A 1916 political cartoon titled “The Americanese Wall,” criticizing literacy tests proposed by Congressman Burnett to restrict immigrant entry into the U.S.
Could your ancestors have come here after 1924? Provisions of certain immigration laws.
Immigration Act of 1917
- Barred the following types of people: "idiots, imbeciles, and feeble-minded persons;" persons of "constitutional psychopathic inferiority;" "mentally or physically defective" persons; the insane; alcoholics; persons with epilepsy, tuberculosis, or contagious diseases; paupers and vagrants; criminals; prostitutes; anarchists; polygamists; political radicals; and contract laborers.
- Created "Asiatic-Barred zone" which included people from India, Afghanistan, Persia (now Iran), Arabia, parts of the Ottoman Empire and Russia, Southeast Asia, and the Asian-Pacific islands.
- Banned any immigrant who was unable to read in any language.
Emergency Quota Act of 1921
- Restricted immigration to 3% of foreign-born persons of each nationality that resided in the United States in 1910.
Immigration Act of 1924
- For four years, until June 30, 1927, the 1924 Act set the annual quota of any nationality at 2% of the number of foreign-born persons of such nationality resident in the United States in 1890. Banned any immigrant who could not become a U.S. citizen, which meant anyone from China or Japan.
An 1881 political cartoon from Illustrated Newspaper satirizing Brooklyn's exclusionary labor policies against immigrants, labeled “Know-Nothingism in Brooklyn.”
An 1860s political cartoon titled “The Great Fear of the Period—That Uncle Sam May Be Swallowed by Foreigners,” mocking xenophobic fears by showing the imagined "threat" of immigrants reversed.
A political cartoon depicting Uncle Sam enforcing a 3% immigration quota on European arrivals, illustrating 1920s U.S. immigration restriction policies.
A late 19th-century anti-Semitic cartoon titled “The New Trans-Atlantic Hebrew Line,” mocking Jewish immigrants as a flood of undesirable arrivals under the guise of persecution.
Images courtesy of the Library of Congress.