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The United States Immigration Act of 1924 (Johnson-Reed Act) limited the number of immigrants who could be admitted from any country to 2% of the number of person from that country who were already living in the United States in 1890. It superseded the 1921 Emergency Quota Act. The law was aimed at further restricting the Southern and Eastern Europeans who had begun to flood into the country beginning in the 1890s, as well as East Asians and Asian Indians, who were totally prohibited from immigrating. It set no limits on immigration from Latin America.
It passed with strong congressional support (only 6 dissenting votes in the Senate). Some of its strongest supporters were influenced by Madison Grant and his 1916 book, The Passing of a Great Race. Grant was a eugenicist and advocate of the racial hygiene theory. His data, which is now considered by some to be flawed, purported to show the superiority of the founding Northern European races.
As an example of its effect, in the ten years following 1900 about 200,000 Italians immigrated every year. With the imposition of the 1924 quota, only 4,000 per year were allowed. At the same time, the annual quota for Germany was over 57,000. 86% of the 165,000 permitted entries were from the British Isles, France, Germany, and other Northern European countries.
The quotas remained in place with minor alterations until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.
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