Fortress America: Asian Exclusion and National Origins Quotas

Question 1

What are the core preference categories of the current U.S. legal immigration system? How are visas generally distributed across these categories?

Answer 1

family based 750-800
employee based 140
humanitarian 80-120
diversity 50,000

Question 2

Can you describe the three “great waves” of immigration to the United States?

Answer 2

Northern Europe Wave
Southern/Eastern Europe Wave
Modern Era

Question 3

Xenophobic groups were unsuccessful in getting government to significantly restrict admissions during the first great wave of immigration in the 19th century. Why?

Answer 3

Laissez-faire policies, business demands for migrant workers, large ethnic voting blocs to counter nativist parties

Question 4

What was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and what propelled it?

Answer 4

suspends Chinese labor immigration fro 10 years, authorizes deportation processes, special certificates for reentry, exclusion extended

oversupply of labor on coast, west coast key swing states in national elections, small Chinese population (no voting bloc), business demands subside,

Question 5

How did eugenics and scientific racism enter the national debate over southern and eastern European immigration in the 1910s and 1920s?

Answer 5

literacy test law (1917),

Question 6

What are national origins quotas, and how did they remake American immigration policy?

Answer 6

emergency Quota Act of 1921, National Origin Quota Act of 1924, limited immigration to 150,000 annually