America's reputation as a land of welcome for immigrants has often been compromised by periodic calls to "shut the door" on immigration. At the turn of the twentieth century, the arrival of unprecedented numbers of immigrants from Southern and…

Proponents of eugenics believed that various forms of "social inadequacy", including mental illness, criminality, and physical handicaps, were the result of inherited genetic traits. Some studies, such as this one from 1922, attempted to link these…

In the years after World War I, Congress passed the Quota Act of 1921, followed by the Immigration Act of 1924, also known as the Johnson-Reed Act. The 1924 Act established a quota for the total number of immigrants allowed per annum at…