. The nature of the immigrant experience in Hawaii differed from that on the mainland for many Japanese, and one reason for this was the economic opportunity that existed becaus
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Some common words found in the essay are:
United Japanese, Japanese Chinese, Chinese Chinese, Milton Murayama, Chinese Hawaiians, America Nisei, Asia America, Origins Act, War America, Immigrants Asian, sugar production, immigrant experience, picture bride, japanese women, asian populations, world war, chinese japanese, chinese women, five rock, japanese workers,
Approximate Word count = 1330
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)
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