Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, the tempest-tost, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
Checking the Tide
The endless stream of newcomers, whose economic and political backgrounds differed from those of the earlier immigrants, led to a search for some method of checking the new immigration. With this end in view, the application of a literacy test was advocated. Presidents Cleveland and Taft had vetoed acts which contained this provision and President Wilson twice repudiated it. However, it became part of the General Law of 1917 over presidential objection. In a reference to the immigrants, President Wilson said:
Some of the best stuff in America has come out of foreign lands and some of the best stuff in America is in the men who are naturalized citizens of the United States.
In the meantime, during the administration of President Theodore Roosevelt, a Gentlemen’s Agreement had been made with Japan in 1907, whereby Japan undertook to check the emigration of Japanese laborers to the United States.
Immigration from Europe was largely suspended during the World War, but it rapidly increased thereafter until it was checked by the temporary Quota Limit Law of 1921 and definitely limited by the permanent Quota Limit Law of 1924. By this law, immigration was restricted to 150,000 annually, with quotas allotted to the various nations based on the Census of 1890. In 1929, the quota based on the Census of 1920 went into effect, bringing the total immigration quota to about 153,000 annually.