Immigration Restriction League


The Immigration Restriction League, was founded in 1894 by lawyer Charles Warren, climatologist Robert DeCourcy Ward, and attorney Prescott F. Hall, three Boston Brahmin Harvard alumni from the class of 1889 who believed that immigrants from southern and eastern Europe were ethnically inferior to Anglo-Saxons. Warren and DeCourcy Ward were both Mayflower descendants, and Hall's ancestors likewise had come from England in the 1600s. They felt that the American way of life they saw as their birth right was being threatened; the League was created to lobby for legislation restricting what they considered undesirable immigration in order to preserve WASP hegemony.
The League was founded in Boston, and soon had branches in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. It attracted hundreds of prominent scholars and philanthropists and other establishment figures, mostly from the New England social and academic elite. An umbrella group, the National Association of Immigration Restriction Leagues was created in 1896, and one of the founders of the original League, Prescott F. Hall, served as its general secretary from 1896 until his death in 1921.
The League used books, pamphlets, meetings, and numerous newspaper and journal articles to promote their campaign of xenophobia and eugenics. Considered the first American anti-immigrant think tank, The League also started to employ lobbyists in Washington after the turn of the century and built a broad anti-immigrant coalition consisting of patriotic societies, farmers' associations, Southern and New England legislators, and eugenicists who supported the League's goals.
Active in lobbying for the passage of what became the Immigration Act of 1917, The League disbanded after Hall's death in 1921.

Demands

Numerical limitation

On April 8, 1918 the League introduced a bill into the Congress to increase the restriction of immigration by means of numerical limitation. The goal of this bill, called "An Act to regulate the immigration of aliens to, and the residence in, the United States," was to reduce as much as possible the number of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe while increasing the number of immigrants from Northern and Western Europe who the League thought were people with kindred values.
The bill provided for these reductions:

Actually admittedAdmissible under bill
Northern and Western Europe189,1771,090,500
Southern and Eastern Europe945,288279,288

Increase of the duty on alien passengers

The bill asked for an increase of the duty paid by alien passengers to enter the United States from two to five dollars. It excluded the citizens of the United States, Canada, Mexico and Cuba. The League demanded an increase in duty in order to properly support and maintain the inspection and deportation of immigrants. Among other things, the funds obtained from the increase in duty would be used for:
With this bill, the League also hoped to diminish the immigration of people from the poorer countries, who were considered less beneficial for the United States.

Additions to the excluded classes

The National Conference on Immigration, held in New York, proposed to add imbeciles, feeble-minded persons, and epileptics to the excluded classes. Persons of poor physique were more susceptible to diseases because of the unsanitary places where they lived. The Bill also demanded an extension of fines to steamship companies for bringing imbeciles, feeble-minded persons, insane persons or epileptics into the U.S.

Prevention of unlawful landing

Previously, transportation companies were only asked to exercise care not to transport illegal immigrants into the United States when returning home from Europe. This bill ordered transportation companies to prevent the landing of "undesirable aliens".

Deportation of public charges

It was a law that would allow deportation of immigrants who entered the United States in violation of law and those becoming public charges from causes arising prior to their landing. Furthermore, it stated that the company that provided the transportation of such individuals would pay half the cost of their removal to the port of deportation.

Literacy test

The IRL made common cause with blue collar workers in labor unions in advocating a literacy requirement as a means to limit poorly-educated immigrants who would lower the wage scale. Potential immigrants had to be able to read their own language. Congress passed the literacy bill for the first time in 1896, which set the ability to read at least 40 words in any language as a requirement for admission to the United States. President Grover Cleveland vetoed that bill in 1897.
President William Taft also vetoed a literacy test in 1913. Again in 1915, President Woodrow Wilson vetoed such a bill. But in 1917 Congress overrode Wilson's veto and instituted the first literacy requirement for naturalization as part of the Immigration Act of 1917. The law stated that immigrants over 16 years of age should read 30 to 80 words in ordinary use in any language. The test however proved to be largely irrelevant, as literacy rates by the late 1910s had improved dramatically in southern and eastern Europe; furthermore, the most radical immigrants often turned out to be the most literate ones.

Notable members and officers