Title: The Role of the Immigration and Naturalization Service in the Administration of Current Immigration Law
Abstract: This paper presents the part that the Immigration and Naturalization Service plays in the administration of the Act of October 3, 1965 (P.L. 89-236). From 1921, when the first quota act was passed, until July 1, 1968, when P.L. 89-236 became fully implemented, the volume of immigration was to some extent controlled by a system of quotas. To implement the 1924 act, a committee of six experts labored for 5 years to establish the national origin of white persons recorded in the 1920 Census. The quotas for each country were to bear the same ratio to 150,000 as the number of inhabitants having that national origin in the United States. Based on the final distribution, President Herbert Hoover issued the first proclamation establishing quotas on a national origins basis in March of 1929, and the quotas went into effect July 1, 1929, for all the countries of the world except the independent countries of the Western Hemisphere. These quotas became the control that limited immigration for some 40 years. In fact, for much of the general public, this was for all intents and purposes the sole factor in the admission of immigrants. The national origins quotas obviously favored nationals from countries whose ancestors first settled this country, i.e., Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Germany, and Ireland, and those countries were allocated 73 percent of the national origins quotas. The latecomers of southern and eastern Europe received only small quotas, and there were minimal quotas of 100 for dependencies and the small countries of the world, which had few nationals in the United States in 1920.
Publication Year: 1970
Publication Date: 1970-06-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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