Henry Cabot Lodge was an American politician, historian, lawyer, and statesman from Massachusetts. A member of the Republican Party, he served in the United States Senate from 1893 to 1924 and is best known for his positions on foreign policy. His successful crusade against Woodrow Wilson's Treaty of Versailles ensured that the United States never joined the League of Nations and his penned conditions against that treaty, known collectively as the Lodge reservations, influenced the structure of the modern United Nations.
The Cabot family is one of the Boston Brahmin families, also known as the "first families of Boston".
A literacy test assesses a person's literacy skills: their ability to read and write. Literacy tests have been administered by various governments, particularly to immigrants.
Madison Grant was an American lawyer, zoologist, anthropologist, and writer known for his work as a conservationist, eugenicist, and advocate of scientific racism. Grant is less noted for his far-reaching achievements in conservation than for his pseudoscientific advocacy of Nordicism, a form of racism which views the "Nordic race" as superior.
The Immigration Act of 1924, or Johnson–Reed Act, including the Asian Exclusion Act and National Origins Act, was a United States federal law that prevented immigration from Asia and set quotas on the number of immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. It also authorized the creation of the country's first formal border control service, the U.S. Border Patrol, and established a "consular control system" that allowed entry only to those who first obtained a visa from a U.S. consulate abroad.
Immigration reduction refers to a government and social policy in the United States that advocates a reduction in the amount of immigration allowed into the country. Steps advocated for reducing the numbers of immigrants include advocating stronger action to prevent illegal entry and illegal migration, and reductions in non-immigrant temporary work visas. Some advocate tightening the requirements for legal immigration requirements to reduce numbers or move the proportions of legal immigrants away from those on family reunification programs to skills-based criteria.
Harry Hamilton Laughlin was an American educator and eugenicist. He served as the superintendent of the Eugenics Record Office from its inception in 1910 to its closure in 1939, and was among the most active individuals influencing American eugenics policy, especially compulsory sterilization legislation.
Jeremiah Whipple Jenks (1856–1929) was an American economist, educator, and professor at Cornell University, who held various posts in the United States government throughout his career. He served as a member of the Dillingham Immigration Commission from 1907 to 1914 in which he led research projects on the state of immigration to the US.
The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, also known as the McCarran–Walter Act, codified under Title 8 of the United States Code, governs immigration to and citizenship in the United States. It came into effect on June 27, 1952. The legislation consolidated various immigration laws into a single text. Officially titled the Immigration and Nationality Act, it is often referred to as the 1952 law to distinguish it from the 1965 legislation. This law increased the quota for Europeans outside Northern and Western Europe, gave the Department of State authority to reject entries affecting native wages, eliminated 1880s bans on contract labor, set a minimum quota of one hundred visas per country, and promoted family reunification by exempting citizens' children and spouses from numerical caps.
The Immigration Act of 1917 was a United States Act that aimed to restrict immigration by imposing literacy tests on immigrants, creating new categories of inadmissible persons, and barring immigration from the Asia–Pacific region. The most sweeping immigration act the United States had passed until that time it followed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 in marking a turn toward nativism. The 1917 act governed immigration policy until it was amended by the Immigration Act of 1924; both acts were revised by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952.
The Lodge Bill of 1890, also referred to as the Federal Elections Bill or by critics as the Lodge Force Bill, was a proposed bill to ensure the security of elections for U.S. Representatives.
Augustus Peabody Gardner was an American military officer and Republican Party politician from Massachusetts. He represented the North Shore region in the Massachusetts Senate and United States House of Representatives in the early 20th century. Through his marriage to Constance Lodge, Gardner was the son-in-law of Henry Cabot Lodge.
John Bond Trevor Sr. (1878–1956) was an American lawyer and influential lobbyist for immigration restrictions. A wealthy nativist, he was an architect of the Immigration Act of 1924, which banned Asian immigration and established quotas that stood for forty years until 1964.
The United States Immigration Commission (also known as the Dillingham Commission after its chairman, Republican Senator William P. Dillingham, was a bipartisan special committee formed in February 1907 by the United States Congress and President Theodore Roosevelt, to study the origins and consequences of recent immigration to the United States. This was in response to increasing political concerns about the effects of immigration and its brief was to report on the social, economic, and moral state of the nation. During its time in action, the Commission employed a staff of more than 300 people for over 3 years, spent better than a million dollars, and accumulated mass data.
Nativism is the political policy of promoting or protecting the interests of native-born or indigenous people over those of immigrants, including the support of anti-immigration and immigration-restriction measures. In the United States, nativism does not refer to a movement led by Native Americans, also referred to as American Indians.
Joseph Lee was a wealthy Bostonian who trained as a lawyer but never practiced law, and is considered the "founder of the playground movement". He was a social worker, author, and philanthropist. Lee believed that community life could be strengthened by playgrounds and play. Lee was also a proponent of eugenics and a major financial supporter of the Immigration Restriction League, a Boston-based group that promoted race-based eugenics as a basis for restricting immigration from eastern and southern Europe.
Eugenics, the set of beliefs and practices which aims at improving the genetic quality of the human population, played a significant role in the history and culture of the United States from the late 19th century into the mid-20th century. The cause became increasingly promoted by intellectuals of the Progressive Era.
Robert DeCourcy Ward was an American climatologist, author, educator and leading eugenics and immigration reform advocate in the early 20th Century. He became the first ever professor of climatology in the United States and made contributions to the study of the climate. His advocacy for immigration reform and eugenics led him to co-found the Immigration Restriction League which was instrumental in the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924 which reduced Jewish and Italian immigration to the U.S. by over 95% and completely barred Asian immigration until 1952.
Prescott Farnsworth Hall was an American lawyer and author who championed nativism, eugenics and anti-immigration views.
The ideology of nativism—favoring native inhabitants, as opposed to immigrants—has been very common and contentious within American politics for centuries. Nativist movements have been around since even before American independence, and have targeted a wide variety of nationalities.
