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The Emergency Quota Act, also known as the Emergency Immigration Act of 1921, the Immigration Restriction Act of 1921, the Per Centum Law, and the Johnson Quota Act (ch. 8, of May 19, 1921), was formulated mainly in response to the large influx of Southern and Eastern Europeans and restricted their immigration to the United States. Although intended as temporary legislation, it "proved, in the long run, the most important turning-point in American immigration policy" because it added two new features to American immigration law: numerical limits on immigration and the use of a quota system for establishing those limits, which came to be known as the National Origins Formula.
The Emergency Quota Act restricted the number of immigrants admitted from any country annually to 3% of the number of residents from that country living in the United States as of the 1910 Census. That meant that people from Northern and Western Europe had a higher quota and were more likely to be admitted to the US than those from Eastern or Southern Europe or from non-European countries.
However, professionals were to be admitted without regard to their country of origin. Also, no limits were set on immigration from Canada, Newfoundland, Cuba, Mexico, or the countries of Central America and South America or "adjacent islands." The act did not apply to countries with bilateral agreements with the US or to Asian countries listed in the Immigration Act of 1917, known as the Asiatic Barred Zone Act. It mandated non-citizens seeking to enter the US to obtain and present a visa obtained from a US embassy or consulate before arriving in the US.
Based on the new formula, the number of new immigrants admitted fell from 805,228 in 1920 to 309,556 in 1921–22. Prior to 1921, the average annual inflow of immigrants was from Southern and Eastern Europe rather than from Northern and Western Europe. In 1921, the Emergency Quota Act, introduced the first numerical limits on U.S. immigration. It capped annual arrivals from the Western Hemisphere at 358,000 approximately. Each country was capped at 3% of the size of the country's immigrant population in the U.S based on the 1910 census.
The act, sponsored by US Representative Albert Johnson (R-Washington), was passed without a recorded vote in the US House of Representatives and by a vote of 90-2-4 in the US Senate.
The act was revised by the Immigration Act of 1924.
The use of the National Origins Formula continued until it was replaced by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which introduced a system of preferences, based on immigrants' skills and family relationships with US citizens or US residents.
Quotas by country under successive laws
Listed below are historical quotas on immigration from the Eastern Hemisphere, by country, as applied in given fiscal years ending June 30, calculated according to successive immigration laws and revisions from the Emergency Quota Act of 1921 to the final quota year of 1965. The 1922 and 1925 systems based on dated census records of the foreign-born population were intended as temporary measures, and were replaced by the 1924 Act's National Origins Formula based on the 1920 Census of the total U.S. population, effective July 1, 1929.
{| class="wikitable sortable" style="text-align:right"
|-
!rowspan="2"|Annual National Quota
!colspan="2"|Act of 1921||colspan="4"|Act of 1924||colspan="2"|Act of 1952
|-
!1922
!%
!1925
!%
!1930
!%
!1965
!%
|-
| align="left"|
| 288
| 0.08%
| 100
| 0.06%
| 100
| 0.07%
| 100
| 0.06%
|-
| align="left"|
| 230
| 0.06%
| 124
| 0.08%
| 100
| 0.07%
| 100
| 0.06%
|-
| align="left"|
| 7,451
| 2.08%
| 785
| 0.48%
| 1,413
| 0.92%
| 1,405
| 0.89%
|-
| align="left"|
| 1,563
| 0.44%
| 512
| 0.31%
| 1,304
| 0.85%
| 1,297
| 0.82%
|-
| align="left"|
| 302
| 0.08%
| 100
| 0.06%
| 100
| 0.07%
| 100
| 0.06%
|-
| align="left"|
| 14,357
| 4.01%
| 3,073
| 1.87%
| 2,874
| 1.87%
| 2,859
| 1.80%
|-
| align="left"|
| 301
| 0.08%
| 228
| 0.14%
| 100
| 0.07%
|
|
|-
| align="left"|
| 5,619
| 1.57%
| 2,789
| 1.69%
| 1,181
| 0.77%
| 1,175
| 0.74%
|-
| align="left"|
| 1,348
| 0.38%
| 124
| 0.08%
| 116
| 0.08%
| 115
| 0.07%
|-
| align="left"|
| 3,921
| 1.10%
| 471
| 0.29%
| 569
| 0.37%
| 566
| 0.36%
|-
| align="left"|
| 71
| 0.02%
|
|
|
|
|
|
|-
| align="left"|
| 5,729
| 1.60%
| 3,954
| 2.40%
| 3,086
| 2.01%
| 3,069
| 1.94%
|-
| align="left"|
| 67,607
| 18.90%
| 51,227
| 31.11%
| 25,957
| 16.89%
| 25,814
| 16.28%
|-
| align="left"|
| 3,294
| 0.92%
| 100
| 0.06%
| 307
| 0.20%
| 308
| 0.19%
|-
| align="left"|
| 5,638
| 1.58%
| 473
| 0.29%
| 869
| 0.57%
| 865
| 0.55%
|-
| align="left"|
| 75
| 0.02%
| 100
| 0.06%
| 100
| 0.07%
| 100
| 0.06%
|-
| align="left"|
|
|
| 28,567
| 17.35%
| 17,853
| 11.61%
| 17,756
| 11.20%
|-
| align="left"|
| 42,057
| 11.75%
| 3,854
| 2.34%
| 5,802
| 3.77%
| 5,666
| 3.57%
|-
| align="left"|
| 1,540
| 0.43%
| 142
| 0.09%
| 236
| 0.15%
| 235
| 0.15%
|-
| align="left"|
| 2,460
| 0.69%
| 344
| 0.21%
| 386
| 0.25%
| 384
| 0.24%
|-
| align="left"|
| 92
| 0.03%
| 100
| 0.06%
| 100
| 0.07%
| 100
| 0.06%
|-
| align="left"|
| 3,607
| 1.01%
| 1,648
| 1.00%
| 3,153
| 2.05%
| 3,136
| 1.98%
|-
| align="left"|
| 12,202
| 3.41%
| 6,453
| 3.92%
| 2,377
| 1.55%
| 2,364
| 1.49%
|-
| align="left"|
| 31,146
| 8.70%
| 5,982
| 3.63%
| 6,524
| 4.24%
| 6,488
| 4.09%
|-
| align="left"|
| 2,465
| 0.69%
| 503
| 0.31%
| 440
| 0.29%
| 438
| 0.28%
|-
| align="left"|
| 7,419
| 2.07%
| 603
| 0.37%
| 295
| 0.19%
| 289
| 0.18%
|-
| align="left"| /
| 24,405
| 6.82%
| 2,248
| 1.37%
| 2,784
| 1.81%
| 2,697
| 1.70%
|-
| align="left"|
| 912
| 0.25%
| 131
| 0.08%
| 252
| 0.16%
| 250
| 0.16%
|-
| align="left"|
| 20,042
| 5.60%
| 9,561
| 5.81%
| 3,314
| 2.16%
| 3,295
| 2.08%
|-
| align="left"|
| 3,752
| 1.05%
| 2,081
| 1.26%
| 1,707
| 1.11%
| 1,698
| 1.07%
|-
| align="left"|
| 2,388
| 0.67%
| 100
| 0.06%
| 226
| 0.15%
| 225
| 0.14%
|-
| align="left"|
| 77,342
| 21.62%
| 34,007
| 20.65%
| 65,721
| 42.76%
| 65,361
| 41.22%
|-
| align="left"|
| 6,426
| 1.80%
| 671
| 0.41%
| 845
| 0.55%
| 942
| 0.59%
|-
| align="left"| and
| 359
| 0.10%
| 221
| 0.13%
| 200
| 0.13%
| 700
| 0.44%
|-
| align="left"|Total from Europe
| 356,135
| 99.53%
| 161,546
| 98.10%
| 150,591
| 97.97%
| 149,697
| 94.41%
|-
| align="left"|Total from Asia
| 1,066
| 0.30%
| 1,300
| 0.79%
| 1,323
| 0.86%
| 3,690
| 2.33%
|-
| align="left"|Total from Africa
| 122
| 0.03%
| 1,200
| 0.73%
| 1,200
| 0.78%
| 4,274
| 2.70%
|-
| align="left"|Total from all Countries
| 357,803
| 100%
| 164,667
| 100%
| 153,714
| 100%
| 158,561
| 100%
|-
|}
See also
- Dillingham Commission
- List of United States immigration legislation
References
Further reading
- Allerfeldt, Kristofer. "‘And We Got Here First’: Albert Johnson, National Origins and Self-Interest in the Immigration Debate of the 1920s." Journal of Contemporary History 45.1 (2010): 7–26.
- Miller, Nathan. New World Coming. Cambridge: Da Capo Press, 2003
- Higham, John. Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism. 2nd ed. New York: Atheneum, 1963. (First edition published by Rutgers University Press in 1955)
- Jerry Elman, "The 'Holocaust' is Not the Right Focus!" Blog posted April 19, 2023. Accessed May 5, 2023 [https://jerry-elman.com/?p=4443]
External links
- Emergency Quota Act as enacted (42 Stat. 5) in the US Statutes at Large