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Who Was Shut Out?: Immigration Quotas, 1925-1927

In response to growing public opinion against the flow of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe in the years following World War I, Congress passed first the Quota Act of 1921 then the even more restrictive Immigration Act of 1924 (the Johnson-Reed Act). Initially, the 1924 law imposed a total quota on immigration of 165,000—less than 20 percent of the pre-World War I average. It based ceilings on the number of immigrants from any particular nation on the percentage of each nationality recorded in the 1890 census—a blatant effort to limit immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe, which mostly occurred after that date. In the first decade of the 20th century, an average of 200,000 Italians had entered the United States each year. With the 1924 Act, the annual quota for Italians was set at less than 4,000. This table shows the annual immigration quotas under the 1924 Immigration Act.

Northwest Europe and Scandinavia

Eastern and Southern Europe

Other Countries

Country	Quota	Country	Quota	Country	Quota
Germany	51,227	Poland	5,982	Africa (other than Egypt)	1,100
Great Britain and Northern Ireland	34,007	Italy	3,845	Armenia	124
Irish Free State (Ireland)	28,567	Czechoslovakia	3,073	Australia	121
Sweden	9,561	Russia	2,248	Palestine	100
Norway	6,453	Yugoslavia	671	Syria	100
France	3,954	Romania	603	Turkey	100
Denmark	2,789	Portugal	503	Egypt	100
Switzerland	2,081	Hungary	473	New Zealand & Pacific Islands	100
Netherlands	1,648	Lithuania	344	All others	1,900
Austria	785	Latvia	142
Belgium	512	Spain	131
Finland	471	Estonia	124
Free City of Danzig	228	Albania	100
Iceland	100	Bulgaria	100
Luxembourg	100	Greece	100

Total (Number)	142,483	Total (Number)	18,439	Total (Number)	3,745
Total (%)	86.5	Total (%)	11.2	Total (%)	2.3

(Total Annual immigrant quota: 164,667)

Source: Statistical Abstract of the United States (Washington, D.C. Government Printing Office, 1929), 100.