Attitudes and policies towards immigration

What the specification asks for

“Attitudes and policies towards immigration” — examined through change and causation. Incandio is aligned to specification 4HI1; it is not published by, endorsed by or affiliated with Pearson.

1 · Understand it

What had been happening

Between about 1890 and 1914 the character of American immigration changed. The older flow had come predominantly from Britain, Germany and Scandinavia; the new one came overwhelmingly from Italy, Poland, Russia and the Austro-Hungarian empire, and it was largely Catholic and Jewish rather than Protestant. In peak years before the war more than a million people arrived annually.

Opposition drew on several sources at once: trade unions worried about wages, employers who were content until the war changed the labour market, Protestant nativism, and a body of pseudo-scientific writing on race, of which Madison Grant's work was the most widely read. The war added the charge of divided loyalty, and the Russian revolution added the charge of radicalism.

The Acts, and the base year

The Emergency Quota Act of 1921 limited annual immigration from each country to three per cent of the number of people of that nationality recorded in the 1910 census. The Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 tightened it to two per cent — and moved the base year back to 1890.

That change of base year is the whole policy and it is the most quotable fact in the key topic. In 1890 the new immigration from southern and eastern Europe had barely begun, so quotas calculated from that census gave large allocations to Britain, Ireland and Germany and tiny ones to Italy, Poland and Russia. The Act also excluded immigration from Asia almost entirely.

The effect was immediate and enormous. Total immigration fell by something like eighty per cent from its pre-war level, and the composition of what remained was reversed. This is the point at which the United States ceased, for four decades, to be a country of mass immigration.

How to argue about intent

A source question on this strand will often turn on whether the restriction was economic or racial, and the base year is what allows a candidate to answer without speculating about anybody's private feelings.

If the concern had been the number of arrivals, any base year would have served: a two per cent quota on the 1920 census would have cut immigration heavily. Choosing 1890 does not reduce the total further; it changes who is admitted. A policy that selects its own base year in order to alter the composition rather than the volume has told you what it is for, in a form that can be demonstrated from the statute itself.

That is a far stronger argument than quoting a congressman's speech, because it does not depend on treating one person's language as representative. It is also exactly the kind of reasoning the interpretation question rewards: an inference from the design of a measure rather than from its advocates' rhetoric.

The consequences reached further than the quotas themselves. Because the Act made no provision for immigration from the western hemisphere, Mexican labour was not restricted, and Mexican migration into the south-western states rose substantially in the following years — and was then subjected to mass deportations after 1929, when the Depression made the same workers unwelcome. A statute written to control European arrivals therefore reshaped a border it had said nothing about, which is the kind of consequence a candidate can use to show that a policy was doing more than its authors described.

2 · Learn it — the notes

The dates that earn marks

1921

The Emergency Quota Act sets quotas at three per cent of the 1910 census. Why this date: It establishes the quota principle, and its base year makes the 1924 change visible as a deliberate choice.

1924

The Johnson-Reed Act sets quotas at two per cent of the 1890 census and excludes Asian immigration. Why this date: Moving the base year back thirty-four years changes the composition rather than the volume, which is the evidence of purpose.

1924–29

Immigration falls to a small fraction of pre-war levels. Why this date: It ends mass immigration to the United States for four decades, which is a change of national character rather than of policy.

The figures, and how far to trust them

• 1890 — The base census year chosen in 1924, before the great wave of southern and eastern European arrivals.
• About 80 per cent — The approximate fall in immigration from pre-war levels after 1924. (Comparisons depend on which pre-war years are used as the baseline; the scale of the reduction is not disputed.)
• Two per cent — The quota proportion under the 1924 Act, against three per cent in 1921.

The people to place

• Albert Johnson — Congressman who co-sponsored the 1924 Act; chaired the House immigration committee.
• Madison Grant — Author of widely read pseudo-scientific writing on race that shaped the restriction argument.
• Calvin Coolidge — President who signed the Johnson-Reed Act in 1924.

How historians disagree

Attributed interpretations, never voiced — the AO4 seam.

• The 'economic anxiety' reading: Restriction responded to real labour-market pressure after the war, to union demands and to housing and service strain in the cities, and would have happened whatever the origins of the arrivals. Contested by The reading that points at the 1890 base year: a policy designed only to reduce numbers would not have needed to change which census it counted, so the composition was the object..

What students say — and what is actually the case

Not this: The 1924 Act simply reduced immigration.

This: It reduced it and reversed its composition, by choosing a base census from before the arrival of the groups it was designed to exclude. The second effect is the one the design reveals.

Not this: Immigration restriction was a Southern or rural phenomenon.

This: It had support from northern trade unions, from employers after the wartime labour market changed, and from respectable metropolitan opinion. The 1924 Act passed both houses by very large majorities.

Two things students merge

Blurred: Reducing volume and changing composition.

The distinction: A quota reduces numbers; a base year decides whose numbers. The 1924 Act did both, and separating them is what makes an argument about intent demonstrable rather than speculative.

Blurred: Nativism and racism in this period.

The distinction: Nativism is hostility to the foreign-born as such; the racial argument of the 1920s claimed a hierarchy among Europeans as well as between continents. The Act's structure reflects the second, and the distinction matters when reading contemporary sources.

What a Grade 9 answer holds here

A Grade 9 answer reads the Act as a document rather than as a policy. Any base year would have cut the numbers; only one of them changed who arrived, and Congress chose a census taken thirty-four years earlier — so the statute's own arithmetic states its purpose more reliably than any speech made in support of it.

3 · How it is examined

This strand is genuinely set through: Paper 2 Section A (a) (6 marks — “Describe TWO features of EITHER … OR ….”); Paper 2 Section A (b) (8 marks — “How far does Source A support the evidence of Source B about …? Explain your answer.”); Paper 2 Section A (c) (16 marks — “Extract C suggests that …. How far do you agree with this interpretation? Use Extract C, Sources A and B and your own knowledge to explain your answer.”).

What earns marks: The 1890 base year, explained as an inference about purpose drawn from the design of the statute. It is an argument from evidence rather than from rhetoric, which is what AO4 questions on intent are looking for.

4 · Prove it — the questions

Answered inside Incandio, where a marker checks what a correct answer must contain and tells you which half was missing. The marking stays in the app; the questions are here.

1. Describe two features of American immigration policy in the 1920s. [6 marks · Paper 2 Section A (a)]
2. How far does Source A support the evidence of Source B about attitudes to immigration in the 1920s? [8 marks · Paper 2 Section A (b)]
3. How far does Source A support the evidence of Source B about the effects of the 1924 Act? [8 marks · Paper 2 Section A (b)]
4. Extract C suggests that immigration restriction in the 1920s was driven by racial rather than economic motives. How far do you agree with this interpretation? [16 marks · Paper 2 Section A (c)]
5. Extract C suggests that the Johnson-Reed Act changed the character of the United States. How far do you agree with this interpretation? [16 marks · Paper 2 Section A (c)]

Carry on through the option

• Previous lesson, in key topic 1: The leisure industry and the changing position of women
• Next lesson: The Palmer Raids, the Red Scare and Sacco and Vanzetti
• Also in this key topic: Attitudes towards black Americans and the Ku Klux Klan · Morals, the Monkey Trial and Prohibition
• Key topic 2 · Increased social tensions in the 1920s · The USA, 1918–41 · the option's timeline · Incandio History
• The other key topics of The USA: The Roaring Twenties · The USA in Depression, 1929–33 · Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1933–41 · The Opposition to the New Deal