Document D: Immigration Quota Act

Below is an excerpt from a text exploring the reasoning behind the Quota Act:  

Prominent eugenicist Harry Laughlin… wrote, ‘Henceforth, after 1924, the immigrant to the United States was to be looked upon, not as a source of cheap or competitive labor, nor as one seeking asylum from foreign oppression, nor as a migrant hunting a less strenuous life, but as a parent of future-born American citizens. This meant that the hereditary stuff out of which future immigrants were made would have to be compatible racially with American ideals.’

The stakes of immigration restriction, as defined by the eugenically minded, ultimately determined the shape of the new legislation. The formula that was finally written into the Johnson Act-that is, a quota system based on 2 percent of each group’s population according to the 1890 census-originally emerged in a Report of the Eugenics Committee of the United States Committee on Selective Immigration. That committee, chaired by none other than Madison Grant and including Congressman Albert Johnson of Washington (the president of the Eugenic Research Association, 1923-1924), argued that a formula based on the 1890 census rather than on a more recent one “would change the character of immigration, and hence of our future population, by bringing about a preponderance of immigration of the stock which originally settled this country.” North and West Europeans, read the report, were of “higher intelligence” and hence provided “the best material for American citizenship"