The Page Act of 1875 (Sect. 141, 18 Stat. 477, 1873-March 1875) was the first restrictive federal immigration law and prohibited the entry of immigrants considered "undesirable." The law classified as "undesirable" any individual from Asia who was coming to America to be a forced laborer, any Asian woman who would engage in prostitution, and all people considered to be convicts in their own country.

The Immigration Act of 1903, also called the Anarchist Exclusion Act, was a law of the United States regulating immigration. It codified previous immigration law, and added four inadmissible classes: anarchists, people with epilepsy, beggars, and importers of prostitutes. It had little impact and its provisions related to anarchists were expanded in the Immigration Act of 1918.

The Emergency Quota Act, also known as the Emergency Immigration Act of 1921, the Immigration Restriction Act of 1921, the Per Centum Law, and the Johnson Quota Act (ch. 8, 42 Stat. 5 of May 19, 1921) restricted immigration into the United States. Although intended as temporary legislation, the Act "proved in the long run the most important turning-point in American immigration policy" because it added two new features to American immigration law: numerical limits on immigration from Europe and the use of a quota system for establishing those limits. These limits came to be known as the National Origins Formula.

The Emergency Quota Act restricted the number of immigrants admitted from any country annually to 3% of the number of residents from that same country living in the United States as of the U.S. Census of 1910. This meant that people from northern European countries had a higher quota and were more likely to be admitted to the U.S. than people from eastern Europe, southern Europe, or other, non-European countries. Professionals were to be admitted without regard to their country of origin. The Act set no limits on immigration from Latin America. The act did not apply to countries with bilateral agreements with the US, or to Asian counties listed in the Immigration Act of 1917, known as the Asiatic Barred Zone Act.

Based on that formula, the number of new immigrants admitted fell from 805,228 in 1920 to 309,556 in 1921-22. The average annual inflow of immigrants prior to 1921 was 175,983 from Northern and Western Europe, and 685,531 from other countries, principally Southern and Eastern Europe. In 1921, there was a drastic reduction in immigration levels from other countries, principally Southern and Eastern Europe.

Following the end of World War I, both Europe and the United States were suffering economic and social upheaval. In Europe, the destruction of the war, the Russian Revolution, and the dissolutions of both the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Ottoman Empire led to greater immigration to the United States, while in the United States an economic downturn following post-war demobilization increased unemployment. The combination of increased immigration from Europe at the time of higher American unemployment strengthened the anti-immigrant movement.

The act, sponsored by Rep. Albert Johnson (R-Washington), was passed without a recorded vote in the U.S. House of Representatives and by a vote of 90-2-4 in the U.S. Senate.

The Act was soon revised by the Immigration Act of 1924.

The use of such a National Origins Formula continued until 1965 when the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 established America's current immigration quota system.


In other words:

Before 1921 there were no illegal immigrants to the US unless they were Asian, criminal, insane or ill. How many of your ancestors would be considered illegal immigrants if we applied today's rules to them? And note the immigration rates... When we were a country with 40% of the population of today.

But then nothing changes - Benjamin Franklin complained about those immigrants not blending into our society and refusing to learn our language... and he was talking about the Germans.