Immigration In The 1920's Essay

Before the federal government took over control of immigration in the 1890’s, Ellis Island was just another piece of land in New York Harbor. As it was called Gibbet Island back then, it was named after the wooden post, or gibbet, where the bodies of the convicted were displayed. It was a place where convicted pirates were hanged to the gallows in the 1820’s until 1839, “it would be their last chance to witness such a horrific spectacle in Gibbet Island” (Cannato pg. 23). Since Congress wasn’t very concerned with immigration, the regulation of immigrants was left to states like Massachusetts and New York. In April 1855, “the Board of Commissioners chose Castle Garden as its immigration depot” (Cannato pg. 36) and the Foran Act was also passed …show more content…
By July 1919 and June 1920, “more than 430,00 people had arrived and almost double that number would arrive in the next twelve months” (Cannato pg. 331). The new law in 1921 made a suggestion to impose a quota on immigration. This then resulted in the Quota Act that set an annual “limit on immigration to 350,000 immigrants per year” (Cannato pg. 333). The law was mainly created to lower and prevent the numbers of immigrants coming from eastern and southern Europe. Then the quota set in 1921 was revised. In the National Origins Act, for immigration in 1924 went from 350,000 to 287,000 people. This quota was determined by “2% of each country’s foreign-born population based on the 1890 Census living in the United States” (Cannato pg. 341). Even though there was an existing quota, this did not apply to those individuals that were highly skilled immigrants, domestic servants, or specialized workers. Also in 1924, Congress created the U.S. Border Patrol within the Immigration Service. Immigration Service continued evolving as the United States experienced rising