Unwanted: Italian and Jewish Mobilization Against Restrictive Immigration Laws 1882-1965 1469652927, 9781469652924

Citation preview

Unwanted

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ma dda l e na m a r ina r i

Unwanted Italian and Jewish Mobilization against Restrictive Immigration Laws, 1882–1965

The University of North Carolina Press ​Chapel Hill

© 2020 The University of North Carolina Press All rights reserved Set in Arno Pro by Westchester Publishing Ser­vices Manufactured in the United States of Amer­i­ca The University of North Carolina Press has been a member of the Green Press Initiative since 2003. Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data Names: Marinari, Maddalena, author. Title: Unwanted: Italian and Jewish mobilization against restrictive immigration laws, 1882–1965 / Maddalena Marinari. Description: Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018055507| ISBN 9781469652924 (cloth: alk. paper) | ISBN 9781469652931 (pbk: alk. paper) | ISBN 9781469652948 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: United States—­Emigration and immigration—­Government policy. | Immigrants—­Political activity—­United States—­History—­20th ­century. | Italians—­Political activity—­United States. | Jews—­Political Activity—­United States. | Emigration and immigration law—­United States—­History—­20th ­century. Classification: LCC JV6455 .M35 2019 | DDC 325.73089/51—­dc23 LC rec­ord available at https:​/­​/­lccn​.­loc​.­gov​/­2018055507 Cover illustration: Herbert Johnson, Make This Flood Control Permanent, 1928, graphite, ink, and ink wash on Bristol board, 15 ⅜ × 17 ¾". Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia (gift of the artist).

Contents

Acknowl­edgments ​vii Abbreviations in the Text ​ix Introduction ​1 ch a p te r on e The ­Battle Begins: World War I and the End of Open Immigration from Eu­rope ​14 ch a p te r t wo The Doors of Amer­i­ca Are Worse Than Shut When They Are Half-­Way Open: From the Literacy Test to the National Origins Quota System, 1920–1929 ​43 ch a p te r thr ee Almost as Inaccessible as Tibet: Mobilizing ­under Restriction before World War II ​71 ch a p te r four International Migration and One World: Reframing the Debate on Immigration Reform in a New Era, 1945–1952 ​98 ch a p te r fi ve A ­Thing of Shreds and Patches: Challenging Immigration Reform from Within, 1952–1960 ​125 ch a p te r s i x Reform at Last: A Victory for Whom? ​151 Conclusion ​175 Notes ​183 Bibliography ​231 Index 251

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Acknowl­edgments

From the time I began working on this book to when it came out, it has become increasingly difficult to be an immigrant in the United States. Now more than ever, I realize how impor­tant it was for many of the p­ eople I discuss in this book to have a support network, a group of p­ eople that always had their backs. This book would not be in print ­today without the amazing mentors, wonderful friends, thoughtful colleagues, and engaged students who encouraged me and sustained me when what was happening in the twenty-­first ­century made it difficult to work on my manuscript ­because it resembled too much the story at the center of this book. And I’ll always be grateful to my families in Italy and the United States for their unwavering support, good cheer, and delicious food as I researched and wrote this book. Most of all, I thank my husband for believing that this book would see the light of day from day one and my son who makes my life better each and ­every day. I dedicate this book to them and to all the mi­grants in the United States and around the world who, e­ very day, try to make the most of living away from home.

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Abbreviations in the Text

AICC

American Immigration and Citizenship Conference

AJC

American Jewish Committee1

ACIM

American Committee on Italian Migration

ACNS

American Council for Nationalities Ser­vice

ACVA

American Council for Voluntary Agencies

ADL

Anti-­Defamation League of B’nai B’rith

HIAS

Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society or Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society

IPL

Immigration Protective League

IRL

Immigration Restriction League

JACL

Japa­nese American Citizens League

NLIL

National Liberal Immigration League

NCIC

National Council on Immigration and Citizenship

NCWC National Catholic Welfare Conference OSIA

Order Sons of Italy in Amer­i­ca

1. This is not to be confused with the American Jewish Congress, which is often abbreviated as AJC as well. In this book, AJC ­will refer exclusively to the American Jewish Committee. Whenever referred to, the congress is written in full.

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Unwanted

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Introduction ­ oday, not even the most ardent advocates for a more open immigration polT icy would argue that the United States should admit all t­ hose who want to enter the country. Policymakers and the majority of immigration reform advocates have accepted restriction as an integral ele­ment of U.S. immigration policy, but the normalization of this assumption has a long history. While we know a lot about the role that restrictionists and nativists have played in this story, Unwanted chronicles the little-­known part that advocates of liberal immigration reform have played in upholding immigration restriction in the United States. Representing the two largest immigrant communities in the United States at the turn of the twentieth ­century, Italian and Jewish reformers profoundly influenced the country’s immigration policy from 1882 to 1965 as they mobilized against immigration laws that marked them as undesirable. Strategic alliances among restrictionist legislators in Congress, a climate of anti-­ immigrant hysteria, and a fickle executive branch often left them with few options but to negotiate or accept a compromise to move past the status quo. With l­ imited options, they often pushed for changes that favored some immigrant groups over o­ thers and penalized immigrants from communities with few financial resources and ­little social capital. Italians and Eastern Eu­ro­pean Jews in the United States joined millions of mi­grants around the globe who, at the end of the nineteenth ­century, left their countries to escape stagnant economies, po­liti­cal unrest, or persecution to take advantage of the demand for unskilled l­ abor in rapidly industrializing nations. Almost immediately ­after their arrival, they became the target of a vitriolic restrictionist campaign.1 As Senator Matthew Neely of West ­Virginia put it in 1924, many Americans believed that they had a duty to defend themselves “against the millions of physically, mentally, and morally inferior men and ­women scattered over Eu­rope.”2 As the pressure to close the gates mounted, Italian and Jewish reform advocates joined other groups to oppose restrictive immigration laws, but their efforts collided with t­ hose of a power­ful co­ali­tion of nativists in Congress who worked tirelessly to solidify a regime of immigration restriction to protect the racial status quo and strengthen their po­liti­cal influence. The result was immigration laws that bore the imprint of restrictionists and anti-­restrictionists alike.

2 Introduction

At the center of this story is a small and unusually successful group of self-­ selected Italian and Jewish leaders who took it upon themselves to oppose restrictive immigration laws that targeted immigrants from eastern and southern Eu­rope. ­These activists w ­ ere overwhelmingly professionals and business ­owners concerned with how the new immigration system affected their communities and, by extension, their role in U.S. society. The relationship between ­these self-­appointed leaders and the communities they represented proved strained, however. While they needed each other to succeed in dismantling immigration restriction and survive the challenges posed by the new immigration system, they often ­were at odds with one another, particularly when it came to strategy. Many in their communities resented t­ hese leaders for their propensity to compromise. The immigration reform advocates, in turn, felt that the groups to which they belonged failed to appreciate the challenges they faced when they pushed for legislative changes. They often had to do so while navigating the constructed image that legislators, restrictionists, and many Americans had of them and their communities—­demonstrating how groups become groups not only by virtue of internal identification as “Italian” or “Jewish” but also ­because of how “outsiders” identify and perceive them. For this reason, for example, German Jews already established in the United States understood that they had common cause with the newly arrived Eastern Eu­ro­pean Jews—­­whether or not the two groups would have self-­identified as such, the broader American public saw them as one group. During negotiations, Italian and Jewish immigration reform activists felt ­limited in their options as they often fell victim to ste­reo­types that Americans had of them. Jewish activists continually faced accusations of being organizers and protestors while Italians w ­ ere often not taken seriously b­ ecause many Americans considered them po­liti­cally apathetic. In response, they vacillated between voicing the concerns of their communities and framing their push for immigration reform in broader terms even when, in real­ity, they ­were still prioritizing their own groups. This was, in part, in response to power­ful legislators who controlled the po­liti­cal pro­cess, set the legislative agenda, and constrained the nature and extent of pro­gress. Unwanted builds on the flourishing scholarship on specific immigrant groups’ response to immigration restriction, the superb research on the history of U.S. immigration policy, and the recent lit­er­a­ture on the intersection between the fight for civil liberties and immigrant inclusion during the first half of the twentieth ­century. A critical turning point in U.S. history, the passage of Asian exclusion dominates much of the lit­er­a­ture on immigrant and ethnic group activists who mobilized against immigration restriction.3 This

Introduction 3

lit­er­a­ture remains the model for analy­sis of the issue as we see more studies on the activism of other groups targeted for restriction.4 At the same time, scholars, whose work chronicles the history of U.S. immigration policy privilege national po­liti­cal officials and policy choices, delve into the waxing and waning of nativist and anti-­immigrant movements as driving forces for immigration laws, or discuss lobbying groups in broad terms.5 Most recently, another group of scholars has reframed the fight for immigration reform within a broader push for inclusion and civil liberties that characterized the first half of the twentieth c­ entury to disentangle the intersection of citizenship, immigration, and belonging. Many of t­ hese works have also paid attention to the role that geopolitics play in immigration policy decisions.6 Unwanted integrates ­these three historiographical trends to bring to light the tension between inclusion and exclusion in much of the debate on immigration throughout the twentieth ­century and shifts the focus to the ­causes and consequences of ­these diametrically opposed approaches to immigration. The following chapters pay close attention to the po­liti­cal engagement of prominent Eu­ro­pean groups and their leaders to uncover how the strug­gle between restrictionists and anti-­restrictionists ­shaped immigration restriction and the integration of t­ hese groups into mainstream U.S. society. Unwanted also traces the changing rationales and strategies ­these activists used to make a case for less discriminatory immigration laws. As they debated how to push for immigration reform, Italian and Jewish activists had to negotiate constantly for whom they w ­ ere speaking, articulate why immigrant rights ­were civil rights and how they connected to both U.S. domestic and international priorities, and decide who their allies ­were to avoid alienating the legislators with whom they negotiated. The interactions between Italian and Jewish advocates and restrictionist legislators show that interpreting the co­ali­tions of western, southern, and eastern restrictionists in Congress within the context of immigration policy alone minimizes their a­ ctual significance. Many of the members of the restrictionist co­ali­tion shared a common desire to shape U.S. society and reinforce racial distinctions through the passage of restrictive immigration policies, but they also coveted the national influence conferred upon ­those heading congressional committees. They regarded immigration restriction as a means to find and hold on to their congressional leadership to influence other m ­ atters of national concern. ­Because of this complex set of motives, ­these co­ali­tions ­were stronger and longer lasting than ­those created by immigration reform advocates representing dif­fer­ent immigrant groups targeted for restriction. In the rare instances when immigration advocates from dif­fer­ent ethnic groups came

4 Introduction

together, restrictionist legislators disrupted ­these alliances by playing off each group against the ­others b­ ecause of their dif­fer­ent reform priorities. The restrictionist co­ali­tion in Congress began to weaken only when the executive branch embraced some of the reformers’ requests ­because they advanced U.S. foreign policy. ­After the outbreak of World War II, U.S. presidents began to frame civil rights policies, including immigration laws, within the context of the country’s foreign policy and U.S. international interests. John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, for example, endorsed immigration reform ­because they understood that restricting Eu­ro­pean and Asian entry through a racist policy conflicted with Cold War claims of demo­cratic superiority. The support of the executive represented a critical turning point in the fight to repeal discriminatory immigration laws, but the dif­fer­ent agendas of legislators, the executive, and immigration advocacy groups profoundly reshaped the immigration bills ­under consideration. The final product often differed dramatically from what immigration reform activists had hoped or supported, but, for many of them, any change to the status quo represented a step in the right direction even when its impact would be uneven. As we w ­ ill see, the debate over the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, more than any other piece of legislation that preceded it, encapsulated this complex set of dynamics. At the heart of Italian Americans’ and American Jews’ dif­fer­ent approaches to advancing changes in American immigration laws ­were their distinct patterns of migration and transnational identity. Eastern Eu­ro­pean Jews left Eu­rope as entire families to escape religious persecution and discrimination to ­settle permanently in the United States. Some eventually returned to Eu­rope, but the majority never went back and had no desire to maintain any ties with their homelands, which in turn had no interest in their fate. Eastern Eu­ro­pean Jews saw themselves more connected with the Jewish diaspora around the world.7 In the United States, they joined a more established and well-­connected Jewish community of German origin that felt compelled to intervene in the debate over immigration restriction b­ ecause the fate of their newly arrived coreligionists also affected their standing in U.S. society. In fact, the old and new Jewish communities often clashed over the best course of action, but together they reluctantly became the face of the opposition against the national origins quota system and promoted a vision of the U.S. as a tolerant, pluralistic, and egalitarian country that would fi­nally provide the Jewish community with full inclusion in the larger non-­Jewish society. Many Italian immigrants ­were initially “birds of passage” who traveled back and forth between Eu­rope and the United States and resisted permanent settlement. ­Until the beginning of the twentieth ­century, they arrived in the

Introduction 5

United States in search of better job opportunities, hoping to set aside enough money to return home, ­settle their debts, and start a new life. The majority of them eventually moved back to Italy permanently. Unlike their Jewish counter­ parts, Italian immigrants, even a­ fter they began to s­ ettle in the United States, retained strong ties with their country of origin, resisted naturalization, and did not join an already well-­established community.8 Hardly apathetic, they had to build their social capital and a po­liti­cal machine from scratch. Many of the differences in mobilization between the two groups stemmed from their distinct immigrant experience. Jewish immigrants’ lack of ties with their homelands and their history of persecution in Eu­rope persuaded them of the importance of acquiring U.S. citizenship immediately, building global networks with other Jewish communities, and relying exclusively on their own resources to or­ga­nize against restriction. They often framed their activism in the name of world Jewry, but their visibility frequently attracted accusations of Jewish conspiracy and disloyalty. During times of heightened anti-­Semitism in the 1930s and 1940s, ­these attacks stifled their efforts to advance a more radical immigration reform agenda. In contrast, Italian immigrants’ strong connection with their ancestral home and the Italian government’s efforts to nurture ­those ties hindered Italian American immigration reform advocates’ effectiveness in opposing immigration restriction for a long time. ­Until World War II, U.S. legislators did not trust Italian Americans and viewed their ties to Italy, as well as the Italian government’s interference in the debate over U.S. immigration policy, as further justification to restrict immigration from Italy. The negative perception of their connections with Italy only dissipated during World War II and with the rise of the Cold War, when Italian Americans’ transnational lives served U.S. interests abroad. Despite their differences, Italian and Jewish immigration reform advocates held a definite advantage over immigration reform advocates of color b­ ecause they could naturalize, but their mobilization did not go unchallenged. They consciously took up the promise of inclusion that came with U.S. citizenship to reject the label of undesirability that immigration laws imposed on them and mobilized for immigration reform as a vehicle for integration.9 In the face of continuing obstruction and anti-­immigrant hysteria, Italian and Jewish immigration reform advocates moved ­toward the center as their campaign against immigration restriction took shape. Instead of pushing for the immediate repeal of the national origins system, each group settled for piecemeal reforms—­ namely ­family reunification, occupational skills, and refugee privileges—­as strategies to bring their relatives and compatriots to the United States. ­These efforts and their legacies are at the heart of this book.

6 Introduction

Appeals to American ­family values emerged as the main tool to challenge immigration restriction over the course of the twentieth ­century. Both groups understood that, despite their differences, congressional leaders of both parties accepted ­family reunification as a loophole in their restrictionist agenda. As the debate over immigration reform unfolded, Italian and Jewish leaders skillfully put ­family ties at the forefront of their efforts, hoping that the emphasis on ­family reunion would facilitate the arrival of more—­if not all—­ immigrants who wanted to come to the United States. Even so, Italian and Jewish activists often found themselves at odds, a situation that weakened the collective efforts of all the groups fighting for immigration reform and that resulted in reforms having an uneven impact on dif­fer­ent groups. In the face of strong and long-­term congressional support of racially motivated nationality quotas, the immigrants’ concessions at times helped normalize the racist and xenophobic foundations that underlie U.S. immigration policy even ­today a­ fter the elimination of Asian exclusion and the abolition of the quota system. What ­these activists did is only part of the story. This is not a traditional ethnic history of social movements. Rather, this book follows activists from two of the largest immigrant groups targeted for restriction at the beginning of the twentieth c­ entury to see how immigration policy changed during a period that historians usually consider the height of immigration restriction. By ­doing this, the traditional periodization of twentieth-­century immigration history changes dramatically. Contrary to the traditional narrative of U.S. immigration history, ­there was not a complete closure in 1924 and a reopening of the gates in 1965. In actuality, U.S. immigration law has always been si­mul­ta­ neously open and closed since its initial federal articulations in the late nineteenth ­century. Italian and Jewish activists, along with antirestrictionists from other ethnic groups, repeatedly pushed for small changes to the country’s immigration policy that successfully brought in immigrants outside of the draconian immigration system in place. During ­these “restrictive” times then, immigration law remained pliable and porous enough for certain classes of immigrants to gain admission into the country based on economic, familial, and geopo­liti­cal considerations.10 Their success in challenging restriction, even if only with ad hoc legislation, also pushes us to reconsider the traditional periodization of immigration restriction in other ways. Rather than focus overwhelmingly on immigration laws and policies as our turning points in the history of the period, war emerges as the major driver of inclusion/exclusion. World War I, World War II, and the Cold War became pivotal turning points in the history of U.S. immigration policy. If restrictionists used the immigrant hysteria that reeled the country during

Introduction 7

World War I to push for the passage of the 1917, 1921, and 1924 acts, antirestrictionists used the U.S. geopo­liti­cal and foreign policy interests during World War II and the Cold War to push for changes to U.S. immigration policy that anticipated many of the dynamics of the post-1965 period. In this context, World War II, not 1965, becomes the critical turning point for U.S. immigration history in the twentieth ­century.11

Restricting Unwanted Immigrants Between 1871 and the outbreak of World War I, 12.9 million immigrants arrived in the United States from Asia and Eu­rope in search of economic opportunities, social mobility, or safety.12 By 1920, the three largest groups of immigrants in the United States w ­ ere Italians (four million), eastern Eu­ro­pean Jews (two million, mostly from the Rus­sian Empire), and Poles (one million). T ­ hese numbers stood in stark contrast to the years preceding the mass migration of the turn of the twentieth ­century. ­Until then, only 11,725 Italians and 150,000 Jews, mostly from Germany, resided in the United States.13 Many Americans of northern and western Eu­ro­pean ancestry regarded t­ hese new immigrants as nonwhite, biologically and culturally inferior, and unassimilable. Their calls for immigration restriction against Asian and Eu­ro­pean immigrants echoed a global push to restrict, exclude, deport, and segregate immigrants deemed undesirable, especially immigrants of color. Immigration laws emerged as a tool of social engineering and nation building.14 The restriction of Chinese immigration in 1882 opened the door to targeting other immigrants as well, but nativist lawmakers needed much longer to build a case against southern and eastern Eu­ro­pe­ans.15 New social theories, anx­i­eties about modernization, and changes in the allocation of power in Congress helped restrictionists make their argument, but it took the anti-­immigrant hysteria of World War I to persuade even Americans who had long supported immigration from Eu­rope that restricting Eu­ro­pean immigrants had become necessary. In an age that venerated experts, scholars like University of Wisconsin sociologist Edward  A. Ross, MIT president and former chief of the national census Francis Walker, and Harvard economists Richard Mayo-­Smith and William Z. Ripley provided seemingly convincing social-­scientific research on the benefits of immigration restriction. In The Old World in the New, Ross contended that the “new” immigrants perpetuated the corruption of the po­liti­cal machine and their moral and intellectual deficiencies diluted Americans’ superior Anglo-­Saxon stock.16 Similarly, Walker claimed that southern and eastern Eu­ro­pe­ans ­were “beaten men from beaten races; representing the worst

8 Introduction

failures in the strug­gle for existence.”17 Ripley’s influential The Races of Eu­rope contended that southern and eastern Eu­ro­pe­ans ­were the “darkest” and most primitive of the three Eu­ro­pean races—­Nordic, Teutonic, and Mediterranean—­ and lacked the intelligence and character to adapt to life in the United States.18 His colleague Mayo-­Smith challenged the traditional assumption that U.S. economic pro­gress depended on robust immigration from Eu­rope and argued that immigration represented a privilege not “a right of the individual.”19 Building on t­ hese influential thinkers, a plethora of public intellectuals and government officials wrote and spoke about the danger that southern and eastern Eu­ro­pe­ans posed to American society, culture, and identity. In so ­doing, they helped normalize discussions about Eu­ro­pean restriction and pop­ul­ar­ ized many of the eugenicist ideas about southern and eastern Eu­ro­pe­ans. In his Immigrant Invasion, Frank Julian Warne, who served as secretary to the New York State Immigration Commission and as a special expert on foreign-­born population for the U.S. census, insisted that the new immigrants had “been reduced to the qualities similar to t­ hose of an inferior race that f­avors despotism and oligarchy rather than democracy.”20 In the bestselling The Passing of the G ­ reat Race, Madison Grant, ­future vice president of the Immigration Restriction League, warned that the country was spiraling ­toward a “racial abyss.”21 Even ­future president Woodrow Wilson, in his popu­lar 1902 textbook History of the American ­People, gave this view academic legitimacy.22 By 1914, many white, native-­born Americans agreed with Bishop Charles Henry Brent of the Protestant Episcopal Church that “the United States is in far greater danger from the quality of immigration that comes from Southern Eu­rope than from any peril that could come by Japa­nese owner­ship of lands in California, or from Asiatic immigration.”23 Industrial strife, l­ abor unrest, and the passing of the frontier adventure further fueled calls for restricting immigration from southern and eastern Eu­rope. The bombing of Haymarket Square in Chicago in 1886 during a national strike of the Knights of ­Labor for the eight-­hour workday rekindled a barely dormant anti-­immigrant frenzy. When authorities hastily arrested seven anarchists, six of whom w ­ ere immigrants, many Americans quickly blamed all immigrants from Eu­rope for the country’s rising rates of crime, immorality, corruption, religious extremism, and po­liti­cal radicalism. Americans’ anx­i­eties about foreign radicalism also reawakened anti-­Catholic sentiments and anti-­Semitism across the country.24 Yet that eugenicist attacks, social tensions, and industrial strife would translate into policy provisions was hardly a foregone conclusion. Americans had vehemently opposed e­ arlier waves of Irish and German immigrants without

Introduction 9

their nativism leading to the passage of a federal immigration policy.25 In fact, for quite some time, leaders of both parties resisted adopting a restrictionist platform and continued to court the new immigrants’ vote at least through the presidential election of 1912. Moreover, Western politicians still yearned for Eu­ ro­pean settlers, and Southern politicians believed that steady Eu­ro­pean immigration could guarantee them white electoral supremacy. The longstanding tradition of an open-­door policy and easy naturalization policies for Eu­ro­pean immigrants remained entrenched in the American imagination and represented one of the main obstacles to restrictionists’ ability to nationalize Eu­ro­pean restriction. Although the immigration acts of 1882, 1885, and 1891 introduced qualitative mea­sures that targeted immigrants with disabilities or contagious diseases, p­ eople likely to become public charges, po­liti­cal radicals, and criminals, established po­liti­cal leaders of northern and western Eu­ro­pean descent remained frustrated that ­these acts failed to stem the arrival of 8.9 million Eu­ ro­pean immigrants between 1881 and 1900.26 The founding of the Boston-­based Immigration Restriction League (IRL) in 1894 marked a turning point in how Americans re­imagined Eu­ro­pean immigrants. A power­ful and well-­connected coterie of advocates skillfully harnessed the growing anti-­immigrant hysteria to a nationwide campaign to restrict immigration from southern and eastern Eu­rope.27 Adopting the language of Progressivism and eugenics, the IRL presented immigration restriction as a vehicle to bring order to the United States, protect Americans, and weed out inferior immigrants.28 The organ­ization became the champion of economist Edward Bemis’s proposal of a literacy test to screen out undesirable immigrants. As political scientist John Hawks Noble suggested at the time, unlike Chinese exclusion, the test represented a “less clumsy and offensive law than the indiscriminate exclusion of certain races as races.”29 Despite its obvious connection to the literacy tests used in the South to disenfranchise black voters, the decision to hide the race-­based rationale under­lying the test for immigrants was central to its appeal—­a fact that did not go unnoticed by restrictionists in subsequent de­cades.30 The organ­ization’s crusade succeeded in part ­because it intersected with the Progressive movement’s larger push to wrest legislative power away from party leadership and transfer it to congressional committees that placed extraordinary weight on outside expertise in policymaking.31 Once the committee system took hold, IRL members emerged as experts on immigration policy, gained broader access to Congress, and influenced policy more directly. By the early 1890s, the IRL could count on the support of Senators Henry Cabot Lodge (R-­MA) and William Chandler (R-­NH) and Representative Samuel McCall

10 Introduction

(R-­MA), all of whom sat on the newly created and power­ful immigration committees and stood ready to collaborate with colleagues from Southern and Western states to bypass party leadership and bring immigration restriction to fruition. In 1896, Senator Lodge, as the new chair of the Senate Immigration Committee, sponsored the first bill proposing a literacy test. Lodge argued that uneducated immigrants from eastern and southern Eu­rope threatened the American standard of living, destabilized American institutions, and posed a threat to “the fabric of our race.”32 Armed with scientific data and research provided by the IRL, Senator Lodge persuaded his colleagues to pass his bill. It was only when the Senate and House immigration committees began the negotiations for a compromise bill that a co­ali­tion of advocates who opposed immigration restriction emerged. Although they lacked a unified agenda, their strength rested in their numbers. Alarmed that the literacy test cast aspersions on their own national groups, German and Irish Americans flooded Congress with letters of protest and criticized the bill widely in their newspapers. Advancing an argument that persists to this day, they contended that existing mea­ sures already regulated the immigration flow adequately. Politicians of Irish and German descent, who often hailed from congressional districts heavi­ly populated with newcomers, quickly joined them. Although, in most cases, they only referred to Eu­ro­pean immigrants, liberal progressives argued that immigration restriction went against the American tradition of welcoming immigrants and questioned the test’s ability to determine the quality of incoming immigrants. A handful of academics, reporters, and settlement workers also joined the nascent antirestrictionist movement, but the most influential critics remained captains of industries in need of cheap ­labor and heads of steamship companies e­ ager to continue their business transporting mi­grants. They warned that restriction would hinder economic growth. Sending countries in Eu­rope cried foul as they regarded restriction of their nationals as an infringement of their national sovereignty, while U.S. Commissioner of Immigration Joseph Senner disputed the notion that southern and eastern Eu­ro­ pe­ans ­were inferior to previous immigrants.33 Together, ­these critics articulated many of the arguments against restriction that would form the backbone of the antirestrictionist camp u­ ntil World War I, when key critics of Eu­ro­pean restriction in the business world, in politics, and in social welfare withdrew their support amid concerns of national security and heightened racial anxiety. Soon, Italian and Jewish immigration reform advocates added their voices to the opposition, but they remained on the margins of the debate ­until the first de­cade of the twentieth c­ entury. In 1897, the Socialist United Hebrew Trades or­ga­nized a mass meeting at Cooper Union in New York City to urge President

Introduction 11

Cleveland to veto the Lodge bill. The protesters, including a large number of Italians, denounced the bill “as vicious, demagogic, and fatuous, and while it appeared to be in the interest of the working man, [it] was ­really in the interest of capital.”34 Penalized by their recent arrival and stunned by the acrimony of the attacks against them, eastern and southern Eu­ro­pean immigrants w ­ ere marginalized as politicians of German and Irish descent claimed the antirestrictionist mantle in the 1890s. On less secure footing than other immigrants from Eu­rope, Italian and Jewish immigrants focused on the practical consequences of restrictive immigration provisions instead. They prioritized clarifying what constituted excludable grounds upon arrival and pushed back against immigration authorities’ eugenicist assumptions about members of their groups. Jewish advocates objected to their categorization as Hebrew rather than by country of origin, while Italian advocacy groups objected to the distinction between northern and southern Italians as two distinct racial groups.35 Despite the lack of cohesion among critics of restriction, they nonetheless succeeded in defeating the Lodge bill. Out­going president Grover Cleveland vetoed the bill ­because of the Demo­cratic Party’s recent appeals to recent Eu­ ro­pean immigrants to court their vote, but the bill’s sponsors and their supporters remained optimistic that they could overturn Cleveland’s lame-­duck veto.36 Indeed, the House overturned it with a vote of 195 to 37, but Republican Senate leaders, wary of the influence of ethnic voters, balked and sent the bill back to the Immigration Committee. Among t­ hose who voted for passing the literacy test bill over the president’s veto, twenty-­five legislators in the House and sixteen in the Senate hailed from southern and border states.37 While Cleveland’s decision signaled that the executive branch continued to reject Eu­ro­pean restriction, politicians from the northeast took note of Southern and Western politicians’ vote to overturn the veto and regarded it as a positive sign for their efforts to build a broader co­ali­tion to push restriction of Eu­ro­pean immigration through Congress. The IRL lost no time and set out to forge key alliances with or­ga­nized ­labor, Southern conservatives, Western restrictionists, and “social control” Progressives around the passage of its literacy test proposal. Although the organ­ization failed to recruit the Knights of ­Labor, it secured the endorsement of the American Federation of L ­ abor, which embraced immigration restriction for de­ cades even though, as a Yiddish newspaper noted, “most of the members . . . ​ are foreign-­born, while its very president is the son of immigrants.”38 In the South, the IRL emphasized southern and eastern Eu­ro­pe­ans’ racial inferiority and the urban prob­lems they would bring to the rural South to persuade Southern Demo­crats to reverse their ­earlier support of Eu­ro­pean immigration

12 Introduction

as a means of building a “New South.” By 1908, the strategy had worked. A Southern restrictionist explained to the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs that “any effort on the part of Your Government or any Italian society in New York to send Italians to this state or any other Southern state w ­ ill result in friction, pos­si­ble and probable lynchings, as Italians are regarded and treated as negroes.”39 Using similar arguments, the IRL also successfully courted supporters of Asian exclusion on the West Coast.40 Fi­nally, the IRL recruited Progressive advocates of prohibition, social reform, and good government initiatives who equated social justice with social control through literacy requirements, voter registration, racial segregation, and sterilization of ­people with disabilities.41 Though the near passage of the Lodge bill had caught them by surprise, Jewish and Italian immigration reform advocates recognized the need to mobilize to confront the growing co­ali­tion pushing for a literacy test. Taking a page from their rivals, they too created their own lobbying organ­izations. Yet crafting a coherent agenda, settling on a unifying strategy within their communities, and finding common ground with potential allies proved much more difficult. As this book demonstrates, t­hese challenges would haunt them through 1965.

Organ­ization of the Book This book is divided into two parts. The first three chapters focus on the rise and consolidation of a restrictive immigration system that left ­little room for critics of restriction to influence legislation. The first chapter examines Italian and Jewish immigrants’ efforts to oppose proposed restrictions on immigration from southern and eastern Eu­rope from the passage of the 1882 Immigration Act, which imposed a head tax and excluded “lunatics, ­idiots, convicts,” and persons likely to become a public charge, to the adoption of a literacy test in 1917. During this critical period in the rise of the antirestrictionist movement, both groups created national organ­izations to negotiate with legislators in hopes of achieving more po­liti­cal influence. Moving to the fight against the passage of the 1924 Immigration Act, chapter 2 offers an account of how Italian and Jewish immigration reform advocates, sensing the inevitability of restriction, pragmatically de­cided to work to mitigate some of the more punitive features of the pending bill, a strategic choice that nonetheless failed. Chapter 3 then examines how Italians and Eastern Eu­ro­pe­ans adjusted to the new immigration regime that followed the passage of the 1924 act and how they worked to build the po­liti­cal clout to push for reform u­ nder the aegis of Roo­ se­velt’s New Deal. During this period, f­ amily reunion emerged as the only

Introduction 13

argument that helped them gain some traction with legislators. Both groups also gained more po­liti­cal visibility with repre­sen­ta­tion at ­every level of government. This newfound influence l­ater allowed them to push for immigration reform more successfully than in the past. The final three chapters focus on the efforts of Italian and Jewish immigration reform advocates to take advantage of World War II and the new geopo­ liti­cal landscape that emerged afterward to challenge the status quo for the first time since 1924. Along with other ethnic and minority groups, Italian and Jewish critics of restriction embraced the rhe­toric of Cold War civil rights to argue for a more humane and less discriminatory immigration policy. Chapter 4 chronicles how Italian and Jewish immigration reform advocates appealed to internationalism, humanitarianism, and civil rights to fight for refugee legislation first and comprehensive immigration reform ­later. The Cold War also provided an opening for a broad co­ali­tion of ethnic, religious, and civic organ­ izations to come together during the debate over the McCarran-­Walter Act of 1952. Although the co­ali­tion fell apart over ideological disagreements and ­under pressure from entrenched restrictionist politicians, the experience of the early 1950s left a mark for the rest of the de­cade. As chapter 5 shows, ­after 1952, Italian and Jewish reformers, along with other advocacy groups, meticulously focused on pushing for ad hoc legislation that slowly but steadily undermined the very premise of the McCarran-­Walter Act by driving up the number of immigrants entering the United States. However, the changes for which they pushed si­mul­ta­neously solidified the emergence of an immigration regime that favored immigrants with ­family ties and skills. Chapter 6 analyzes Italian and Jewish reform advocates’ final efforts to abolish the national origins quota system but also sheds light on the constraints they faced in seeking reform. ­After pushing for immigration reform for over forty years, many of them, sensing that the win­dow for reform was closing, realized that they had to compromise to accomplish their goal. Italian Americans and Jewish Americans accepted and took advantage of working within the framework of the existing immigration debate in the hope that it would lead to more lenient immigration laws and improve the perception that mainstream Amer­i­ca had of them as undesirable. Their mobilization helped liberalize some aspects of the U.S. immigration system by 1965, but, as this book argues, the pragmatic decisions they made also produced challenges and inequalities that persist to this day. The origins of the immigration restriction debate at the end of the nineteenth ­century set the tone and the par­ ameters that would constrict reformers’ options and possibilities u­ ntil 1965.

chapter one

The B ­ attle Begins World War I and the End of Open Immigration from Eu­rope In 1908, Prescott Hall, secretary of the Immigration Restriction League (IRL), spearheaded a campaign to fund the organ­ization’s crusade to restrict immigration from southern and eastern Eu­rope. The new immigrants, he wrote in the letter he sent out to potential donors, threatened to lower “the ­mental, moral and physical average of our p­ eople.”1 The literacy test, he continued, represented the only solution to reduce the arrivals of undesirable immigrants, but the league urgently needed donations to outdo their well-­organized and well-­funded opponents—­a barely veiled reference to Jewish groups—­in the fight over the country’s immigration system.2 Although not as united as the IRL claimed, critics of immigration restriction found in the debate over the literacy test from 1896 to 1917 the first opportunity to come together to resist the passage of new restrictive policies. Much of this confrontation between nativists and antirestrictionists drew the ­battle lines for a decades-­long strug­gle over U.S. immigration policy. Before 1896, critics of the literacy test mostly included descendants of immigrants from northwestern Eu­rope, social workers, Progressive intellectuals, and business o­ wners ­eager to secure a never-­ending supply of cheap ­labor. By 1917, when Congress made the literacy test part of U.S. immigration policy, Italians and Jews of both German and eastern Eu­ro­pean descent had entered the fray, but many of the traditional members of the antirestrictionist co­ali­tion had abandoned it. Even with the changes in the ethnic origins of the co­ali­tion, the most vis­i­ble critics of immigration restriction remained middle-­class, moderate, and well-­connected members of immigrant communities who worried about the impact that the public debate over immigration restriction had on them. Mostly professionals, politicians, business o­ wners, and philanthropists—­ many of t­ hese Italian and Jewish leaders—­felt they had an ethical obligation to intervene on behalf of their communities. For Louis Hammering, president of the American Association of Foreign Language Newspapers, t­ hese “paladins of the poor” had a duty “to defend a class of p­ eople who cannot defend

The ­Battle Begins 15

themselves, to defend ­people whose country and parents did not give them the privilege of an education.”3 For Jewish leaders, it represented an opportunity to improve their life in a country many of them viewed as their last resort to thrive as a group given the rampant anti-­Semitism ravaging Eu­rope. Although an uneasy alliance, Jewish activists from eastern Eu­rope benefitted from the network and resources that the more established German Jews possessed. Italian leaders, on the other hand, regarded mobilizing against immigration restriction as a way of unifying a fledgling community. Building po­liti­cal clout proved more difficult for Italian leaders b­ ecause a wealthy and professional elite was just emerging and was pulled in many directions. Regardless of their differences, Italian and Jewish leaders faced the same challenge by 1917. They saw the initially broad co­ali­tion of critics of immigration restriction begin to dwindle and felt increasingly isolated. A ­ fter 1917, many of them came to the conclusion that they had no choice but to be conciliatory. Despite the opposition ­these groups mustered against the literacy test, they found themselves defending the status quo rather than articulating an alternative vision of U.S. immigration policy. U ­ ntil the outbreak of World War I, restrictionists and antirestrictionists seemed fairly balanced, with each side managing to defend its agenda. Once the war began, however, the ­tables turned in ­favor of the formidable restrictionist alliance that had slowly emerged in Congress. Together, Northern politicians bent on restricting immigration from southern and eastern Eu­rope, Western politicians committed to excluding Asian immigrants, and Southern Demo­crats ­eager to preserve their power in a changing South forced antirestrictionists on the defensive and left them ­little room to craft alternative proposals. Although neglected in the lit­er­a­ture, which tends to privilege immigration legislation as the sole driver of admissions and exclusions, wars have long been a decisive ­factor in determining which new immigrants are admitted and which are rejected. Congress narrowly passed the 1917 Immigration Act b­ ecause restrictionists successfully exploited the anti-­immigrant hysteria during World War I to advance their agenda. Conventional narratives also emphasize a paradigm of immigrant inclusion versus immigrant exclusion, but, ­because of the mobilization of activists like the Jewish and Italian leaders discussed in this chapter, even the most restrictive laws have both exclusionary and inclusive ele­ments. The Immigration Act of 1917 was just one of a long series of restrictive immigration laws that contained enough flexibility for mi­grants to continue to arrive and for activists to find openings to push for liberalizing the law.4

16  Chapter One

Roots of Re­sis­tance The turn of the twentieth c­ entury represented a phase of experimentation for many groups who opposed immigration restriction. Without clear or definite pre­ce­dents, many ethnic leaders grappled with how best to respond to attacks against their groups and how to mobilize their communities without further exacerbating the divide between restrictionists and antirestrictionists in U.S. society. When Senator Henry Cabot Lodge (R-­MA) proposed a literacy test bill in 1896, Italian and Jewish activists took a page from the playbook of their nativist opponents and created their own national organ­izations to influence the debate over immigration reform and negotiate with legislators. Although unskilled immigrants ­were restrictionists’ primary target, it was middle-­class Jewish and Italian Americans living in New York City who led the way. Within this already self-­selected group, American Jews of German descent emerged as the most influential and or­ga­nized early critics of restrictions on Eu­ro­pean immigration. They had the connections and financial means to sustain this fight, but, precisely b­ ecause of their long history of po­liti­cal involvement, they ­were also the only ones whom legislators recognized as legitimate po­liti­cal actors. Almost entirely made up of newcomers, the Italian community lacked members with the connections, means, and access that the Jewish community had despite its internal divisions. Although they took longer to make an impact, Italian activists followed a strikingly similar trajectory. ­Here, too, middle-­class members of the community took the lead, but they initially strug­gled to rally a community fiercely divided along regional lines and po­liti­ cal views and suspended between two worlds b­ ecause of its high return rates and circular patterns of migration. While Italian and Jewish leaders w ­ ere the face of the opposition, their success depended on the communities to which they belonged. Grassroots Italians and Jews did not just show up at protests, but they also held t­hese self-­appointed leaders accountable. Many in the Jewish community, but especially newly arrived eastern Eu­ro­pean Jews, criticized ­these leaders’ caution and propensity for compromise. They relentlessly pushed them to be more vocal and do more for their fellow Jews fleeing religious and po­liti­cal persecution. In real­ity, their leaders did prioritize Jewish interests, but, leery of becoming the face of the fight against immigration restriction, they intentionally framed their criticisms of the literacy test and other restrictive mea­sures in broader terms and consciously sought to build alliances with other stakeholders to avoid any backlash. Grassroots Italians called for more action more quickly too,

The ­Battle Begins 17

but many of them also wondered why Italian government authorities ­were not ­doing more to help them as well. In response to ­these multiple priorities, Italian and Jewish activists initially created organ­izations that si­mul­ta­neously tackled social integration and lobbied politicians whenever new immigration proposals came up for consideration. The Immigration Protective League (IPL) represented a perfect example of antirestrictionists’ early efforts to combine lobbying, immigrant assistance, and co­ali­tion building. Early in 1898, in response to the rising influence of the IRL, Oscar Straus—­a German immigrant who studied law, practiced business, and served as ambassador to Turkey before becoming Secretary of Commerce and ­Labor in 1906—­met with prominent members of German, Irish, and Italian communities from across the country to create the league. In addition to lobbying for liberal immigration policy, the IPL worked to relocate newly arrived immigrants across the United States to minimize the competition for housing and jobs in East Coast cities and stave off complaints of ethnic segregation from nativists.5 Considering the demands in both fields, the IPL quickly discovered that working on both lobbying and relocation proved time-­ consuming, costly, and in­effec­tive. It soon evolved into an organ­ization that focused primarily on guaranteeing that any new immigration provision benefitted Eu­ro­pean immigrants. Even though Jewish mi­grants remained the primary beneficiaries of the IPL’s efforts, the leadership structure of the organ­ization reflected Straus’s interest in appearing nonsectarian. The found­ers appointed Straus as vice president, Irish-­born Representative William Bourke Cockran (D-­NY) as president, and Austrian-­born Joseph H. Senner, former U.S. Commissioner of Immigration in New York City, as secretary.6 Adopting a strategy pioneered e­ arlier by Chinese critics of exclusion, Straus and his colleagues also courted business ­owners, steamship companies, and industrialists to join the organ­ization. ­These recruits included W. Dodsworth, editor of the Journal of Commerce; Alexander E. Orr, president of the New York Chamber of Commerce; P. F. Collier, proprietor of Collier’s Weekly; Henry Loomis Nelson, editor of Harper’s Weekly; Horace White of the New York Eve­ning Post; and journalist and financier Henry Villard. The support from such prominent members of the business community did bolster the organ­ization’s advocacy efforts, but their presence drove the organ­ization to emphasize economic concerns in its critique of immigration restriction at the expense of other rationales.7 IPL’s massive propaganda campaigns and public protest meetings represented a testing ground for antirestrictionists to determine which strategies

18  Chapter One

worked best. Although ­these tactics rarely dissuaded restrictionist legislators ­because they considered them further proof of the need for more rather than less restriction, it helped antirestrictionists come together, or­ga­nize, and fund-­ raise like their restrictionist counter­parts. On March 8, 1898, at a mass meeting at Cooper Union in New York City co-­organized with the New York Chamber of Commerce, IPL speakers criticized the literacy test as a superfluous addition to the existing immigration laws that, challenging a longstanding American tradition, would only lead to ­family separation. Not surprisingly, they also emphasized the economic repercussions of the test. They argued that its sponsors w ­ ere misleading American workers into believing that the test would end competition from immigrant workers since skilled mi­grants would most likely pass the test. The IPL’s president denounced the test as an attempt “to substitute for the policy of liberality, confidence, and freedom . . . ​a policy of pusillanimity, distrust and cruelty.”8 Fi­nally, many of the speakers pointed to the contribution the ethnic vote had made to President McKinley’s recent victory and warned Republican leaders that they might lose the support from members of the restricted groups.9 Several of the speakers at the meeting also made it clear that while they rejected the literacy test, they accepted existing forms of qualitative regulation of immigration, a crucial step ­toward normalizing restriction as an integral part of U.S. immigration policy. No one reflected this shift better than Carl Schurz, the venerated German-­born Republican who had excoriated the nativist Know Nothing Party during the presidential election of 1860. Although he rebuked Senator Lodge and other nativists as fear mongers, Schurz admitted that some form of restriction had become inevitable. “That this country should not be a dumping ground for the criminals and the cripples of the Old World we all readily admit,” he wrote in a letter read at the meeting, “but existing legislation has proved itself amply sufficient to prevent this.”10 Schurz incarnated the norm rather than the exception among critics of restriction. Except for a small minority at the margins of their communities, the majority of Italian and Jewish powerbrokers who mobilized against new restrictive bills found some form of restriction acceptable and reasonable. Many of them shared restrictionists’ concerns about unfettered immigration. They just disagreed about who should be the target and how far restrictions should go. The meeting, along with protests from other quarters, successfully persuaded moderate Republicans concerned about the ethnic vote to withdraw their support for the Lodge bill, but it was a pyrrhic victory.11 While Lodge and his allies accepted the defeat of his bill, they convinced Congress to create the bipartisan U.S. Industrial Commission to investigate the impact of re-

The ­Battle Begins 19

cent immigration on U.S. society. Pro-­immigration advocates immediately proposed delaying the consideration of any further legislation on immigration ­until the committee had issued its report. While they hoped that the debate over further regulation would die down in the meantime, the creation of the committee attested to the influence of supporters of restriction in Congress, the growing impact of Progressive reforms on the legislative pro­cess, and the rising importance of outside expertise in the crafting of legislation. The committee went out of its way to consult experts whose work could corroborate restrictionist arguments. In 1901, the Industrial Commission issued a scathing report criticizing immigration from southern and eastern Eu­rope. The report declared that the newcomers depressed wages, lowered Americans’ standard of living, threatened to replace the native-­born population, and raised the country’s crime and poverty rates. It also established a hierarchy of desirability among the new immigrants, which, in part, stemmed from the dif­fer­ent character of Italian and Jewish migration patterns. Although it remained concerned about their impact on U.S. society, the committee praised Jewish immigrants for their high naturalization rates, their commitment to settling in the United States, and their willingness to accept that the United States had the right to prevent the immigration “of paupers and diseased persons and all who are unfitted to enjoy the franchise.” Italians did not fare as well. When it came to Italian immigrants, the committee upheld the common ste­reo­type that Italian men “of low intelligence are desirable to do the rough work” b­ ecause they w ­ ere docile hard workers. The report also blamed Italian immigrants “from the ignorant peasant class” for the increase in diseases in the United States rather than investigating the ­causes ­behind the overcrowded conditions in which they lived.12 While clearly prejudiced against southern and eastern Eu­ro­pe­ans, only two of the fourteen committee members recommended a literacy test. Cautious po­liti­cal actors caught in a changing po­liti­cal landscape, the o­ thers only endorsed a ban on anarchists, an increase in the head tax immigrants had to pay upon entry, and stricter sanctions on immigrants with a job on arrival. The report nonetheless provided restrictionists with the legitimacy they craved. Although the commission’s formal recommendations did not include a literacy test, the members of the commission did argue that, while a literacy test had not been necessary when most of the immigrants came from Germany and Ireland, the “changing character of immigration” had now made such a test desirable.13 The committee’s endorsement of the literacy test coincided with Theodore Roo­se­velt’s swearing in as president following McKinley’s assassination at the

20  Chapter One

hands of Leon Czolgosz, an American-­born anarchist with a foreign-­sounding name. More importantly for restrictionists, Roo­se­velt had been in touch with Prescott Hall about Lodge’s literacy test bill as early as 1896.14 Confident of Roo­se­velt’s backing, the IRL and the American Federation of L ­ abor (AFL) collaborated on a yearlong petition drive demanding “a more rigid restriction of immigration to protect American citizenship and the Working Men.”15 Hundreds of petitions from u­ nion members and private citizens from Wyoming to Arkansas to New Jersey flooded Congress in 1902, demonstrating the success of the IRL, AFL, and East Coast nativists in turning Eu­ro­pean restriction into a national issue.16 In 1903, ­unions, patriotic socie­ties, small business ­owners, philanthropies, and individuals joined forces in a second and even more robust petition effort to urge Congress to pass more restrictive immigration legislation.17 Concerned, Americans of German and Irish descent once again took the lead and mobilized even before legislators took up a new bill. Like their counter­ parts’ petitions, the letters to Congress from t­ hese critics of restriction used well-­established arguments. Seeking to emphasize immigrants’ contributions, the League of German American Associations in Dayton, Ohio noted, “if the experience of the last five years has proven anything, it is the fact that the so-­ called undesirable ele­ments have proven themselves very desirable.”18 For its part, the German American Central Verein insisted that, “the existing laws on immigration, if properly carried out, are fully adequate to accomplish what the new mea­sure . . . ​is intended to accomplish.”19 When all the other arguments failed, the German Central Bund of Ohio reminded legislators that they would “oppose the re-­nomination and re-­election of all Members of Congress who vote for the unnecessary restriction of immigration.”20 Business o­ wners, social workers, and prominent members of the immigrant communities soon joined ­these efforts and or­ga­nized additional protests and petitions to Congress against the literacy test in 1902 and 1903. Although the renewed pressure from opponents of restriction showed that they represented a force with which to reckon, restrictionists benefitted from a well-­funded, well-­organized, and well-­connected network that could now count on support from the executive branch in addition to key legislators. Congress, with Roo­se­velt’s backing, passed the Immigration Act of 1903, also known as the Anarchist Exclusion Act, which, following the recommendations of the Industrial Commission, raised the head tax and expanded the list of excludable categories to include anarchists, epileptics, the “insane,” and “professional beggars.” Buoyed by the passage of the act, East Coast restrictionists resumed their campaign of writing letters to Congress to push for a literacy

The ­Battle Begins 21

test, even as Congress and the president turned their attention to the debate over Japa­nese exclusion.21 Seeking to build the widest restrictionist co­ali­tion pos­si­ble in Congress, Lodge and his IRL allies took e­ very opportunity to tell Western lawmakers privately that they would support their proposal to exclude Japa­nese if, in turn, they would back the literacy test to restrict immigration from eastern and southern Eu­rope.22 By 1905, the fight for Asian exclusion and Eu­ro­pean restriction had begun to converge. As debates over immigration continued, restrictionists’ intentional comparisons between southern and eastern Eu­ro­pe­ans and p­ eople of color in the United States significantly contributed to the passage of more restrictive immigration legislation. Edward W. Bemis, the economist who had first pop­u­ lar­ized the idea of a literacy test, compared southern Italian, Bohemian, and Hungarian immigrants to Chinese-­like sojourners.23 In their letters, nativists regularly drew comparisons between Italian and Jewish immigrants and the already restricted Chinese and disenfranchised African Americans. If Italians came to be known as the Chinese of Eu­rope, immigration authorities increasingly characterized eastern Eu­ro­pean Jews as “orientals” incapable of assimilation. By 1905, nativists frequently asserted that Congress needed to protect Americans against “hordes of immigrants coming from Southern Eu­rope and Oriental countries.”24 In 1907, the IRL took it further and contended that, “Indians, Negroes, Chinese, Jews, and Americans cannot be all ­free in the same society.”25 That same year, reflecting how popu­lar t­ hese beliefs had become among mainstream Americans, a man from V ­ irginia warned his state legislators that “the pre­sent immigrants are of distinctly alien races, akin to the Negroid, and composed of the very worst ele­ments from the most backward and degraded sections of Eu­rope and Western Asia.”26 By 1910, AFL chapters around the country had passed tens of resolutions urging legislators, the executive branch, and immigration officers to stand up against the “selfish interests shifting the sources recently from Northwest Eu­rope to Southeast Eu­rope and Western Asia in their search for the cheapest ­labor and the most profitable traffic.”27 As the restrictionist front continued to grow, Italian and Jewish advocates strug­gled to bring their communities together in the fight against immigration restriction. Eastern Eu­ro­pean Jews’ relationship with the older and more established German Jews often faltered b­ ecause of religious and cultural differences. Although the older and more established community provided eastern Eu­ro­pean Jews with an infrastructure from which they could build and to which they could contribute, tensions remained. Many of the new arrivals resented the condescension from their more established German counter­parts

22  Chapter One

and found l­ ittle consolation in Oscar Straus’s serving as L ­ abor and Commerce Secretary, even though he was the first American Jew to hold a cabinet position. Roo­se­velt, in fact, had nominated Straus as ­Labor and Commerce Secretary, the department that supervised the Immigration Bureau, only when Republican strategists had grown alarmed in 1906 that the GOP candidate for governor in New York State would be defeated by the Demo­cratic nominee, William Randolph Hearst, who presented himself as a crusader of the tenements. Although Straus worked to soften the punitive tendencies of the bureau, criticized Asian exclusion, and attacked the AFL’s restrictionist stance, the circumstances of his appointment undermined his effectiveness and his actions alarmed rather than pacified restrictionists.28 For their part, Italians joined a community made up almost entirely of new arrivals who collaborated with each other reluctantly b­ ecause of centuries-­old regional divisions. Italy had fully unified only in 1871 and regional differences and mutual suspicion among Italians at home and abroad persisted well into the twentieth ­century. Although regional differences afflicted both groups, Italian immigrants’ ability to come together around immigration restriction also suffered from the high rate of return migration among the mostly male Italian immigrants.29 Unlike Jewish immigrants, who rarely felt any connection to the countries they left ­behind and usually came to the United States to ­settle permanently, most Italian immigrants, including t­ hose who chose to stay, had strong ties with their ancestral home and often looked to the Italian government for help when they ­were abroad.30 In an effort to navigate such competing priorities, many Italian antirestrictionists in the United States developed a particularly fraught rapport with representatives of the Italian government in the country b­ ecause they often interfered with antirestrictionists’ efforts to challenge immigration restriction. ­Until the beginning of the twentieth ­century, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did ­little to regulate the flow of Italians to the Amer­ic­ as or to protect Italian mi­grants abroad.31 To the Italian government, emigration offered a solution to its unemployment prob­lems, a lifeline to the country’s economy, and an opportunity to forge trading partnerships.32 Complicating ­matters further, many of the Italian consuls and ambassadors in the United States came from central and northern Italy and often despised southern Italians, who comprised the majority of Italian immigrants in the United States. Many of the Italian consular officials shared Americans’ disdain for Italian immigrants’ illiteracy and, like American nativists, blamed it on the mi­grants themselves.33 They also considered Italian Americans’ public critiques of U.S. immigration policy counterproductive. In 1902, when La Tribuna and Il Secolo denounced the

The ­Battle Begins 23

literacy test bill and asked Italian authorities to appeal to President Theodore Roo­se­velt to veto it, the Foreign Ministry condemned the articles and said that the United States had ­every right to pass such a mea­sure b­ ecause it was a sovereign nation.34 Like the Jewish activists of German descent, the Italian government preferred compromise and quiet diplomacy. In 1901, in response to pressure from U.S. authorities, the Italian government created the Council of Emigration to monitor its mi­grant flow more closely and enforce U.S. immigration laws.35 Leary of collaborating with Italian American leaders, Italian government representatives de­cided to negotiate privately with U.S. authorities over proposed legislation or specific immigration cases.36 In 1905, for example, the Italian ambassador encouraged Italian authorities to work with steamship companies to reroute more Italian mi­grants to U.S. ports such as Charleston, Galveston, Mobile, and New Orleans to minimize their concentration in northeastern cities despite the hostility many Italian mi­grants faced in the U.S. South.37 Italian authorities also briefly considered a suggestion from Italian-­born Gino Speranza, a l­ egal counsel at the Italian consulate in New York, to follow the example of “Chinese jurisprudence,” as he put it, and go to court to challenge immigration restriction and civil rights violations against Italian immigrants. Although he conceded that this strategy was expensive, time consuming, and unpredictable, Speranza argued that it represented the only safe tactic open to the Italian government during a time of intense debates over national sovereignty.38 As early as 1912, the consular bureaus, without much po­liti­cal and financial support from the Italian government, realized that they could not pursue Speranza’s “program of patient strug­gle” and de­cided that the courts ­were not the right place to push back against discriminatory immigration laws.39 The decision also demonstrated that white immigrants, even t­hose with questionable racial status in many Americans’ eyes, had a broader set of options than immigrants of color and could choose to forego a difficult and uncertain strategy that required a long-­term commitment, one that for many immigrants of color remained the only option. As Italian authorities searched for the best strategy to respond to restrictionists, prominent Italian and Jewish Americans in New York City founded three national organ­izations explic­itly to oppose immigration restriction. In 1905, Vincenzo Sellaro, a renowned physician originally from Sicily, recruited several prominent members of the largest Italian community in the country to found the Order Sons of Italy in Amer­ic­ a (OSIA) “to re­unite in one single ­family” all the Italians in North Amer­ic­ a and achieve “influence and re­spect” in the United States.40 Like many of the benevolent socie­ties that had

24  Chapter One

p­ receded it, OSIA provided assistance to newly arrived immigrants, set up Americanization programs, and promoted Italians’ contributions to the United States. They supported t­ hese initiatives to address concrete prob­lems but also to convince apprehensive Americans that restriction was unnecessary. By the early 1920s, the order had grown to approximately 1200 local chapters and 300,000 members, making it the largest Italian American organ­ization in North Amer­i­ca.41 Considering that Italian immigrants had tried without success to create a national society to or­ga­nize Italian Americans across the country since 1868, this represented quite an accomplishment and a clear sign that the Italian American community was settling and negotiating its role in American society. When it came to immigration ­matters, OSIA soon became one of the most vocal advocates for f­amily reunification as a key princi­ple in immigration policy. A year ­after the foundation of OSIA, the Jewish community saw the formation of two advocacy organ­izations with diametrically opposed approaches to intervening in the immigration debate. The National Liberal Immigration League (NLIL) and the American Jewish Committee (AJC) quickly emerged as the most influential players in the antirestrictionist camp and regularly competed with one another ­until 1915, when NLIL’s influence declined amid strategic miscalculations and its president’s bankruptcy. While NLIL leaders opted for massive propaganda campaigns and large protest meetings, AJC members rejected public demonstrations and embraced quiet persuasion by a small group of influential Jews with an extensive network of po­liti­cal connections. The strategic differences between NLIL and AJC echoed the two sides that had emerged within the larger anti-­immigration restriction community, a divide that would persist through 1965. ­After successfully organ­izing two mass meetings to protest the literacy test in New York City and Boston in 1906, Nissim Behar—­a propagandist of the Paris-­based Alliance Israélite Universelle, an educator, and a Zionist—­founded the NLIL as a nonsectarian organ­ization to oppose immigration restriction and influence legislation in Congress. Behar worked hard to diversify the leadership of the organ­ization, like the IPL. At the first meeting, NLIL members elected Edward Lauterbach, a Republican Jewish ­lawyer from New York City and a member of the newly founded AJC, as president and Antonio Zucca, president of both the Italian American Demo­cratic Union of Greater New York and the New York Italian Chamber of Commerce of New York City, as trea­ surer. Behar and Lauterbach invited prominent American leaders like Andrew Car­ne­gie and Woodrow Wilson to serve on the board and then set out to recruit a broad range of organ­izations of Eu­ro­pean immigrants to join them. They

The ­Battle Begins 25

reached out to leaders in older immigrant communities from Eu­rope, namely German and Irish; recruited other Jewish groups not focusing on immigration issues liked the In­de­pen­dent Order of B’nai B’rith; and enlisted organ­izations with new immigrants like the L ­ abor Information Office for Italians and the Slavonic Immigrant Society. Despite Behar’s and Lauterbach’s efforts to create a bipartisan and ethnically diverse membership, restrictionists still considered NLIL a Jewish organ­ization b­ ecause Behar, as managing director of the league during its entire existence, coordinated ­every aspect of the organ­ization and was its driving force.42 Also in 1906, a group of influential American Jews of German descent, troubled by the slow American response to the pogroms in eastern Eu­rope, founded the AJC to oppose the passage of additional restrictive immigration laws. If NLIL emphasized the economic benefits of immigration, AJC focused on humanitarian justifications and argued that the United States should continue its longstanding tradition as a haven for the oppressed. Its American-­ educated and highly successful founders—­who included famed civil rights and constitutional l­ awyer Louis Marshall, educator and religious leader Cyrus Adler, businessman and philanthropist Jacob Schiff, and merchant and philanthropist Cyrus L. Sulzberger—­believed they had an obligation to fight to keep Amer­i­ca’s gates open for persecuted eastern Eu­ro­pean Jews. They also understood that the push for restriction threatened their position in American society ­because nativists, like anti-­Semites, did not distinguish between eastern Eu­ro­pean and German Jews.43 Complicating m ­ atters further, many of them belonged to the Republican Party and increasingly strug­gled to reconcile their traditional party allegiance with the party’s growing commitment to immigration restriction. Although Marshall’s larger-­than-­life personality became the public face of the committee, the other core members of the organ­ization ­were also prominent leaders of the Jewish community who w ­ ere active in politics, had connections to Jewish elites in the United States and abroad, and worked to secure civil rights for all minority groups in the United States. While many AJC leaders participated in relocation and Americanization efforts, they intentionally pushed the organ­ization to focus exclusively on immigration policy from the beginning. Borrowing tactics from their restrictionist foes, AJC leaders collected and widely circulated reports to Congress, the executive branch, and the public that challenged accusations that immigrants ­were criminal, a burden on public charities, and a hindrance to the U.S. economy. Unlike NLIL, AJC, in historian Henry B. Leonard’s words, “relied primarily upon the application of private, quiet pressure upon impor­tant p­ eople, especially politicians and administrators at the Federal level.”44 Many of its

26  Chapter One

members, but especially Louis Marshall, who served as the organ­ization’s president from 1912 to 1929, believed that NLIL’s aggressive tactics contributed to the labeling of the antirestriction campaign as a “Jewish issue.”45 For this reason, Marshall rejected any special pleas to admit Jewish hardship cases outside of the existing immigration laws. He believed that ­doing so opened the Jewish community to “the attack that we f­ avor indiscriminate immigration, without regard to the welfare of our country.”46 Italian and Jewish leaders joined a myriad of immigrant groups and advocacy organ­izations with the belief that lobbying represented the best strategy to intervene and gain legitimacy in the national debate over immigration, yet whose approach was most effective remained unclear.47 Whereas the two Jewish organ­izations focused almost exclusively on the l­egal and legislative aspects of immigration policy to avoid any conflict or overlap with other Jewish organ­izations working on resettlement issues, OSIA became an organ­ization that worked on every­thing related to the immigrant experience.48 The compartmentalization among Jewish organ­izations often caused frustration within the community, but its success exposed Jewish reformers to more attacks and scrutiny from mainstream Americans and legislators. OSIA’s model, on the other hand, led to a dispersal of energy and resources that undermined its ability to influence the legislative pro­cess and attracted criticism for its willingness to collaborate with the Italian government. Neither model emerged as an adequate response to the recent legislative reforms in Congress. Progressives’ emphasis on committees, se­niority, and outside expertise undermined t­ hese organ­izations’ ability to pre­sent radical alternatives to legislators’ proposals.

Struggling to Respond to Shifting Public Opinion The dizzying pace at which legislators continued to draw up new immigration proposals made it difficult for antirestrictionists to step back and reassess how to respond, and, by the beginning of the twentieth c­ entury, their biggest challenge was the rapid loss of several of their allies. At the end of 1905, Congress received hundreds of letters from angry u­ nion members calling for a literacy test and lamenting that ignoring immigration would “destroy us and place us on a par with the wage scale and social conditions of Southern Eu­rope and Oriental countries.”49 Wielding the power of their vote, they reminded Republicans that their party platform had pledged to enact immigration restriction since the 1890s. As Republicans became ever more committed to immigration restriction, Southern Demo­crats underwent a change of their own. Southern Demo­crats had originally supported recruiting Eu­ro­pean immigrants to dis-

The ­Battle Begins 27

place African Americans as the main source of cheap ­labor in the South, but, concerned about the impact of black suffrage on their power, they soon saw immigration restriction as the po­liti­cal issue that could help them mobilize white voters and preserve their foothold at the federal and state level.50 In fairly rapid succession, one Southern state ­after another passed provisions, like the one in ­Virginia, “to oppose in ­every pos­si­ble manner the influx . . . ​of immigrants from Southern Eu­rope with their Mafia and Black Hand murder socie­ ties and with no characteristics to make them with us, a homogeneous p­ eople, believing as we do, that upon Anglo-­Saxon supremacy depend the ­future welfare and the prosperity of the commonwealth.”51 When this expanded restrictionist co­ali­tion propelled the passage of the Dillingham Immigration bill in the Senate in the spring of 1906, the newly formed NLIL and AJC marshaled their supporters to prevent its adoption. With the full support of Senator Lodge, the bill called for an increase in the head tax from two to five dollars and the re­introduction of a literacy test for all immigrants entering the country except ­those from Mexico, Canada, and certain American territories.52 Concerned about the impact of the test on immigrants fleeing anti-­Semitism in Eu­rope, AJC and NLIL put pressure on the U.S. House to block the passage of a similar bill. NLIL or­ga­nized massive interethnic meetings in Boston, New York City, and other major cities around the country demanding that Congress delay any action on immigration legislation ­until it had completed another investigation on the seriousness of the alleged immigration crisis. To highlight the broad spectrum of allies in the antirestrictionist cause, NLIL invited representatives of immigrant organ­ izations, religious and l­abor leaders, politicians from both parties, and business o­ wners to speak at the rallies. At many of the meetings, ­those pre­sent passed resolutions objecting to the passage of further restrictive mea­sures, identified small del­e­ga­tions to send to Washington, DC, and encouraged attendees to mobilize their communities against the Dillingham bill.53 Answering NLIL’s call, Jewish organ­izations around the country coordinated petitions to Congress to protest “in the name of humanity . . . ​further restrictions in the ­matter of immigration.”54 A del­e­ga­tion of prominent Jewish business o­ wners from Philadelphia met with President Theodore Roo­se­velt and the congressional representatives from Pennsylvania to pre­sent their objections to the bill55 and convinced the Philadelphia Board of Trade to contact all members of Congress to protest the passage of a literacy test.56 Although the bill sailed through the Senate, the House remained deeply divided. Progressive Republicans on the House Immigration Committee supported the literacy test as a form of social reform and racial purification, but

28  Chapter One

the old party establishment, represented by the power­ful House Speaker Joseph Cannon (R-­IL), opposed the literacy test b­ ecause it worried about electoral reprisals from business and immigrant voters. Cannon, who was a member of NLIL, used the power of his speakership to block the House version of the bill—­which was sponsored by Republican Representative Augustus Peabody Gardner, a fervid restrictionist from Mas­sa­chu­setts and Henry Cabot Lodge’s son-­in-­law—­from ever reaching the floor for debate. In the meantime, Marshall, on behalf of AJC, quietly contacted several members of the House who seemed to be softening on restriction to encourage them to sit on the restrictionist bill a ­little longer, but he also communicated regularly with Cannon to receive updates. In his letters, Marshall never questioned the need for stricter immigration regulation, but he argued that the literacy test would penalize poorly educated southern and eastern Eu­ro­pe­ans who ­were “mentally and morally unblemished” but facilitate the admission of anarchists and communists, who ­were often highly educated.57 Both organ­izations’ lobbying efforts paid off when their allies in Congress defeated Gardner’s ploy to ram a bill with a literacy test through the House. Gardner, frustrated with his colleagues’ stalling his bill in the Immigration Committee, attempted to have the committee discharged and, with the help of the Rules Committee, have his bill passed. A Republican, Marshall quietly recruited a few of his Demo­cratic friends in the House to reach out to key Demo­crats on the committee to sabotage the ploy along with antirestrictionist Republicans. Cannon again used his influence over the House Rules Committee to limit the length of the debate and allow only one amendment per section. During the House debate, the chamber lowered the head tax to two dollars, eliminated the literacy test, and, thanks to pressure from Jewish representatives Lucius Littauer (R-­NY) and Henry Goldfogle (R-­NY), added a clause to the bill that exempted victims of religious and po­liti­cal persecution from the requirements of the bill.58 ­Because of ­these changes, the House and Senate immigration committees remained deadlocked for months, unable to agree on a compromise bill. Although Senators Lodge and William P. Dillingham (R-­V T), chair of the Immigration Committee, saw t­ hese negotiations as an opportunity to reinstate the literacy test in the bill, they faced pushback from the Republican House committee members, who opposed the test and remained loyal to Cannon. Antirestrictionists seized this opportunity to urge legislators to resist any effort to reintroduce the literacy test and, as an incentive, pledged to vote for candidates for Congress “who ­will lend us their assistance in defeating the vicious attempts of the combined forces of nativists to restrict immigration.”59 ­These

The ­Battle Begins 29

divisions within the Republican Party helped critics of immigration restriction put pressure on Congress to reject the entire bill and pass further immigration legislation only when it had a clearer picture of immigration to the United States. At this final stage, the AJC, B’nai B’rith, and the NLIL joined forces to oppose the pending bill. Together they appealed to L ­ abor and Commerce Secretary Oscar Straus, another one of the prominent found­ers of the AJC, to use his influence to recruit support for their cause. Straus convinced Cardinal James Gibbons to write a personal letter to President Roo­se­velt opposing the test and reminded the Republican leadership that the party would lose any support it had gained in heavi­ly immigrant districts if it passed the literacy test bill.60 In the meantime, NLIL wrote letters urging several legislators to challenge the AFL’s endorsement of the literacy test and its misrepre­sen­ta­ tions of the immigration flow from Eu­rope.61 The Order of B’nai B’rith worked with the German American Alliance to or­ga­nize a letter-­writing campaign to persuade Congress to study immigration carefully before adopting any new legislation.62 Fi­nally, several Jewish groups wrote to their senators to object to the proposed raise in the head tax and the discriminatory “low vitality” clauses that echoed long-­held ste­reo­types about Jewish immigrants’ physical fitness.63 Like much of the immigration legislation passed since 1882, antirestrictionists achieved a qualified victory. When House and Senate negotiations fi­nally agreed on the text of the 1907 Immigration Act, it did not include the literacy test. Caught between the pressure from authorities in San Francisco to prioritize Japa­nese exclusion and Cannon’s refusal to pass a bill with a literacy test, Roo­se­velt set aside his belief in Eu­ro­pean restriction and asked Lodge to drop the test from the bill. Lodge conceded out of deference to the president but asked for the establishment of a new commission to study the immigration crisis. Nonetheless, the act further restricted immigration from southern and eastern Eu­rope and set the stage for more legislation down the line. The final version of the bill expanded the existing categories of exclusion, made deportation easier, gave more power to doctors to reject entering immigrants, and, further legitimizing social status as a category of admission, raised the head tax to four dollars. In February 1907, within five days of each other, Roosevelt—­in moves that acknowledged competing U.S. domestic and international priorities—­signed the Immigration Act of 1907 and stipulated the Gentlemen’s Agreement with Japan committing the United States not to restrict Japa­nese immigration if the Japa­nese government regulated Japa­nese migration on its own.

30  Chapter One

Although NLIL, AJC, and most of the Republican leadership hoped the creation of the commission would derail any further attempts to pass a literacy test, critics of restriction realized that the commission’s hearings kept immigration restriction in the spotlight and consolidated support for restriction in Congress. Max Kohler, another prominent AJC member, rightly predicted that the commission’s report would likely “shape our immigration policy for a number of years . . . ​and its publications w ­ ill be the chief collection for the study of the immigration question for a long time to come.”64 With Senators Dillingham and Lodge and Representative John Burnett (D-­AL) sitting on it, three of the nine-­person commission w ­ ere avowed restrictionists who understood the newfound power of congressional committees over the legislative pro­cess and welcomed in their deliberations outside social science experts on the ills of immigration.65 The hearings legitimized the influence of the eugenics movement on immigration policy and upheld the false dichotomy between how successfully the “old” immigrants had integrated and the “new” immigrants’ inability to do so. Despite their concerns about the Dillingham Commission, antirestrictionists actively engaged with its members and Congress to make a case for maintaining the status quo. Jewish and Italian leaders coordinated several letter-­writing campaigns to reiterate that, as the Italian Chamber of Commerce put it, “existing mea­sures, if efficiently enforced, are sufficient to bar out undesirable immigrants.”66 In one of its many letters to Senator Dillingham, AJC leaders acknowledged the “right and duty of e­ very government to protect its ­people against the incursion of criminals, paupers, lunatics, and other persons who would be public charges” but urged Congress to do so “without violating our national traditions and the dictates of common humanity, or depriving our country of a natu­ral and healthy means of increasing its population and prosperity.”67 On March 11, 1910, representatives from AJC, B’nai B’rith, and the Union of the American Hebrew Congregations testified at a hearing of the Dillingham Commission to underscore once again the effectiveness of existing laws and, using the only argument to which members of the committee seemed receptive, reiterate that the literacy test was un-­American ­because it would only separate families.68 The AJC also submitted a report it had commissioned to economist Isaac A. Hourwich on how the new immigrants helped American society to thrive and prosper. The Dillingham Commission not only dismissed Hourwich’s study, but it also downplayed a report it had solicited from renowned anthropologist Franz Boas, which demonstrated that immigrants’ physical and ­mental abilities improved in the second and third genera-

The ­Battle Begins 31

tions regardless of national origin and that the physical and social environment, not hereditary traits, determined assimilation.69 Ignoring antirestrictionists’ arguments, the Dillingham Commission issued a massive forty-­one-­volume report in 1911 that echoed the nativist sentiments of its times and recommended immigration restriction as an economic necessity. The members of the commission, espousing the eugenicist theories of social theorists like Mayo-­Smith, Walker, and Ripley, argued that immigrants from southern and eastern Eu­rope w ­ ere intellectually inferior, backward, and physically weak. They concluded that t­ hese traits along with their lack of skills made southern and eastern Eu­ro­pe­ans unassimilable and posed a threat to American society. In their opinion, “the reading and writing test” represented the most objective and “feasible single method of restricting undesirable immigration.” The commission also recommended increasing the head tax and restricting immigration through national origins quotas, a proposal that ­later emerged as the linchpin of U.S. immigration policy.70 As Max Kohler had predicted, the Dillingham Commission report sanctioned restrictionists’ rationale and provided the basis for U.S. immigration policy for de­cades to come. Although momentous, the report would not have had such a long-­lasting impact if it had not coincided with a revolt against the existing power structure in Congress and within the parties. Fuming at Cannon’s obstructionism of the literacy test, House nativists like Gardner actively participated in the House revolt led by other Progressives that challenged the power that speakers and party leaders had over the legislative pro­cess and advocated for a shift to autonomous standing committees.71 With the backing of the AFL, the House Immigration Committee and nativist legislators challenged the traditional party government and the partisan speakership to advance their restrictionist agenda.72 As ­these developments unfolded, the IRL and socie­ties like the Patriotic Order of Sons of Amer­i­ca constantly reminded their representatives that their members ­were following their voting patterns and would “vote their convictions” at election time.73 Representative Burnett and Senator Dillingham lost no time and introduced a literacy test bill in each chamber of Congress. Sensing a change in the tide, Italian and Jewish immigration reform advocates immediately mobilized to protest the Burnett and Dillingham bills. NLIL orchestrated another letter writing campaign asking Congress to delay action on immigration and coordinated a propaganda campaign to convince Congress and the public that the United States needed immigration to thrive eco­ nom­ical­ly.74 The number of letters Congress received from German, Jewish,

32  Chapter One

Polish, and Italian critics of immigration restriction demonstrated an emerging, if fledgling, co­ali­tion that supported the legislative status quo, fiercely opposed the literacy test, and extolled the virtues of immigration for the United States, but the number of t­hose letters paled in comparison to t­hose that ­labor and patriotic organ­izations sent in f­avor of restriction.75 Undeterred, antirestrictionists of Eu­ro­pean origin took to the streets. They attended in droves a mass meeting in New York City in 1912, sponsored by NLIL. The speakers included Oscar Straus, Representatives William Sulzer and Henry M. Goldfogle, and renowned Zionist leader Rabbi Stephen S. Wise of the American Jewish Congress. Straus labeled the new wave of nativism a resurgence of Know-­Nothingism and attacked Senator Dillingham for admitting that the test was a pretext for restrictionists to exclude “36 ­percent of the immigrants who are now ­free to enter.”76 Encouraged by NLIL, OSIA circulated a petition against the passage of a literacy test to generate support among “the largest pos­si­ble numbers of citizens, of all races and origins.” “The more imposing the protest,” Behar wrote to James Donnaruma, a prominent Italian American in Boston and editor of the influential newspaper La Gazzetta del Mas­sa­chu­setts, “the greater our chance with Congress and the President for the final defeat of the Burnett bill.”77 ­Later in 1913, OSIA or­ga­nized another mass meeting to criticize senseless immigration restriction and, following NLIL’s lead, publicized it widely in immigrant newspapers and urged as many ­people and ethnic organ­izations as pos­si­ble to participate. NLIL and the AJC invested considerable energy in challenging the economic critique of the Dillingham Commission with the belief that proving the new immigrants’ value to the U.S. economy would suffice to stave off further legislation, but they soon realized that the rejection of southern and eastern Eu­ro­pe­ans went beyond the perceived economic threat they posed. NLIL’s Behar, for example, communicated with several respected and influential public figures of the time, including Seth Low, Jane Addams, Lillian D. Wald, and Charles W. Eliot of Harvard, to recruit them to speak sympathetically about the new immigrants’ economic benefits. Only Eliot, however, agreed to write an open letter that Behar publicized widely in the En­glish and foreign-­language press and had inserted in the Congressional Rec­ord. Behar also broadly distributed a pamphlet, The Educational Test, publicizing the views of former president Cleveland, Secretary of Commerce and L ­ abor Charles Nagel, Andrew Car­ne­gie, several legislators, and other prominent critics who argued that the literacy test would deprive U.S. industry of a much needed source of cheap ­labor. Lastly, Behar reached out to local chambers of commerce and manufacturers’ associations to enlist support.78

The ­Battle Begins 33

The AJC was just as active, if more discrete. Along with Jacob Schiff, Julius Rosenwald, and Mayer Sulzberger, Marshall quietly contributed thousands of dollars to reprint and distribute Hourwich’s study on the positive economic impact of the new immigrants. Significantly, Marshall insisted on their anonymity b­ ecause he feared that, if the public knew of the committee’s involvement, the study might not “be regarded as a scientific contribution.”79 Despite their efforts, NLIL and the AJC’s initiatives did ­little to assuage Americans’ economic concerns about immigrants from southern and eastern Eu­rope ­because the public already accepted t­hese beliefs as facts. The emphasis on the economic threat ignored how eugenicist and nativist arguments had taken over the immigration debate by the beginning of the twentieth ­century. The greatest challenge for all antirestrictionist organ­izations, one that persists to this day, remained the difficulty of bringing all the immigrant groups together. While many of the leaders involved believed that the success of the antirestrictionist camp rested in a diverse co­ali­tion that represented dif­fer­ent interests but acted as one, they still prioritized their own group’s interests, often at the expense of their potential allies. Many ethnic, fraternal, and religious organ­izations sent their petitions to Congress on behalf of the constituents they represented rather than as part of a broader, nonsectarian co­ali­tion. Even Jewish leaders, who w ­ ere at the forefront of co­ali­tion building, wavered u­ nder unrelenting attacks from restrictionists.80 While NLIL pursued a broad non-­ sectarian co­ali­tion ­until the end, AJC president Louis Marshall became more pragmatic in his approach and ­limited his efforts to reach out to leaders from other targeted immigrant groups. As nativists’ attacks intensified, Marshall came to believe that further restriction was inevitable, and, like many of the immigrant leaders he had once criticized, de­cided that the committee’s priority was to achieve “a result favorable to our brethren” by minimizing the impact of restriction on Jewish immigrants.81 Although he had tried to be conciliatory as early as 1907 during the final negotiations on the 1907 Immigration Act, Marshall’s commitment to prioritizing Jewish mi­grants was a testament to AJC’s declining po­liti­cal influence and to the ­limited options all antirestrictionists had as the real­ity of impending restriction set in. NLIL’s and the AJC’s decisions about co­ali­tion building s­ haped their responses when Representative Burnett strategically reproposed his literacy test bill in 1912 to make immigration a central issue in the presidential election. In addition to testifying in Congress, NLIL sponsored mass meetings in cities with large immigrant enclaves, like Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, New York City, and Philadelphia, and urged all the organ­izations in attendance to testify as well. It also worked with the Association of Foreign Language Newspapers

34  Chapter One

to enlist newspaper editors from across the country to protest the bill. Responding to the appeal, the Morgen Journal urged the adoption “of a scientific policy of intelligent, sympathetic regulation and distribution of immigrants, instead of permitting the government’s course of action to be determined by blind justice and passion.”82 AJC leaders, meanwhile, quietly lobbied to rally support against the test on Capitol Hill, regularly communicated with Representatives William Bennet, Adolph J. Sabath, and Henry M. Goldfogle, and asked their point lobbyist, Fulton Brylawski, to monitor closely all immigration proposals that could affect Jewish immigrants. The more he learned about the support for the Burnett bill, the more Marshall became convinced that its passage was imminent, so he quietly began to negotiate for the exemption from the literacy test of immigrants persecuted for religious and po­ liti­cal beliefs to help Jewish immigrants from Eu­rope.83 For their part, Italian Americans’ criticisms of the literacy test largely echoed ­those of the Jewish community, but they also raised concerns about the impact it would have on Italy. Like Jewish advocates, Italian leaders exhorted legislators to prioritize ­family reunion and consider the new immigrants’ economic contributions. Yet they also emphasized the damage a literacy test would do to Italy’s “economic, industrial, and commercial relationship with the United States.” At a time of fervid anti-­immigrant sentiment, this explic­ itly transnational criticism only confirmed restrictionists’ suspicions about Italians’ inability to assimilate.84 Even Italian authorities placed more faith in Jewish organ­izations’ ability to improve the chances of defeating the literacy test than in any initiatives from Italian leaders. While praising OSIA for its efforts, the Italian inspector of emigration at the Italian consulate in New York dismissed Italian antirestrictionists as a marginal voice in the immigration debate ­because they did not “enjoy a good reputation in the American press.”85 Italian Americans’ situation was not unique. Many of the groups involved in the campaign against restriction juggled dif­fer­ent agendas and priorities, making it difficult to find common ground and unite, but they became more vocal at a time when many of their power­ful allies had lost influence over the legislative pro­cess, like House Speaker Cannon, or ­were less reliable, like the executive. When the House passed Burnett’s bill with l­ittle opposition and the Senate and House committees quickly reached an agreement on a compromise bill in late 1912, antirestrictionists again turned their attention to the executive branch to veto the bill. B ­ ecause Eu­ro­pean immigrants could naturalize and had traditionally entered the po­liti­cal sphere easily, presidents and party man­ag­ers, unlike grassroots politicians, remained cognizant of immigrants’ importance

The ­Battle Begins 35

during national elections and tried to strike a balance between welcoming the newcomers and supporting restrictionists.86 Hopeful, NLIL or­ga­nized two petition drives with signatures from supporters of liberal immigration from across the country and successfully arranged for a hearing at the White House. About two hundred delegates representing immigrant communities from all over the country attended the meeting and made a case to William Howard Taft for vetoing the bill. Marshall attended the meeting, but he also privately contacted several prominent Jewish leaders from around the country to send the president a tele­gram asking him to veto the mea­sure. As Cleveland had done in 1896, Taft vetoed the bill in his last days in office, but he did so mostly ­because of the arguments from industrial employers about the continuing need for cheap ­labor. ­After the veto, NLIL or­ga­nized yet another letter-­ writing campaign to persuade key members of Congress to sustain the president’s veto, while Marshall, on behalf of the AJC, again urged his contacts to write to their legislators. While Congress did uphold the president’s veto in the end, the margin was smaller than in the past. Perhaps worse news for opponents of restriction, both parties incorporated immigration restriction in their platforms.87 The Demo­cratic Party even went against its own presidential candidate, Woodrow Wilson, who, at least on the campaign trail, recanted his ­earlier view of immigrants from southern Italy, Poland, and Hungary as “the very lowest class of h­ uman beings possessing neither intelligence nor initiative,” and, in a public letter to Italian Americans, promised that, if elected, he would not close Amer­i­ca’s gates to Eu­ro­pean immigrants “who loved liberty and sought opportunity.”88 This time, critics of immigration restriction barely had time to revel in their close victory, as Representative Burnett and Senator Dillingham resubmitted their bills in the spring of 1913. As proof of the changing tide in Congress, many legislators felt neither bill went far enough. Representative Albert Johnson (D-­WA), ­future sponsor of the 1924 Johnson-­Reed Immigration Act, rejected the Gardner-­Burnett bill ­because it would fail to restrict “the ­great influx of undesirable aliens from Asiatic and Eu­ro­pean countries” since it did not prescribe a writing test as part of its literacy test and did not exclude Japa­nese immigrants.89 Despite the discouraging odds, NLIL again set its network of antirestrictionists in motion, resumed its lobbying in Washington, and once again collaborated with the Association of Foreign Language Newspapers to reach a broader audience. For over a year, Louis Hammering, the association’s president, corresponded with editors of foreign-­language newspapers to nudge them to keep their critique of the literacy test in the spotlight.90 In a sign that many antirestrictionists increasingly felt that the passage of the literacy

36  Chapter One

test had become inevitable, the response to the call to action from NLIL was weak this time. At the two mass meetings NLIL or­ga­nized in Roxbury and Boston, merely a handful of politicians and a small group of representatives from Jewish, Italian, German, and Irish organ­izations from New York, Philadelphia, and Boston attended. No social Progressives or business leaders participated.91 Abandoning any hope of defeating the mea­sure, the AJC and their lobbyist continued to push privately for the exemption of persecuted immigrants from the literacy test, but their efforts too had ­little traction among legislators.92 The repeated attacks against immigrants from southern and eastern Eu­rope increasingly drove a wedge between old and new Eu­ro­pean immigrants. Initially, the threat of immigration restriction had brought ­these groups together, but the relentless criticisms revived longstanding po­liti­cal and cultural disagreements amidst the never-­ending competition for access and influence in U.S. politics and society.93

World War I and the Literacy Test The outbreak of World War I provided restrictionists with the final argument they needed to tip the debate over the literacy test in their f­ avor. By 1910, the largest immigrant groups in the United States came from Austria-­Hungary (two million), Italy (two million), and Rus­sia (one and a half million).94 Restrictionists, warning that t­ hese numbers would only skyrocket at war’s end, seized the opportunity to connect their immigration agenda to many Americans’ anx­ie­ ties about southern and eastern Eu­ro­pean immigrants’ loyalty to the United States. Their criticisms, however, demonstrated that, regardless of what the new immigrants did, nativists found blame. Nativists attacked Italians, whose return rate hovered around 50%, as disloyal and unassimilable. For renowned nativist Edward Ross, Italians’ low naturalization rate showed that “half, perhaps two-­thirds, of our Italian immigrants are ­under Amer­i­ca, not of it.”95 While Jewish immigrants’ return rate stood only at 4.3 ­percent, nativists believed that their high naturalization rates showed that t­ hese new citizens ­were “without any po­liti­cal princi­ples or convictions, entirely without patriotism, and usually evasive, dishonest, and incapable of appreciating any responsibility ­towards any government.”96 Although the majority of immigration restrictionists believed that only a system of racial se­lection could guarantee racial harmony, their fearmongering during the war helped them recruit supporters among proponents of nationwide Americanization programs who had traditionally opposed immigration

The ­Battle Begins 37

restriction. Patriotic organ­izations like the D ­ aughters and Sons of the American Revolution and the American Legion joined the Americanization movement along with l­abor ­unions, settlement h­ ouses, the Young Men’s and Young ­Women’s Christian Associations, the North American Civic League for Immigrants, and business organ­izations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers. Several federal agencies and thirty states across the country passed their own Americanization policies too. Even Frances Kellor, a longtime pro-­immigration leader and social reformer, embraced the Americanization movement, arguing that “nation building is to be in the f­ uture a deliberate formative pro­cess, not an accidental . . . ​arrangement.”97 Her defection marked the loss of another critical ally for antirestrictionists, which, along with the waning support from German Americans and the decline in business ­owners’ opposition to restrictive immigration laws, spelled trou­ble for the cause of liberal immigration. Restrictionists’ new criticisms also put Italian and Jewish leaders on the defensive and successfully divided them. As criticisms of their communities mounted, Italian and Jewish activists had ­little choice but to divert their attention from lobbying against the literacy test to addressing attacks on their communities’ loyalty, po­liti­cal be­hav­ior, and assimilation. Ramping up their educational efforts, they appealed to members of their communities to make greater efforts to integrate into American society,98 but they also criticized assimilationists’ narrow definition of integration and decried the “astonishing ignorance and indifference ­toward the immigrant” among many Americans.99 Embracing what Robert Fleegler has called contributionism,100 Italian and Jewish elites, especially members of AJC and OSIA, sponsored books and articles, often authored by Protestant Americans to lend the publications more legitimacy, that familiarized Americans with their communities, celebrated immigrants’ gifts and contributions to American society, and emphasized how the United States had transformed the new immigrants’ lives. In an effort to defend specific immigrant communities, t­ hese publications often created a climate of mutual mistrust and jeopardized chances for interethnic collaborations on immigration policy as each group praised its members over ­others. ­After an article in Life magazine questioned American Jews’ patriotism, for example, Marshall retorted that American Jews ­were more loyal to the United States than any other group ­because the country had “opened to them the gates of hope and bestowed the sweets of Liberty.”101 Similarly, during a House debate on the United States’ entry into the war, New York Representative Fiorello La Guardia vowed that the Italian residents in the country w ­ ere the most “­eager, willing, and anxious to fight . . . ​­under the American flag.”102

38  Chapter One

­ nder unrelenting scrutiny, Italian and Jewish critics of restriction also diU vided over how to respond to the new attacks. NLIL insisted that stressing the economic benefits of immigration remained the best strategy, but, by 1914, many of its detractors took this emphasis to confirm the long-­held suspicion that NLIL represented business interests.103 Rejecting this rhe­toric, James Donnaruma of OSIA sustained that antirestrictionists should call out nativists and say openly that the literacy test “was born of race and religious proscription”104 while AJC leaders argued that the antirestrictionist movement should stress humanitarianism and asylum. ­These organ­izations also disagreed over how to negotiate with restrictionists in Congress. The AJC, but especially Marshall, objected to NLIL’s mass public meetings and felt its sensational pamphlets did more harm than good to the antirestrictionist cause ­because they attracted negative publicity.105 Organ­izations like OSIA and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) believed that antirestrictionists should work together only when necessary. Perhaps most surprising, NLIL lost the support of the business community, which was increasingly embracing restriction. Not even electing former speaker of the House Cannon as its new president helped NLIL from fading into obscurity.106 Cannon’s inability to carry on the league’s activities demonstrated the declining influence of old establishment politicians, the hold of the emerging restrictionist co­ali­tion in Congress over the legislative pro­cess, and the triumph of anti-­immigrant hysteria across the country. The swift passage of another Gardner-­Burnett bill in late 1914 crystallized ­these dif­fer­ent approaches and made it clear which organ­izations would continue to be part of the debate over the country’s immigration policy. ­After Congress passed the bill, immigration advocates representing southern and eastern Eu­ro­pe­ans turned to President Wilson to persuade him to veto it. NLIL successfully arranged for a hearing with the president in January 1915, but it sent only its president and vice president rather than a del­e­ga­tion of representatives from dif­fer­ent ethnic organ­izations as it had done for the meeting with President Taft. Meanwhile, Leon Sanders, president of HIAS and chair of the New York Non-­Partisan Citizenship Committee, successfully brought together representatives of Jewish, Irish, and Italian organ­izations, friends of l­ abor, and social Progressives in mass meetings in Baltimore, Boston, New York City, and Providence, Rhode Island, to put pressure on Wilson.107 For its part, the AJC quietly approached a few legislators to understand what the fate of the bill might be. Although hardly an egalitarian, Wilson vetoed the literacy bill when it reached his desk, but antirestrictionists, remembering the close margin ­after Taft’s veto, worried that Congress might overturn it. Without hesitation, Mar-

The ­Battle Begins 39

shall contacted several prominent American Jews on behalf of the AJC and asked them to put pressure on their U.S. representatives to uphold the president’s veto. He personally paid for many of the tele­grams they sent. In the end, the House upheld the veto by a very close margin while the Senate again voted to overturn it.108 Despite the close call, the debate over the literacy test was far from over. ­After Wilson’s veto, antirestrictionists a­ dopted a well-­established strategy and again pleaded with Congress to adopt a wait-­and-­see approach. They noted that the sharp decline in immigration during the war years, from 1.4 million in 1914 to 300,000 in 1916, made it difficult to predict what would happen at the end of the war. Although they rejoiced at this decline, restrictionists continued to argue that immigration would resume at the end of the war and bring hordes of destitute, inferior, and radicalized Eu­ro­pe­ans to the United States, who would then join the existing immigrant communities who already caused plenty of social, economic, and po­liti­cal prob­lems for the country. Many in Congress agreed and, in late 1916, with the full support of the IRL, AFL, patriotic groups, and agrarian associations, Representative Burnett and Senator Dillingham, who now chaired the House and Senate committees on immigration and naturalization, made a final push for the literacy test. Demonstrating the growing influence of committees in the legislative pro­cess, Burnett only allowed amendments to the bill that he and the committee found acceptable. Although it exempted ­family members of admitted immigrants, Burnett’s bill raised the head tax from four to eight dollars and broadened the categories of excludable immigrants in a continued effort to select immigrants who fit specific economic, cultural, and po­liti­cal expectations. Following a suggestion from the report that carried his name, Dillingham’s bill originally proposed limiting immigration from Eu­rope to percentages varying by country, but he ultimately replaced it with a literacy test b­ ecause it seemed a more workable mea­sure. More importantly, the Dillingham bill also introduced an “Asiatic barred zone,” which banned immigration from eastern Asia and the Pacific Islands, thus bringing together what many Americans regarded as the two main targets of immigration restriction.109 By crafting a bill that affected immigration from Eu­rope and Asia, Dillingham broadened the support for it and secured swift passage of his bill. Jewish leaders immediately sprang into action, but they quickly realized that the odds had turned against them. AJC’s Marshall publicly urged Congress not “to build a Chinese wall around our country, to make us an isolated and parochial ­people, in the narrowest sense of the word.”110 HIAS distributed material criticizing the literacy test across the country, while other Jewish leaders

40  Chapter One

singled out Demo­cratic Senator “Cotton Ed” Smith of South Carolina for cosponsoring Dillingham’s bill even though he represented a state that attracted very few immigrants but had one of the highest illiteracy rates in the country. Despite this intense lobbying, when the hearings for the Burnett bill began, Marshall, concerned that Congress might pass the literacy test this time, privately approached Burnett to propose the exemption from the literacy test of immigrants fleeing religious or po­liti­cal persecution again. Hoping to divide the opposition and rally enough support from Congress to override a pos­si­ ble veto from President Wilson, Burnett accepted to negotiate with Marshall. Although Burnett and the AJC leader never formally reached an agreement, the House immigration committee did ultimately decide to exempt only p­ eople seeking admission into the country ­because of religious persecution. Fearing an influx of Mexican revolutionaries, the committee refused to exempt po­liti­ cal refugees. While Marshall considered the committee’s religious exemption a success, Jacob Schiff, another prominent AJC member, advocated that the organ­ization should continue to oppose the Burnett bill and fight for a more expansive exclusion clause. Despite internal division, the AJC de­cided to back away from the debate in Congress so as not to jeopardize the religious exemption and agreed to intervene again only if the bill reached Wilson’s desk.111 This small victory served as an impor­tant lesson for critics of restriction ­eager to gain access to the negotiating t­ able but ­limited in their influence over legislators. Only moderates had access to the halls of power and pursuing the coveted insider status forced them to make pragmatic choices benefitting some groups over ­others. More importantly, the pro­cess preempted any discussions of alternative, more liberal policies. Within and beyond Congress, the inclusion of the religious exemption clause in the Burnett bill unleashed a fierce debate that demonstrated that even a moderate proposal exposed its proponents to accusations of disloyalty. Even worse for many moderate Jews, the attacks confirmed that many supporters of restriction viewed immigration as a “Jewish prob­lem.” Many of the restrictionists who testified in Congress and w ­ ere quoted in the press argued that Jewish lobbyists ­were gaining special ­favors and considered the inclusion of the religious exemption clause further reason to restrict immigration from eastern Eu­rope. In response, Marshall wrote to Bennet to point out that the clause would benefit not just Rus­sian Jews but also Finns, Letts, and Armenians, but his arguments did ­little to dissuade anti-­ Semitic restrictionists.112 As the debate over the literacy test drew to a close, the Italian community, caught between two worlds and with ­limited po­liti­cal influence, found itself with very few options to make its voice heard. For most of the debate over the

The ­Battle Begins 41

literacy test during the war, Representative La Guardia and New York state senator and OSIA member Salvatore Cotillo ­were the only ones who spoke against the mea­sure on behalf of Italian Americans. La Guardia—­the ­future three-­term mayor of New York City, whose parents came from Italy but had dif­fer­ent religious backgrounds (his ­mother was Jewish while his f­ ather was a lapsed Catholic)—­represented a heavi­ly immigrant district, but he had also had the opportunity to witness the impact of restrictive U.S. immigration laws during his work as an interpreter who spoke Italian, Yiddish, and Croatian on Ellis Island from 1907 to 1910. Cotillo was the first Italian sent to the New York Assembly from an Italian neighborhood, East Harlem in New York City, and the first elected to the state senate. He would go on to serve as the first Italian judge on the State Supreme Court. While he worked tirelessly in f­ avor of regulatory mea­sures to prevent the exploitation of immigrant workers, he also promoted the need for Americanization to members of the Italian community in New York State.113 Their efforts, however, came to a halt a­ fter the Austro-­Hungarian forces defeated the Italian army in the B ­ attle of Caporetto in the fall of 1917. Many Italians blamed the United States for the defeat ­because it had failed to provide the country with sorely needed supplies. Fearing that the widespread disillusionment among Italians ­after Caporetto could harm the final outcome of the war, the U.S. government recruited Cotillo and La Guardia to travel to Italy to reassure Italians of the United States’ undivided support. Faced with a choice between protecting an Italy in crisis and standing against the literacy test, Cotillo and La Guardia prioritized Italy’s security, effectively ending Italian Americans’ opposition to the literacy test.114 Heeding the advice of Italian officials in the United States, Italian American leaders had sought to find legitimacy by letting only their voted representatives speak on the issue of the test, but this strategy too backfired. Against all odds, Marshall and AJC quietly orchestrated a final round of opposition to put pressure on President Wilson to veto the bill and for Congress to uphold the veto, but restrictionists’ skillful use of the anti-­immigrant paranoia caused by World War I made it virtually impossible for them to gain any traction. Carefully trying to avoid any accusations of Jewish parochialism, Marshall sought the support of Cardinal Gibbons, secured the names of representatives who wavered on the literacy test to apply pressure on them, and sent a letter to all AJC members urging them to write to their representatives. Although Wilson did veto the literacy test bill, a Democratic-­controlled Congress went against his decision and overrode his veto by staggering margins. The vote reflected how far the restrictionist alliance in Congress had come

42  Chapter One

since Senator Lodge had first proposed the literacy test as a restrictive mea­ sure at the end of the nineteenth c­ entury. While the House voted 287 to 106 to override President Wilson’s veto, the Senate registered only seven dissenting votes.115 The alliance with Western Demo­crats and the combination of the literacy test and the creation of an “Asiatic Barred Zone” during a global war proved too much for antirestrictionists to withstand. The 1917 Immigration Act also showed how exclusion and inclusion occurred in tandem even at a time of intense pressure for immigration restriction. Despite the defeat, the history of mobilization against the literacy test from the beginning of the twentieth ­century to 1917 held several impor­tant lessons for Italian and Jewish critics. They learned that only moderates had access to the negotiating t­ able and that, ­because their cause did not have national support, focusing on specific, targeted issues gave them a better chance for success. Marshall and the AJC successfully pushed for the exemption of immigrants fleeing religious persecution from the literacy test, but they had to do so within a broader framework than just focusing on Jewish refugees, a lesson that the 1930s and early 1940s would only reinforce. For their part, Italian leaders took note that the act also exempted close ­family members of admitted immigrants from the test, reflecting a reverence for the f­ amily unit that would ­later become a key ele­ment in undermining the impact of further restriction. While successful, this strategy made antirestrictionists ever more focused on the interests of the groups to which they belonged. Neither Italian nor Jewish leaders opposed the creation of an Asiatic Barred Zone, the inclusion of new categories for exclusion, or the refusal to exempt from the literacy test po­liti­ cal refugees like Mexicans fleeing the revolution.116

chapter two

The Doors of Amer­i­ca Are Worse Than Shut When They Are Half-­Way Open From the Literacy Test to the National Origins Quota System, 1920–1929 “The   entering wedge was the literacy test,” wrote the AJC ­after Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1924.1 The committee members believed that World War I and the economic downturn that followed had helped “chauvinists to arouse suspicion and racial and national antagonisms against foreigners . . . ​ despite the signal proofs . . . ​during the World War that immigrants are not lacking in patriotism.”2 From a legislative perspective, the 1917 Immigration Act did indeed open the door to a rapid succession of immigration laws (1917, 1918, 1921, 1924) that tightened the nation’s borders against “inferior” races (southern and eastern Eu­ro­pe­ans and Asians) and undesirable immigrants, including “­idiots, the insane, paupers, vagrants, prostitutes, polygamists, anarchists, and persons likely to become a public charge.” This escalation in restriction culminated in the Johnson-­Reed Immigration Act of 1924, which imposed a near total ban on immigration from Asia and introduced the national origins quota system on the Eastern Hemi­sphere and most of the Ca­rib­bean. Steeped in xenophobic fearmongering, the debate that followed the passage of the literacy test and led to the Johnson-­Reed Act left ­little room for any policy counterproposals from antirestrictionists. Although they had become better or­ga­nized and more sophisticated in terms of po­liti­cal strategies, Italian and Jewish activists faced a barrage of attacks against their loyalty, their politics, and their motives, and found themselves on the defensive, reacting to mitigate the restrictionist proposals swirling through Congress. The loss of their most valuable allies in their fight against restriction—­such as the business community, Progressive social reformers, and older immigrant groups from Europe—­further undermined their ability to shape policy. Even Jewish antirestrictionists—­w ho had, initially at least, benefited from a much larger cohort of wealthy or professional elites than the Italian immigrant communities—saw their broader base dwindle a­ fter 1917. In spite of ­these setbacks, antirestriction advocates, building on their past experience, again persuaded legislators to continue to protect f­ amily reunion even within the

44  Chapter Two

quota system. They also tested new strategies and arguments, such as pushing for ad hoc legislation or administrative intervention for specific cases on the basis of humanitarianism. Putting a ­human face to humanitarian tragedy often persuaded legislators or administrators to intervene, but this strategy only favored individuals from immigrant communities with connections and po­liti­cal access. In making a case against the new restrictionist mea­sures of the 1924 act, Italian and Jewish leaders continued to frame their objections within foreign policy considerations but only selectively. While they warned about the international consequences of restricting mi­grants from Asia and Eu­rope, they strongly objected to the exemption from the quota system of most mi­grants from the Western Hemi­sphere. While racial resentment clearly suffused their statements about the exemption, it is also as clear that they worried that the exemption would eliminate the need for unskilled workers from outside the Amer­i­cas. World War I had demonstrated that could indeed happen. While they viewed the passage of the quota system as a resounding defeat, they worried even more about their inability to make a strong case for the continuing need for unskilled workers.

Back on Their Heels: Immigration Activists Confront the Rise of Quantitative Restriction The passage of the literacy test did l­ ittle to placate restrictionists’ desire to curtail immigration from southern and eastern Eu­rope further. Even before World War I came to an end, many restrictionists warned that the test “would afford only a frail barrier against the promised rush from the war-­stricken countries of Eu­rope” ­after the war.3 The Immigration Restriction League (IRL) once again led the charge. Its members argued that rising rates of elementary education in sending countries and the exemption clause for religiously persecuted immigrants—­a barely veiled reference to Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe—­doomed the efficacy of the test from the beginning. By 1918, many restrictionists called the Immigration Act of 1917 “a big joke” b­ ecause “it was qualitative and fixed no numerical limit to immigration.”4 On cue, in December 1918, restrictionists in Congress led by Representative Burnett of Alabama exploited a modest uptick in arrivals from Eu­rope to resurrect their most draconian immigration proposals and shore up po­liti­cal support for their bills. The po­liti­cal realignment that had been slowly emerging solidified around the national hysteria over immigration. The historically more restrictive Republican Party recaptured Congress and Southern Demo­crats embraced immigration

The Doors of Amer­i­ca Are Worse Than Shut When They Are Half-­Way Open 45

restriction to retain their po­liti­cal influence in a changing Demo­cratic Party. Southern Demo­crats’ strategic choice helped restrictionists maintain the status quo on immigration restriction for de­cades to come, but Northern Demo­crats’ reluctance to defend open immigration ­after the massive defection of recent immigrant voters in the wake of World War I proved equally impor­tant.5 The push for more restrictive legislation only intensified a­ fter the war, when the convergence of po­liti­cal paranoia, eugenicist beliefs, and isolationist impulses shifted the conversation from qualitative to quantitative restriction. The shift began when Italian and Japa­nese negotiators along with several Jewish intellectuals in Eu­rope and the United States proposed to consider migration policy as part of the Treaty of Versailles. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, President Wilson’s nemesis and the ­father of the restrictionist movement in Congress, rejected the idea and restrictionists followed suit.6 At the same time, anxiety over the Bolshevik Revolution led to the First Red Scare and the deportation delirium of 1920, which intentionally targeted many Italian and Jewish immigrants. Painting them as radicals, the U.S. government deported many of them simply ­because they participated in ­labor organ­izing and postwar strikes.7 Amid growing concerns among old-­stock Protestant Americans of the po­liti­cal influence of the new immigrants and their c­ hildren, advocates for Prohibition, the rebranded Ku Klux Klan, and avid readers of Henry Ford’s anti-­Semitic propaganda blamed Italian and Jewish immigrants for the social and economic prob­lems ailing the nation.8 Armed with census data and the results of quantitative mea­sure­ments of intelligence like the IQ test administered during World War I, the “experts” of the time provided additional pseudoscientific evidence of the need for more restriction. Nativists no longer wanted racial assimilation. They sought racial purity.9 And for them only nationality quotas would do. When the House Committee on Immigration appeared ready to endorse Burnett’s bill, which suspended all immigration for four years and introduced quotas thereafter, members of the AJC immediately contacted their allies on the committee ­because they understood how much the bill would destabilize Jewish migration. As president of the committee, Marshall wrote Representative Isaac Siegel (R-­NY) to ask him to oppose the bill. Marshall denounced the proposal to suspend immigration in the wake of a global conflict and attacked the quotas as discriminatory b­ ecause they based “the right of immigration on the nationality of the alien seeking admission, and not on his physical, moral and m ­ ental qualifications.”10 While he worried that the nationality quotas would subvert the entire immigration system, he noted that the quotas

46  Chapter Two

particularly penalized Jewish immigrants from eastern Eu­rope b­ ecause many of them came from countries that denied citizenship to their Jewish minority. It was a ­bitter irony, Marshall pointed out, that ­under the proposed system, immigrants from countries like Germany, against which the United States had just fought a world war, would be admitted in much larger numbers than immigrants from countries who had fought alongside the United States.11 Although Burnett’s bill failed to pass, the push for quantitative restriction had begun. Less than a year ­later, the House took up a similar bill from the chair of the Immigration Committee, Representative Albert Johnson (R-­WA), amid another flurry of restrictionist bills. Representative Johnson incarnated the new generation of restrictionist legislators who wanted racial purity and embraced a racialized brand of nationalism. A former member of the Asiatic Exclusion League, Johnson eventually led the Eugenic Research Association, an organ­ ization that opposed interracial marriage and advocated for the forced sterilization of ­people with a m ­ ental disability. He also understood how to keep the restrictionist co­ali­tion in Congress together. His emergency bill sought to suspend all immigration for two years except for immediate relatives and farm ­labor—­a concession to Southwestern growers in need of returnable, cheap ­labor from Mexico—­and then introduce nationality quotas. Johnson won over several of his colleagues who remained skeptical about such an extreme bill a­ fter he circulated a report from Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes insinuating that a large wave of “filthy” and “unassimilable” Jews from eastern Eu­rope was invading the country. Once the report reached the press, the AJC mounted a vigorous protest and denounced the secretary’s statement that “our restriction on immigration should be so rigid that it would be impossible for Armenians, Jews, Persians, and Rus­sians to enter the United States.” Fearing a backlash, Hughes initially denied any responsibility for the quote but ­later admitted that the consular officers quoted in the report had provided their personal opinion as facts.12 Hughes’s complicity foreshadowed the intimate collaboration between restrictionist legislators and State Department officials to uphold immigration restriction at all costs once it became the law of the land, even in the face of disruptive events like World War II. In spite of the protests against the State Department’s bias, restrictionists in the House and the Senate who held key positions on both immigration committees forged ahead with their agenda. Despite motions to dismiss the bill from Representative Adolph Sabath (D-­IL) and Isaac Siegel (D-­NY), protests from Jewish organ­izations in New York City and condemnations from several Jewish religious organ­izations from across the country, the House passed

The Doors of Amer­i­ca Are Worse Than Shut When They Are Half-­Way Open 47

Johnson’s bill swiftly ­after reducing the suspension of all immigration to twelve months.13 In the Senate, an aging Dillingham rejected the suspension idea but endorsed the quota plan that he had originally proposed in the Dillingham Commission report as a one-­year, emergency mea­sure. Dillingham’s bill proposed to admit 5 ­percent of the number of foreign-­born from each country listed in the 1910 census and gave the Secretary of ­Labor latitude to admit immigrants outside of the quota system if they ­were fleeing a humanitarian crisis.14 Alarmed by t­ hese developments in Congress, several antirestrictionists rejected the wait-­and-­see approach that many of them had ­adopted before 1917 and came together to form co­ali­tions to protest the proposed quota system. For the first time, several of ­these co­ali­tions countered with their own immigration proposals. In March  1919, representatives of industrial, mercantile, and banking corporations; prominent members of immigrant groups of old and new Eu­ro­pe­ans; and a few advocacy organ­izations founded the Inter-­ Racial Council to try to stop the restrictionist momentum. Failing to recognize that many Americans and legislators had already moved past the phase when they still hoped to assimilate the new immigrants from Eu­rope, the council leaders committed to improve “the relationships among races in Amer­i­ca,” push for sound immigration policies, and work closely with the foreign language press to carry on its work of “racial adjustments” and immigrant education.15 In terms of immigration policy, the Inter-­R acial Council proposed to integrate immigration, assimilation, and naturalization, but the details of its proposals revealed the extent to which antirestrictionists had accepted that some form of restriction had become inevitable. In April of 1920, several business executives, foreign-­language newspaper publishers, Louis Marshall and Max Kohler of AJC, James Donnaruma of OSIA, and Alderman Fiorello La Guardia, among o­ thers, met to finalize a counterproposal.16 They proposed to dispatch several consular agents to sending countries “to advise intending immigrants regarding the requirements of our immigration laws and the grounds for deportation” and to repeal the literacy test b­ ecause it damaged the interests of commerce, industry, and agriculture. Although the 1917 Immigration Act encompassed much more than the literacy test, it is indicative that antirestrictionists of Eu­ro­pean descent focused on the provision of the act that hurt Eu­ro­pean immigrants the most. Equally notable was the continuing emphasis on economic grounds for open immigration despite evidence that many Americans no longer considered economic considerations a central component of the immigration debate. When it came to assimilation, the Inter-­Racial

48  Chapter Two

Council recommended the creation of a Federal Board of Assimilation and suggested to raise the standards to acquire U.S. citizenship.17 The council submitted its resolutions to each member of the Senate and House committees on immigration hoping to be part of the deliberations about the country’s ­future immigration laws. Along with a plea to study the realities of immigration in the United States before amending the existing policy further, the council provided data showing the need for four million workers in industries and farming. Marshall even appeared before the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization to discuss “the essentials of a sound immigration policy on the lines of t­ hese resolutions.” Although the resolutions showed a willingness to negotiate, the House committee dismissed them and renewed its commitment to more restrictive mea­sures. While in his public report to the AJC membership Marshall vowed to continue to advocate for a humane system for all immigrants, in private, he and several AJC members braced for restrictions and pondered ­whether they should begin strategizing about how best they could protect Jewish mi­grants.18 Italian and Jewish critics of restriction ­were even less enthusiastic about the “liberal” legislative alternative to Dillingham’s bill that the National Committee for Constructive Immigration Legislation (NCCIL) drafted but felt that they had no choice but to collaborate. Mostly composed of industrialists, growers, and social reformers, NCCIL was an ad hoc organ­ization that acknowledged the continuing need for immigration but endorsed the push for further restriction to select which immigrants should enter. The committee warned that without the changes to the quotas it recommended, “we s­ hall be subject to a pos­si­ble flood of immigration from central, southern, and northeastern Eu­rope.”19 Placing an emphasis on naturalization as an indicator of an immigrant’s commitment and loyalty to the United States, NCCIL suggested allocating the quotas based on the number of naturalized citizens of each national group. B ­ ecause of its emphasis on assimilation, the proposal received the endorsement of prominent immigration advocates Cardinal James Gibbons, Representative Adolph Sabath, and social activist Lillian Wald,20 as well as po­liti­cal circles, religious groups, and Progressive organ­izations whose members believed that “no more immigrants of each ­people or mother-­tongue group may be admitted than can be w ­ holesomely Americanized and steadily employed.”21 Although the proposal penalized Italians more since they naturalized in low numbers and favored eastern Eu­ro­pean Jews ­because of their high naturalization rates, neither group expressed much enthusiasm for it ­because it felt too selective.

The Doors of Amer­i­ca Are Worse Than Shut When They Are Half-­Way Open 49

The debate over the Dillingham bill revealed just how tenuous the antirestrictionist co­ali­tion had become by the beginning of 1920. Many observers saw the near passage of the bill as an indication that the question had become not ­whether national origins quotas would happen, but when. For the first time since the beginning of the debate over Eu­ro­pean restriction, the National Association of Manufacturers withdrew its objection to further immigration restriction b­ ecause small businesses feared that open immigration gave an unfair advantage to big business and blamed immigrant strikers for the postwar economic and social unrest. For its part, ­because World War I had brought immigration from Eu­rope to a halt, big business now relied more on immigrants from Mexico and African Americans who had left the South as part of the ­Great Migration.22 Moreover, as Louis Marshall put it, the “chauvinistic nationalism [and] the hatred of every­thing foreign” made it difficult for their allies in Congress to “withstand the pressure . . . ​to bring about a cessation of immigration.”23 It was no coincidence that the near passage of the Dillingham bill in early 1920 coincided with the Palmer raids and the beginning of the deportation delirium. Although some restrictionist senators judged it too lenient, the Senate easily passed the Dillingham bill. In the joint meeting, the House lowered the quota percentage to three and introduced exemptions from the quota system for immediate relatives and skilled mi­grants. The compromise mea­sure easily passed both h­ ouses of Congress, but Wilson administered a pocket veto as his last official act as president. Antirestrictionists’ certainty that the executive branch represented the last barrier to restriction crumbled, however, when Warren G. Harding, whom the IRL hailed as the first restrictionist president, entered the White House.24 Harding’s isolationist “Amer­i­ca first” platform marked the end of the executive branch’s obstruction to immigration restriction and opened the door to a new round of negotiations over new immigration legislation in Congress. With the Republican Party in control of the legislative and executive branches, the House and Senate immigration committees resurrected Dillingham’s quota system proposal.25 Strategically leaving l­ittle time for the opposition to or­ga­ nize, the Senate committee called for hearings on the quota system from January 3 to January 26, 1921. Italian and Jewish critics of immigration restriction scrambled to prepare their remarks and decide who would represent their interests in front of the committee. Italian leaders sent Louis J. Scaramelli, president of the Italian Chamber of Commerce in New York City, to pre­sent a unified front and emphasize the economic benefits of Italian migration. Jewish

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leaders, on the other hand, sent five spokespersons, each of whom spoke on behalf of a dif­fer­ent agency working on immigration ­matters. Among them ­were Louis Marshall of the AJC, Judge Leon Sanders of the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society, and Morris Rothenberg of the American Jewish Congress. More than anything, the numerical difference in repre­sen­ta­tion revealed the broad range of approaches to immigration within the Jewish community. Yet restrictionists saw it as confirmation of their long-­held suspicions that the fight against restriction was a “Jewish cause” financed by “Hebrew money” as part of an international Jewish conspiracy.26 Despite the imbalance in numbers, Italian and Jewish advocates’ testimonies reflected a coherent set of arguments that would persist, almost unchanged, ­until the mid-1960s. First and foremost, the witnesses, statistics in hand, argued that many of the recently arrived immigrants had planned to leave Eu­ rope to re­unite with their ­family members well before the war. Their emphasis on ­family reunion was meant to allay concerns about an impending immigration crisis, appease the AFL’s concerns about l­abor competition, and appeal to a cornerstone of American identity. “The pre­sent immigration,” Judge Sanders testified, was “a rehabilitation of broken-up homes, and, hence, the greatest case of constructive relief work.”27 Echoing Sanders, Louis Marshall insisted it was time for Congress to focus “on questions of h­ uman rights and on questions of public policy.”28 Second, Italian and Jewish witnesses appealed to the country’s immigrant past to challenge the divide between old and new immigrants from Eu­rope. Observing that, during the last presidential election, both Wilson and Hughes had at least one immigrant parent, Marshall noted that the ­people who in 1921 cried that a flood of destructive aliens was on the verge of invading the United States descended from immigrants themselves. For Scaramelli, restrictionists ignored that the recent Eu­ro­pean immigrants had contributed to the economic growth of the United States just as much as their pre­de­ces­sors. When all other arguments failed, the witnesses insisted that the existing policy sufficed to bar unwanted immigrants and that what the country needed, in Scaramelli’s words, was “proper regulation, se­lection, and distribution of the immigrants.”29 Both Marshall and Scaramelli noted that if the country built more inspection facilities and hired more inspectors and physicians, the likelihood of admitting undesirable immigrants would diminish drastically.30 The more Marshall and Scaramelli insisted that old and new Eu­ro­pean immigrants equally contributed to the success of the United States, the more the members of the Senate committee bristled. Senator LeBaron B. Colt (R-­RI), the new chairperson of the Senate Immigration Committee, asked Marshall

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how he could ignore the obvious differences between the two groups, especially when it came to their ability to assimilate. Both Marshall and Scaramelli countered that if the new immigrants did not assimilate as quickly, it was ­because their receiving country had failed them and pointed to how many of the new immigrants had died fighting for the United States during World War I. That they had done so despite the exploitation, discrimination, and vituperation they had endured at the hands of many Americans only attested to their willingness to assimilate, they insisted.31 As the hearings continued, the Italian government, ever doubtful about Italian American advocates’ ability to succeed, debated what path to pursue, too. As had happened before, its decision to intervene only intensified restrictionists’ resolve. ­After a lengthy exchange, Adolfo Vinci, royal counselor of emigration at the Italian Embassy in Washington, D.C., and Giuseppe De Michelis, Italian Commissioner of Emigration in Rome, de­cided to avoid protesting the mea­sure publicly to preclude “the suspicion that our opposition derives from internal po­liti­cal necessities and from the desire to rid ourselves of po­liti­cally and socially dangerous ele­ments.” Showing both his bigotry and lack of insight, Vinci believed that “a very violent opposition w ­ ill in any case occur, especially from the Jews who are supported by power­ful Israelite financiers in the United States” b­ ecause Johnson cared less about restricting Italians and was more interested in defending the country “from an invasion of immigrants (especially of Israelites from Eastern Eu­rope) considered dangerous propagandists of extremist ideas.”32 Vinci proposed to approach Johnson privately instead to plead for a grace period to allow Italy and other sending countries to adjust to the quota system if his bill became law. In exchange, the Italian government would not object to any provision requiring the registration of all foreigners in the United States, even though Italian Americans vehemently opposed such proposal. Before contacting Johnson, Vinci also approached several industrialists and steamship o­ wners to gauge the support for guest-­worker programs between the United States and Italy in place of the quota system.33 When several businessmen did endorse his plan, Vinci proposed it to Senator LeBaron Colt, Representative Johnson, and Commissioner of Immigration Anthony Caminetti, but his efforts backfired. As a good-­faith gesture, Vinci informed the U.S. State Department that the Italian government stood ready to suspend the issuance of passports for the United States “­until informed as to the classes of immigrants desired into this country.”34 While Senator Colt seriously considered Vinci’s proposal, Representative Johnson inveighed against Italian officials’ meddling during his testimony at the Senate hearings.35 When asked about Vinci’s offer to stop issuing passports, he replied that while

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the Italian government had indeed issued semiofficial statements to that effect, an Italian official, presumably Vinci, had in the meantime contacted legislators to delay the beginning date of the new system so that Italy could send to the United States Italians who already had a passport.36 Contrary to Vinci’s assumption, Johnson also made it clear that, for him, Italians w ­ ere “inimical to the best interests of the United States” b­ ecause they had low standards of living, possessed racial characteristics that made them unassimilable, and w ­ ere susceptible to dangerous socialistic ideas.37 Caminetti agreed. While he applauded many of the sending countries’ efforts to collaborate with U.S. immigration authorities, Caminetti testified that the collaboration was not enough to stem the tide of immigration to the United States. When Colt asked him to corroborate his statements, Caminetti responded that, during his recent trip to Eu­rope, official and unofficial sources had informed him of the lucrative traffic of forged passports with fake visas to the United States, of the large number of agencies proclaiming to assist immigrants to leave for the United States for a fee, and of the many nonprofit Jewish agencies that ­were preparing to assist eastern Eu­ro­pean Jews to ­settle in the United States.38 For Caminetti and Johnson, southern and eastern Eu­ro­pe­ans ­were only waiting for naval traffic to the United States to resume at full speed. Despite their efforts, antirestrictionists failed to dissuade Congress from turning to quantitative restriction. On March 19, 1921, Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act with barely any opposition. The AJC tried to arrange for a meeting with Harding to urge him to veto the bill, but the president refused “to afford an oral hearing to ­those opposing legislation,” and agreed only to read a memorandum detailing their objections to the act. The memorandum, written mostly by Marshall and signed by representatives of several immigrant organ­izations, reiterated many of the arguments against immigration restriction presented during the hearings, namely the immigrants’ contribution to the economy, the need to conduct a careful study before enacting immigration legislation out of fear, the effectiveness of the existing laws, and the un-­American nature of the bill.39 It also included arguments that had solidified since the outbreak of World War I, such as an emphasis on immigrants’ valor in war, f­ amily separation, and immigrants’ successful Americanization.40 The memorandum also revealed how restrictionists’ racial justifications for their immigration proposals affected critics of immigration restriction of Eu­ ro­pean descent. Like Marshall, many immigration reform advocates resented that the Emergency Quota Act sanctioned racial prejudice and affirmed unequivocally that southern and eastern Eu­ro­pe­ans “are men and ­women of inferior race, that they are not assimilable, that they are undesirable, that even

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though they are citizens and have performed the duties of citizenship they are not wanted.”41 Revealing the limits of his advocacy and his bias, Marshall railed against the exemption of immigrants from the Western Hemi­sphere from the quota system: “Since when have Mexicans become more desirable than Italians and Poles? Are our immigration laws to become the subject of favoritism? One would suppose from the text of this bill that such is the intention. If it is, then the bill is abhorrent to one’s sense of right and justice—­it becomes sectional, and not national, in its scope.”42 Marshall’s statements exposed the lack of solidarity among immigrant groups targeted for restriction, their inability to think beyond ethnic lines, and the internalization of the color line demarking U.S. society. Harding ignored the AJC memorandum and, only seventy-­five days ­after Wilson had vetoed a similar mea­sure, signed the 1921 Emergency Quota Act into law, representing the culmination of the turmoil and hysteria that followed World War I. The act l­ imited the annual number of immigrants admissible from the Eastern Hemi­sphere to 3 ­percent of the number of persons from each country living in the United States according to the 1910 census. Of the 357,802 total, the law allocated slightly over half of the quotas to countries in Northern and Western Eu­rope and the remainder to countries in Southern and Eastern Eu­rope. The act also ­limited the monthly quota to 20  ­percent of the annual quota. Yet, like much of the restrictionist immigration legislation of the time, it contained several provisions that favored immigration even when that was not the legislators’ intent. The 1921 act, as antirestrictionists had hoped, granted preference status to ­family members of naturalized citizens, residents who had applied for citizenship, and immigrants who had served in World War I. Unlike the bill Wilson had vetoed, the 1921 version also exempted immigrants escaping religious persecution, a small victory for American Jews.43 Although legislators insisted that the 1921 Emergency Quota Act was a temporary mea­sure to give the country a breathing spell and allow Congress time to conceive a “scientific” method to control immigration, they used it to set the stage for the passage of permanent quantitative immigration restriction. The pre­ce­dent of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act offered a clear pathway to follow when seeking to convert a temporary mea­sure into permanent legislation. Renewed twice before 1924 amid repeated threats to halt all immigration, the act consolidated bipartisan support for immigration restriction, especially as evidence suggested that it was working to curb immigration. Immigration to the United States fell from 652,364 in 1921 to 216,385 in 1922.44 The success of the act also attracted supporters from unsuspected quarters. Gino Speranza, once an impassioned supporter of Italian immigration who had founded the

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Society for the Protection of Italian Immigrants and served as ­legal counsel for the Italian government, became a passionate advocate for Eu­ro­pean restriction. “Their mass aggressiveness in demanding that Amer­i­ca ­shall accept foreign ideals,” wrote Speranza in an article suggestively titled “The Immigrant Peril,” threatened to create “a mongrelized civilization,” a racial script that evoked longstanding fears about interracial relations.45 By 1928, the same year in which the Demo­cratic Party ran Catholic Al Smith for president, both parties endorsed the quota system.

Mobilization ­under the 1921 Emergency Quota Act As immigrants scrambled to get to the United States before the 1921 act went into effect, Italian and Jewish immigration activists realized how far reaching the impact of quantitative restriction on Eu­ro­pean migration would be. They also understood how difficult it would be to roll back the tide now that quantitative restriction was the new status quo. ­Eager to pass a more restrictive immigration law, Congress had overlooked that the U.S. government lacked the infrastructure and the personnel to implement it. During the first twenty-­seven days of operation of the act, more than 10,000 immigrants arrived above the quotas. By the end of 1921, authorities had deported 2,680 immigrants solely for being in excess of quota.46 In response to antirestrictionists’ pleas to repeal the act or delay its implementation, legislators insisted that the initial prob­ lems ­were mere imperfections “exploited by the opponents of restriction, in the attempt to discredit the w ­ hole law.”47 Confronted with such re­sis­tance, Italian and Jewish activists reassessed their options and pursued dif­fer­ent strategies as they sought to provide immediate relief to mi­grants from their groups caught in between laws. Italian Americans once again turned to the Italian government despite their disappointment that its representatives had been unable to help stop the passage of the 1921 quota law or secure a bigger quota for Italy. Barely a week a­ fter the act had gone into effect, Italian American advocates and Italian government authorities mobilized to admit a group of Italian immigrants who had arrived above the quota. During a hearing on the case held by the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, Commissioner General of Immigration W. W. Husband blamed the incident on the Italian steamship companies’ callousness and the Italian government’s slowness in implementing the new system. The committee not only refused to act, but one of the committee members, Representative John Raker (D-­CA), even proposed to enact stricter regulations specifically targeting Italian immigrants.48 It was not ­until Vinci pri-

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vately approached the U.S. Department of ­Labor that immigration authorities admitted the surplus immigrants.49 Oblivious, De Michelis then asked Vinci to investigate ­whether the Senate and House immigration commissions would consider basing the 3 ­percent quotas “not on the Foreign Born (which would put us at 1,343,125) but on the Foreign white stock by country of origin (which would put us at 2,098,360).”50 Aside from the racist nature of his proposal, De Michelis failed to grasp Americans’ commitment to restrict Italians and the scant leverage Italy had in the negotiations. Taking a page from Jewish leaders’ mobilization, Vinci told him that the only option the Italian government had left was to negotiate privately with the U.S. Secretary of State, the U.S. Department of ­Labor, and a few “influential friends.”51 By October 1921, he advised De Michelis to prepare “the masses” for the worst so that they would appreciate any victory, however small, that the Italian government would achieve.52 Vinci’s relationship with the Italian American community further deteriorated a month l­ ater when the New York Italian Chamber of Commerce refused to collaborate in the creation of an organ­ization to assist Italian immigrants to relocate to agricultural areas in the United States b­ ecause its members found the proposal insulting and resented that they had been asked to fund the proj­ect.53 Although by the early 1920s, many Italian immigrants in the United States had settled permanently, naturalized more quickly, and entered politics in growing numbers, their leaders continued to rely on the Italian government in part b­ ecause they felt that Americans regarded them as second-­class citizens but also ­because they lived transnational lives that kept their ties with Italy alive. It also helped that, despite the contempt many in the Italian government had for ­these mi­grants, Italian authorities continued to cultivate such connections. Meanwhile, the Jewish community too debated how to respond to the crisis that followed the 1921 act. While the American Jewish Committee coordinated an interethnic response to discussions about renewing the Emergency Quota Act, many of the other organ­izations involved in immigration m ­ atters mobilized to assist incoming Jewish immigrants. In both instances, t­ hese leaders felt responsible t­ oward the Jewish diaspora and believed that the United States remained their best option even if they had to walk a fine line when they intervened to assist Jewish immigrants trying to come to the United States. Amid proposals to extend the act or lower its baseline to 2 or even 1 ­percent, the AJC, frustrated by past “uninformed and ill-­advised del­e­ga­tions” but committed to avoid any accusations of the “Jewish” immigration prob­lem, spearheaded the creation of a committee with prominent and knowledgeable immigration reform advocates from several immigrant communities to protest

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the extension of the act. Marshall chaired the del­e­ga­tion and appeared before the House Committee on Immigration on January 26, 1922, to voice “the view of ­those who believe restriction of immigration is unsound, inhumane, and opposed to American traditions.” When Congress extended the 1921 act without the addition of new restrictions, the AJC took credit for the small victory and hoped that the recent dip in admissions would end any further discussion of extending the quota system.54 Turning to the more pressing issue of how to help fellow Jewish mi­grants, Jewish leaders, having learned from their past experience, focused almost exclusively on advocating for the admission of w ­ omen and c­ hildren. They took advantage of a loophole in the 1917 and 1921 immigration acts, neither of which elucidated when ­family members could re­unite with their relatives already in the United States.55 In November 1923, Rev. Abram Simon of Washington, D.C., the Chair of the Civil Rights Committee of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, met with Commissioner General of Immigration Husband to assist 1,597 Rus­sian Jews who had arrived above the quota that month. Husband suggested not taking any action b­ ecause he believed that the U.S. Department of L ­ abor would not expel them since “their deportation would impose upon them hardship of greater severity than it would care to inflict” ­because of ­family separation.56 Also in 1923, the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) and the AJC collaborated to assist one thousand Rus­sian immigrants ordered for deportation ­because they ­were in excess of the Rus­sian quota. Marshall wrote to President Coo­lidge to urge him to suspend their deportation. The president conceded the stay but ordered authorities to review ­every single case and not to deport only ­those mi­grants for whom deportation would endanger their lives or cause a hardship ­because of ­family separation. Once Marshall had notified the president and the Secretary of L ­ abor that the United States District Court of Newport had mistakenly charged a group of immigrants against the 1923 Rus­sian quota, immigration authorities admitted the entire group.57 While successful, the resolution of ­these crises only demonstrated the role that po­liti­cal connections played, especially in the absence of the development of a consistent policy to address the fallout from the 1921 act. Several Jewish organ­izations also went to court to appeal immigration authorities’ deportation decisions, but they too discovered that the economic and emotional strain of the lengthy proceedings ­limited the effectiveness of such a strategy. Focusing on issues of derivative citizenship, Goldman v. Tod and Patton v. Tod reflected the rewards and shortcomings of challenging immigration restriction in the courtroom. In 1921, when Samuel Goldman, a young Polish

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boy, arrived in the United States with his m ­ other, ­brothers, and ­sisters to join his ­father in Syracuse, New York, the medical authorities in Ellis Island ordered to deport him ­because they found him “a feebleminded undesirable alien.” The local Jewish community secured a ­lawyer who demonstrated that Samuel was simply malnourished but failed to reverse the deportation order. Desperate, the community turned to Louis Marshall for assistance in the appeal. Marshall changed ­legal strategy and argued that Samuel was admissible as the son of an American citizen. Samuel Goldman’s f­ ather had even included the boy’s name on his certificate of naturalization.58 As the case dragged on, Marshall asked Representative Walter V. Magee (R-­NY) to intercede with the U.S. Department of ­Labor, which eventually issued a special order on behalf of Samuel Goldman.59 Once again, Marshall’s po­liti­cal connections ­were more effective than resorting to traditional ­legal strategies. The unpredictability of the court system, especially as Congress continued to pass new immigration provisions, became even more apparent in Patton v. Tod. Pola Patton arrived in the United States from Lithuania on July 6, 1914, at the age of nine. Two weeks a­ fter her arrival, when a board of special inquiry certified that, “the girl was mentally deficient and must be excluded,” Marshall agreed to represent her. A ­ fter a lengthy appeals pro­cess, the judge ruled in 1924 that Pola be returned to Lithuania b­ ecause of feeblemindedness.60 As in the Goldman case, Patton’s ­father was a naturalized citizen who had listed his ­children’s names on his naturalization documents. Marshall asserted that a parent’s citizenship transferred to the child, an argument many similar cases had used as the basis for a stay of deportation. Although the law itself was vague on the subject, the judge ruled that only “a foreign-­born minor child dwelling in the United States at the time of naturalization of the parent automatically becomes an American citizen.”61 As such, the judge concluded that the ten-­ year permanence in the United States was illegal and disqualified her from the benefits of her ­father’s citizenship. The decision revealed the confusion as to which officials within the government had the authority to decide over entry, deportation, and appeals, as other judges had agreed that the U.S. Department of ­Labor could admit ­children of naturalized citizens. While middle-­class Italian and Jewish immigration reform advocates focused on private negotiations, testimonies in Congress, and ­legal ­battles to challenge restriction, o­ thers opted to enter the United States illegally to circumvent restriction. Undocumented immigration from Italy and eastern Eu­rope increased as the restrictive mea­sures intensified. By June 30, 1923, desertions reported for all ports in the United States reached a total of 23,194, of which 14,734 w ­ ere at the port of New York alone.62 “Undoubtedly,” the

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Commissioner General of Immigration wrote in 1923, “the literacy test ­requirement . . . [and] the so-­called quota law have greatly increased the number of such attempts to enter the country illegally,” even among admissible immigrants.63 As historian Libby Garland has demonstrated, thousands of eastern Eu­ro­pean Jews entered the country illegally b­ ecause the number of immigrants seeking to enter the U.S. far exceeded the quotas allotted for countries in the Eastern Hemi­sphere.64 For the same reason, Italians began slipping into the country through Canada and Mexico or pretended to be seamen and deserted when they arrived at U.S. ports.65 Starting in 1923, Italian Commissioner of Emigration De Michelis regularly received reports from Italian immigration authorities along the French border about Italians sneaking out of Italy and then heading to the United States to enter the country illegally before Congress approved additional restrictive laws.66 By 1927, the Commissariato had investigated a traffic of undocumented Italian mi­grants to the United States from Tunis, Tunisia, through Panama; a widespread commerce of false petitions for ­family reunifications; passport forgers in Baltimore, Naples, and Palermo; and the bribery of passport authorities in Calabria and Sicily to help mi­grants, especially ­women whose departure Italian authorities obstructed for patriarchal reasons, leave for the United States.67 The rise in the rates of illegality among immigrants from eastern and southern Eu­rope only convinced Italian and Jewish advocates that the most effective way to end ­these prob­lems rested in the legislative pro­cess. In fact, their responses to the Emergency Quota Act marked a new phase in the history of the opposition to immigration restriction. ­These years provide a power­ful example of how antirestrictionists often ­shaped U.S. immigration laws in ways that helped them in the short term but harmed them and f­uture immigrant groups in the long term. Unlike l­ater in the twentieth c­ entury, ­these ­earlier restricted groups could more easily take advantage of loopholes in the new restrictive policies ­because the immigration bureaucracy was still adjusting to the new system. Italian and Jewish immigration reform advocates successfully pushed for personal bills, lobbied for ad hoc legislation targeting specific shortcomings in the policy, and interceded with immigration authorities to plead for leniency. However, the more they exposed prob­lems in the law, the more legislators and immigration authorities intervened to fix them, thus making the system more effective and with fewer and fewer options to circumvent it. Similarly, their focus on ­family reunion became their most power­ful tactic to undermine restriction from within, but this strategy overwhelmingly benefitted groups who had strong repre­sen­ta­tion in Congress and the resources to intervene. They often compromised to bring a small change to the status quo

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that benefitted their groups but penalized o­ thers. By operating within the ­immigration system created by the U.S. Congress, they also helped normalize restriction, which in turn gradually narrowed the par­ameters of the debate over immigration and the options for imagining ­future reform. As a result, in the twenty-­first c­ entury, even staying ­legal has become a challenge. This period was also formative for restrictionists, who, especially once a stable co­ali­tion emerged in Congress, honed tactics that would be the foundation of their strategy for de­cades to come. Many restrictionist legislators regularly called for hearings with short notice or on a quick turnaround. They also began to build alliances with key officials in the federal government in charge of overseeing aspects of U.S. immigration policy. ­These strategies si­ mul­ta­neously quashed activists and bypassed any official who might be lenient in enforcing the new restrictions. Lastly, they became savvy in using media exposure to drum up support for their proposals outside the halls of Congress.

The Last Stand against Permanent Quotas Thus, while the Jewish and Italian communities wrestled with the impact of the 1921 act, Representative Johnson feverishly worked to convince his colleagues that the country needed a permanent quota system. “The United States is our land,” Johnson warned without realizing the irony of his statement, “if it was not the land of our ­fathers, at least it may be, and it should be, the land of our c­ hildren. We intend to maintain it so. The day of unalloyed welcome to all ­peoples, the day of indiscriminate ac­cep­tance of all races, has definitely ended.”68 As president of the Eugenics Research Association, Johnson hired Harry H. Laughlin from the Eugenics Rec­ords Office in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, to help the House Immigration Committee devise a “scientific” method to restrict immigration from southern and eastern Eu­rope. A biological determinist and an ardent restrictionist, Laughlin had long been involved in drafting and passing sterilization legislation at the state and national levels targeting ­those deemed “unfit,” especially poor, white southern Eu­ro­ pean immigrants.69 When Johnson called on him, Laughlin eagerly accepted. ­After a fact-­finding tour of Eu­rope, Laughlin provided Johnson with data on the “degeneracy” and “social inadequacy” (code for crime, insanity, and feeblemindedness) of southern and eastern Eu­ro­pe­ans to confirm their alleged racial inferiority and unassimilability.70 In late 1923, armed with Laughlin’s research, the power of his chairmanship of the House Immigration Committee, and the full support of the Harding Administration, ­labor, and several patriotic organ­izations, Johnson proposed a

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bill to make the quota system permanent. In addition to broadening the exclusion of Asian immigrants, his new bill lowered the annual Eu­ro­pean quota from 3 ­percent to 2 ­percent and used the 1890 rather than 1920 census to calculate the yearly quotas. ­These apparently benign tweaks virtually guaranteed smaller annual quotas for southern and eastern Eu­ro­pean countries. Hoping to stifle the opposition, Johnson announced that the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization would hold its hearings on the bill from December 26 to December 31, 1923. Johnson’s machinations escalated the attacks from the antirestrictionist camp but also left them vulnerable to excoriating counterattacks given the climate of anti-­immigrant hysteria. ­After successfully asking for an extension of the hearings with the support of Representatives Emanuel Celler and Samuel Dickstein of New York, Italian and Jewish activists flocked to testify in Congress, but, amid accusations that their testimonies w ­ ere simply subterfuges to delay a vote on the bill, they sought to provide constructive criticism and show some willingness to negotiate.71 Although largely absent during the opposition to the quota system in 1921, Italian American leaders ­were much more active in 1924. Salvatore Cotillo again spoke passionately about the Italian American community’s concerns regarding restriction. Testifying on behalf of the Order Sons of Italy of the State of New York, he criticized restrictionists’ use of World War I as a justification for further restriction. He argued that restrictionists ignored immigrants’ ser­vice and sacrifices during World War I and noted that cutting immigration from Italy further would reduce the remittances Italy needed to purchase U.S. products to recover from the war. Moreover, he mentioned that Italian authorities, in compliance with the 1917 immigration act, now only allowed the best immigrants to leave for the United States. He conceded that Americans had ­every right to regulate immigration but blamed the press for fanning the flames of racial fear, religious hatred, and nativism.72 In that spirit, Cotillo, much like his Jewish counter­parts, offered moderate counterproposals as a compromise in an effort to soften the impact of Johnson’s bill w ­ ere it to become law. He pleaded for the adoption of the 1920 or 1910 census rather than the 1890 census and asked for simplifications of the ­family reunion provisions to avoid dividing families for years with complicated and lengthy application requirements.73 Across the country, many OSIA leaders orchestrated letter-­writing campaigns to Congress to protest against the discriminatory quota system and build po­liti­cal capital in Congress. They asked members of local chapters to send tele­grams to legislators from districts with a heavy Italian American presence to encourage them to propose amendments to the bill to ensure equal

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treatment for all countries if they planned on voting for it.74 The central leadership wrote to Representative Johnson directly to remind him that his bill unfairly marked Italy for special humiliation despite its sacrifices to the Allied cause during World War I and that he was ignoring that the Italian government had been willingly complying with U.S. immigration requirements. They also argued that the bill would undermine the economic prosperity of the United States and confirm illogical fears of racial deterioration. “The near exclusion of a once welcome class of immigrants,” the letter concluded, would “precipitate and excite a racial feeling among the vari­ous ele­ments of our citizens, which ­will ultimately form itself into racial blocs.”75 While OSIA’s pleas gained l­ ittle traction with Representative Johnson, they received the full support of the Fascist government in Italy. On February 26, 1924, Gelasio Caetani, the Italian ambassador to the United States, wrote OSIA president Giovanni Di Silvestro to thank him for the order’s work in defending Italy’s dignity in its campaign against the Johnson bill. Although Di Silvestro was pro-­Mussolini from the outset, he did not always agree with the Duce’s immigration policy decisions, but he continued to collaborate with the Italian government to facilitate ­family reunions and bring more Italians to the United States. In line with Mussolini’s mission of creating a Greater Italy, Caetani reiterated that Italian immigrants made excellent American citizens precisely ­because of their Italian origin but urged them to keep alive their spiritual ties to Italy while being loyal to their newly a­ dopted country.76 As Mark Choate demonstrates, Mussolini’s government carefully balanced its encouragement to Italians in the United States to naturalize with its efforts to build a community of Italians abroad who had the interest of their motherland at heart.77 In the meantime, precipitated by concerns about many prominent Jewish antirestrictionists’ waning influence within the Republican Party, American Jews divided along generational, class, and ideological lines about how to approach their mobilization against the Johnson bill. Like the divide ­earlier in the ­century between ACL and NLIL, the AJC, with its more established, affluent, and po­liti­cally savvy members of German origin, insisted that discretion and back-­door negotiations represented the only solution, while the American Jewish Congress, whose members comprised recent immigrants from eastern Eu­rope, refused to shy away from public confrontation. As the Johnson-­Reed bill gained traction, the American Jewish Congress mobilized southern and eastern Eu­ro­pean grassroots groups to or­ga­nize mass protests in several cities on the East Coast. As late as January 1924, Rabbi Stephen Wise, president of the American Jewish Congress, wrote Samuel Dickstein (D-­NY),

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a member of the House Immigration Committee and one of the few politicians left in Congress who openly criticized restriction, to tell him that it was still pos­si­ble to defeat the Johnson bill by putting pressure on “warm and earnest friends in the Senate” and by working “in conjunction with the non-­ Jewish ele­ments of our population which come from within the racial groups against whom this legislation is aimed by the champions of the imaginary Nordic race.”78 A month ­later, still believing that they could “defeat this iniquitous and un-­American legislation,” the American Jewish Congress invited Dickstein to attend a mass meeting sponsored by “a number of the races which would come ­under the proscription of the proposed Johnson immigration legislation.”79 Meanwhile, the AJC asked one of its most prominent members, renowned immigrant rights ­lawyer Max J. Kohler, to publish a series of articles in the New York Times to counterbalance restrictionists’ incessant attacks on the new immigrants in the media. Echoing Cotillo and Marshall, Kohler focused on three specific issues: the cruelty of the national-­origins quota system, the bill’s violation of mi­grants’ personal liberties, and the violations of international treaties stipulating freedom of movement. Unlike Cotillo, however, Kohler consciously positioned himself to speak on behalf of all Eu­ro­pean immigrants to avert any accusations of immigration being a Jewish cause.80 First and foremost, Kohler criticized the harshly narrow f­ amily reunion provisions and attacked the use of the 1890 census to calculate the quotas of each country as a blatant effort to discriminate against eastern and southern Eu­ro­pean immigrants and maintain the racial and religious profile of the United States of the 1880s.81 Kohler also argued the Johnson bill v­ iolated mi­grants’ personal liberties ­because it provided for no statute of limitation for the deportation of residents who had entered the country illegally, required residents who wanted to send for their families to provide a copy of their income tax return, and criminalized immigrants by proposing to fingerprint all immigrants upon their arrival.82 Shifting to foreign policy ramifications, Kohler criticized the solidification of remote control mea­sures, but, echoing Marshall and Cotillo, he only selectively criticized restrictions on immigration from outside Eu­rope. He argued that the introduction of “un-­reviewable czars” granting visas and American medical inspectors in the sending countries concentrated too much power in the hands of a few, often prejudiced, immigration officials and ­violated Eu­ro­ pean countries’ national sovereignty.83 Similarly, the creation of an “Asiatic Barred Zone” endangered the United States’ relationship with China and Japan as well as Britain, France, and Turkey b­ ecause of their colonies in Asia.84 Kohler,

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like Marshall, complained that Johnson’s bill allowed immigrants from Mexico, Canada, Cuba, or Central and South Amer­ic­ a and their wives and ­children to “enter as they [pleased], regardless of any quota, and despite greater opportunity to smuggle in excess quota immigrants over long borders.”85 Such statements, like ­those from Marshall and Cotillo, ignored the exploitation that many immigrants from the Western Hemi­sphere faced, but they also demonstrated a concern among immigrants from outside the Amer­i­cas and their descendants that the exemption from the quota system of immigrants from the Western Hemi­sphere would make the passage of the system more likely ­because, as it had happened during World War I, immigrants from the Amer­ i­cas could easily replace ­those from Asia and Eu­rope. As the responses to his articles in the New York Times demonstrated, Kohler’s five articles did ­little to dispel ­people’s misconceptions about southern and eastern Eu­ro­pe­ans or build support for liberal immigration policy. New York University sociologist and prominent IRL member Henry Pratt Fairchild dismissed the contributions of the new immigrants and questioned their rates of assimilation and naturalization.86 New York Times reader Walter W. Hoffman wrote that Kohler’s articles ­were misleading b­ ecause the author forgot “that it is the undeniable right of any nation to select its immigration, to discriminate between ­those judged desirable and t­ hose judged undesirable.”87 In his defense of the right of the United States to exclude, restrict, and select, Hoffman pointed out that “the difference in racial type renders them undesirable entirely irrespective of the question of their inferiority.”88 In April 1924, Senator David Reed (R-­PA), the sponsor of the Johnson bill in the Senate, also wrote a response. For years, Reed wrote, Americans had indulged in the illusion they could absorb all immigrants into its melting pot, but ­those from southern and eastern Eu­rope had proven that, if the United States wanted to survive, it could no longer be the refuge of the oppressed ­because they threatened the survival of “the American racial type.” He believed that although Congress had passed some laws in the previous forty years to exclude blatant unfitness, it had done nothing to stop immigrants who could neither assimilate nor understand the value of American institutions. For him, “the policy of exclusion” simply recognized southern and eastern Eu­ro­pe­ans’ “fundamental dissimilarity” from Americans. Subverting immigration reform advocates’ foreign policy arguments, Reed reminded readers that, “many other nations have a­ dopted similar policies,” especially with Asian immigrants.89 Reed’s reference to Asian exclusion highlighted the correlation between the exclusion of Asians and the restriction of southern and eastern Eu­ro­pe­ans that united West and East coast advocates of restriction.

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Many Italian and Jewish activists had become familiar with restrictionists’ nativist rhe­toric, but they found troubling that many of their traditional allies ­were withdrawing their support and embracing quantitative restriction. Once among the most vocal supporters of open immigration from Eu­rope, the National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Congress now endorsed Johnson’s bill as a necessary mea­sure to guarantee national integration but recommended the adoption of a flexible quota system to accommodate the country’s fluctuating ­labor needs.90 Similarly, many social progressives embraced restriction ­because they believed it could help integrate and Americanize the immigrant population in the United States more effectively and quickly. More importantly, most German Americans, stunned from the attacks they had received during World War I, remained ­silent, while Scandinavians endorsed the calls for restriction of immigration from Southern and Eastern Eu­rope to demonstrate their Americanism. Irish Catholics joined the outcry against the new immigrants when Amer­i­ca, the leading Catholic weekly in the country, endorsed restriction ­because the new Catholics posed a threat to American Catholicism and the nation. Many African Americans, u­ ntil then ambivalent about immigration restriction, openly endorsed it out of fear that the new immigrants would compete against them during a time of economic downturn. Increasingly, advocates from the groups targeted by the Johnson-­ Reed bill found themselves alone. The only exception remained northern Baptists who condemned immigration restriction b­ ecause it turned away potential converts.91 In January 1924, when stories spread that “to prevent a strong agitation against it,” Johnson’s bill would “be rushed through the Houses of Congress with the utmost speed,” some antirestrictionists made a last-­ditch effort to stop Congress from considering it. In response to the rumors, a few prominent Italian Americans in Boston, who believed that existing legislation already managed immigration effectively, created the Boston Committee Against Unfair Restricted Immigration to oppose the “nefarious Johnson selective bill.” The committee leaders invited prominent Italian Americans around the country to hold meetings, create small del­e­ga­tions, and arrange for meetings in Washington, D.C., to discuss their opposition to the quota system with representatives, senators, both congressional immigration committees, and, if pos­si­ble, the president. “We hope to have in Washington the largest repre­sen­ta­tion of our race that ever congregated t­ here, and thus impress with our strength the National Legislators,” they wrote. The committee also called on editors of Italian American newspapers to write editorials in both Italian and En­glish about the bill to inform their communities about the danger the bill posed to Italian

The Doors of Amer­i­ca Are Worse Than Shut When They Are Half-­Way Open 65

migration and ask readers to put pressure on their representative and senator to reject any bill that discriminated against Italians.92 Few Italian Americans and editors responded to the Boston Committee’s call to action. The initiative received a particularly cold reception from Italian American leaders in New York City, who represented the largest Italian community in the nation. “The consensus of opinion in New York,” read the report detailing the committee’s trip, “was that our mission was doomed to failure, and that the so-­called Johnson bill was bound to be enacted into law in its pre­sent form.” Although the committee leaders insisted that an educational campaign in the newspapers, grassroots mobilization, and collaboration with other immigrant groups significantly raised the chances of defeating the bill, no delegates from New York City joined them on their lobbying trip to Washington, D.C. “­There seemed to exist a sense of depression and resignation”; the report continued, “they felt that nothing could stop the passage of that bill.”93 That sense of resignation was exacerbated b­ ecause, by 1924, many Italian American communities remained deeply divided over Mussolini in Italy and could not overcome their ideological differences to mount a concerted campaign to reject the bills in Congress. It also did not help that, in all of its meetings with members of Congress, President Coo­lidge, and officials from the U.S. Department of State, the small del­e­ga­tion from Boston saw its appeals about justice and fairness in immigration policy fall on deaf ears.94 The Boston Committee’s lack of success underscored the challenge to articulate an alternative to restriction and why many immigration advocates believed that they had no choice but to be pragmatic once they realized that Congress would soon vote to make the quota system permanent. In the Jewish community, the usually divided German Jews and eastern Eu­ro­pean Jews came together as the debate over the Johnson bill came to a close. Although “Jewish public opinion and the Jewish press w ­ ere a unit in opposing this mea­sure,”95 the AJC remained the undisputed leader of the opposition against further immigration restriction. As it had done since the anti-­immigrant hysteria of World War I made passage of the 1917 Immigration Act all but inevitable, the AJC collaborated with other groups to protest further restriction in public and negotiated in private to soften the impact of the bills. The AJC argued against “the injustice of the restrictions based on a census,” urged the repeal of the literacy test, and contended that “the basic immigration law of 1907 was sufficiently selective in nature to keep out all undesirable immigrants.”96 Always sensitive to the perception that immigration was an exclusively Jewish issue or that AJC intransigently opposed any restriction at all, the committee leaders insisted that it advocated on behalf of all immigrants

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facing restriction and targeted any type of “restrictive immigration based on any theory other than the exclusion of ­those mentally, morally and physically unfit and of t­hose opposed to or­ga­nized governments.”97 They also worked with other immigrant organ­izations to coordinate a letter-­writing campaign, communicate with members of Congress, and publicize the negative impact of the bill. At the same time, the AJC worked to secure amendments “to mitigate in some directions the rigor of the act.” Guided by the experience of the previous twenty years, they worked particularly hard to secure exemptions for mi­grants caught in between quotas acts or t­ hose who sought to re­unite with their families.98 Despite antirestrictionists’ considerable mobilization and the protests of a small group of Northeast legislators spearheaded by New York City representatives Emanuel Celler, Samuel Dickstein, and Fiorello La Guardia, Johnson’s bill swept the House with a crushing vote of 322 to 71 on April 12, 1924.99 When the bill reached the Senate, Senator David Reed (R-­PA)—­although just as committed to restriction as Johnson—­found the use of the 1890 census po­liti­cally risky. More than the quota system itself, several antirestrictionist activists had singled out the adoption of the 1890 census as the most discriminatory feature of the bill and ­were ready to take it to court. Even Secretary of State Charles Evan Hughes had suggested in a letter to the Senate Immigration Committee that the Senate needed to devise a quota system “that ­will not involve any discrimination of which just complaint can be made” from immigrant groups in the United States or their countries of origin.100 With the full support of Senator Henry Lodge, who was still around to witness the triumph of his decades-­ long ­battle to shape U.S. society through immigration legislation, Reed took up a proposal from John Trevor, a close associate of eugenicist Madison Grant and head of a co­ali­tion of restrictionist and patriotic socie­ties. Trevor suggested replacing Johnson’s proposal with an annual cap of 155,000 on the Eastern Hemi­sphere with visas allocated according to the number of inhabitants of each “national origin” pre­sent in the continental United States in 1920. As Mae Ngai explains, the quotas u­ nder Trevor’s computation system “­were nearly identical to t­ hose calculated at 2 ­percent of the foreign-­born population in 1890, yet could be declared nondiscriminatory b­ ecause they gave fair repre­sen­ta­tion to each of the nation’s ‘racial strains.’ ”101 In addition to incorporating Trevor’s proposal, Reed’s bill favored f­ amily reunion and immigrants with skills needed in the United States and exempted immigrants from in­de­pen­dent countries in the Western Hemi­sphere from the quota system.102 The emphasis on ­family reunion certainly pleased critics of restriction who had pushed for it for two de­cades, but the importance the bill placed on im-

The Doors of Amer­i­ca Are Worse Than Shut When They Are Half-­Way Open 67

migrants with skills represented a major setback. For many, it confirmed again that nationality as much as class would determine who could enter the United States. From then on, antirestrictionists fought to make sure that f­ amily reunion took pre­ce­dence over preferred skills when it came to quota allocations and advocated that the United States would always need unskilled immigrants as much as immigrants with skills. They also continued to oppose any legislation that singled out immigrants ­because of their religious beliefs, something that has received ­little attention in the more recent historiography.103 When the U.S. Congress almost unanimously passed the Johnson-­Reed bill, antirestrictionists once again turned to the executive to veto the legislation. On April 18, 1924, with only six dissenting votes in the Senate and seventy-­one in the House, the U.S. Congress passed the 1924 Immigration Act. President Coo­lidge, like Harding before him, refused to meet with an antirestrictionist del­e­ga­tion. Undeterred, the AJC, American Jewish Congress, In­de­pen­dent Order of B’nai B’rith, and OSIA came together and prepared a memorandum to the president outlining their objections to the bill. The language of the memorandum made clear that restrictionists had not only won the legislative ­battle but had also shifted the rhetorical par­ameters of the debate in their f­ avor as t­ hese organ­izations had internalized the racialized language they used. Still in disbelief that mi­grants from Eu­rope could be the target of restriction like mi­grants from other regions of the world, they argued that the bill marked the first “attempt to discriminate in re­spect to Eu­ro­pean immigration,” differentiate Eu­ro­pean immigrants in terms of countries of origin “but also of racial stocks and of religious beliefs,” and categorize southern and eastern Eu­ ro­pe­ans as “inferior types and not assimilable.”104 Although they excoriated Asian exclusion, especially exclusion of Japa­nese immigrants, the authors of the memorandum lashed out against the exemption from the quota system of Western Hemi­sphere immigrants. “Can it be seriously contended,” they wrote, “that Mexicans, Cubans, Haitians, Santo-Domingoans, or Central and South Americans, are more desirable or more assimilable than Italians, Poles, Rus­sians, Austrians, Belgians, Hungarians, Romanians, Greeks, Dutch, Czecho-­Slovakians or Yugo­slavians?”105 The timing, they insisted, could not have been worse. The legitimization of such “racial, national and religious hatreds and jealousies” came at a time, a­ fter World War I, “when the welfare of the ­human race as an entirety depends upon the creation of a brotherly spirit, the restoration of peace, harmony and unity, and the termination of past animosities.”106 While they clearly understood the power of evoking World War I to make their case against the Johnson-­Reed bill, Italian and Jewish activists’ insistence on devaluing mi­grants from the Western Hemi­sphere

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offered a clear example of how Eu­ro­pean mi­grants internalized the U.S. color line and sought to exploit it to their advantage.107 None of the arguments they presented persuaded President Coo­lidge, who, on May 26, 1924, signed the bill into law, thus bringing to an end the debate over the restriction of immigration from southern and eastern Eu­rope that had lasted for over forty years. Prior to the passage of the 1924 Immigration Act, U.S. immigration policy had excluded eight specific groups: contract laborers, most Asian immigrants, certain criminals, paupers, immigrants with certain diseases and disabilities, radicals, persons deemed immoral, and illiterates. ­After 1924, the U.S. immigration system broadened its excludable categories and ­limited immigration in even more profound ways. The act included Japa­ nese in the “Asiatic barred zone” since only “­free white persons,” “aliens of African nativity,” and “persons of African descent” ­were eligible for citizenship, thus imposing a near ban on immigration from Asia.108 Insisting that nonwhite Mexicans represented less of a threat b­ ecause, unlike Asians and southern and eastern Eu­ro­pe­ans, U.S. authorities could easily expel them, Southern and Western lawmakers successfully persuaded their colleagues to exempt most of the Western Hemi­sphere from the quota system, but they appeased their anti-­ immigrant colleagues by extending the requirements to pay head taxes and visa fees to ­people from the Western Hemi­sphere.109 The act also required immigrants to apply for visas and reentry permits at U.S. consulates abroad, thus reinforcing the mechanisms of remote control that the federal government had sought to build since the end of the nineteenth ­century. Within this new system, immigration authorities abroad, who often favored restriction, acquired considerable discretionary power.110 More importantly for Italian and Jewish immigrants, the 1924 Immigration Act ratified the national origins quota system as the law of the land. The allocation of visas favored ­family reunion and immigrants with skills, which added socioeconomic expectations to the nationality requirements embedded in the quota system. Immediate ­family members, intellectuals, artists, and professionals, in fact, continued to enter outside the quota system. The most immediate concern for both restrictionists and antirestrictionists remained the calculation of the yearly quotas. Unable to s­ ettle on a formula for the national origins system for immigration from the Eastern Hemi­sphere and most of the Ca­rib­ bean, Congress incorporated both Johnson and Reed’s proposals. From 1924 to 1929, the act allocated the 2 ­percent quotas based on the “Anglo-­Saxon census” of 1890. At the same time, the act commissioned a study to find a scientific method to allocate the quotas based on national origins from 1929 onward.111

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On the same day Coo­lidge signed the bill, the antirestrictionist front achieved one small victory that confirmed that their focus on f­ amily reunion was working. In Commissioner of Immigration v. Gottlieb, the Supreme Court ruled in ­favor of Rabbi Gottlieb, allowing his ­family to re­unite with him. The case involved New York City Rabbi Solomon Gottlieb’s wife and infant son, who, on December 1, 1921, had arrived from Palestine to join the rabbi. ­After a hearing before the board of special inquiry at Ellis Island, the immigration authorities ordered them deported for exceeding their country’s yearly quota. Louis Marshall personally advised the defense l­ awyer of the case, and the AJC along with other Jewish organ­izations widely publicized the case in the newspapers and called on Congress to add a provision in the pending bill to avoid such hardships in the ­future.112 The Supreme Court case did convince Congress to include ministers of religion and their families in the list of mi­grants who could enter the United States outside quota limitations.113 While a bittersweet victory in the face of a major defeat, this change would prove critical ­later in the c­ entury, especially as persecuted Eu­ro­pean Jews looked for refuge in the United States, and would become the foundation to argue for the exemption of more ­family members from the national origins quota system.

Conclusion As prominent IRL member Henry Pratt Fairchild candidly explained, the new quota system guaranteed that “the immigration stream . . . ​correspond to the basic character of the American ­people before the onset of the ‘new’ immigration.”114 The passage of the 1924 Immigration Act represented a major victory for his organ­ization and the culmination of de­cades of work to bring together a national co­ali­tion of restrictionist legislators. A triumphant Johnson called the act “Amer­ic­ a’s Second Declaration of In­de­pen­dence,” perhaps to suggest, as Donna Gabaccia has pointed out, that “restriction and isolation would safeguard American in­de­pen­dence, providing security form foreign turmoil.”115 If Johnson exulted, Rabbi Stephen Wise of the American Jewish Congress noted in disbelief: “If in 1898 I had said that in 25 years Amer­ic­ a’s doors would be shut to the Jews it would have been unthinkable that this country should so fail to live up to her traditions of freedom and opportunity.”116 Zolberg and Daniels suggest that immigration reform advocates missed an opportunity when they failed to propose a ­viable alternative to the bills submitted in Congress. In my view, this interpretation fails to take into consideration the atmosphere of hostility, racial resentment, and religious tension in which ethnic immigration reform advocates operated. As Italian and Jewish

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organ­izations mobilized to soften the impact of the bill, they constantly worried that their actions might incite further calls for even harsher restriction. ­W hether this was truly the case or merely their perception, this preoccupation affected their ability to advance a counterproposal, especially as they continued to lose allies in their fight. The AJC repeatedly warned of the possibility that supporters of restriction might “bring about the modification and if pos­si­ble even the abolition” of the f­ amily reunion provisions in the system, thus denying immigrants from eastern and southern Eu­rope of the only bargaining chip they had left.117 Furthermore, although they engaged in some interethnic collaboration, immigrant groups in the 1920s had yet to forge a strong enough co­ali­tion to imagine a comprehensive response to the drive for quantitative restriction. In a climate of anti-­immigrant hysteria, the status quo before the adoption of the quota system suddenly became more appealing as the vari­ous groups scrambled to protect their own. Once the drive for quantitative restriction was underway, the par­ameters of the debate shrank considerably, leaving immigrant groups with the stark choice between fighting for the status quo and acquiescing to quantitative restriction and trying to mitigate its impact. Presenting an alternative to the existing legislation did not enter the conversation among immigration reform advocates ­until the 1950s, and, even then, despite more favorable conditions, the dif­fer­ent groups strug­gled to agree on a counterproposal ­because they had dif­fer­ent interests and approached reform from dif­fer­ ent positions of power. Antirestrictionists also faced a power­ful bipartisan co­ali­tion of Southern and Western Demo­crats and Republicans who found common ground on immigration restriction and used the new legislative structure to protect their power and pass legislation that ­shaped U.S. society to their liking and their po­liti­cal benefit. Lastly, many immigration advocates simply refused to believe that the U.S. Congress would go through with targeting any Eu­ro­pean mi­grants for restriction. That real­ity sank in only when legislators turned their attention to calculating the annual quotas.

chapter three

Almost as Inaccessible as Tibet Mobilizing ­under Restriction before World War II Many of the leaders involved in the antirestriction mobilization efforts had suspected for a while that the national origins quota system might become permanent, yet they still found the passage of the 1924 Immigration Act shocking. Many still found it inconceivable that Congress would target Eu­ro­pean immigrants for restriction. The explicit targeting of white immigrants sent an unmistakable message that no immigrant group would avoid scrutiny if the need arose. In a letter to Senator Reed, Louis Marshall of the AJC wrote that the act unjustly divided “mankind into Nordics and non-­Nordics” and marked ­those affected by the legislation “as undesirable, as inferior, as a menace to civilization, as unassimilable, as incapable of patriotism.”1 Similarly, New York City judge Francis X. Giaccone, a prominent ­lawyer who went on to work for the La Guardia Administration and serve as State Supreme Court justice for a year and as a member of the New York State Commission for H ­ uman Rights, denounced the 1924 Immigration Act as discriminatory ­because it marked some groups as inferior.2 Stunned by the stigma the law placed on eastern and southern Eu­ro­pe­ans, Italian and Jewish leaders wrestled with how best to fight back for most of the 1930s. The continuing pressure to assimilate and the impact of the ­Great Depression on their communities further complicated their ability to mobilize. In hindsight, Italian and Jewish activists in the 1940s and 1950s criticized their pre­de­ces­sors for failing to show any “real desire to change the immigration laws” during the 1930s, especially as Jewish refugees sought to flee Eu­rope.3 During the 1930s, many of t­ hese critics concluded, Italian Americans and Jewish Americans ­were too busy assimilating to fight immigration restriction. The real­ity was much more complicated than that. The years from 1924, when Congress passed the Johnson-­Reed Act, to 1929, when the act went into effect, represented a testing ground for Italian and Jewish critics of restriction and illustrate why they became ever more cautious during the 1930s. Between 1924 and 1929, Italian and Jewish leaders continued to lobby legislators as they debated how to allocate the quotas ­because all the proposals ­under consideration clearly discriminated against southern and eastern Eu­ro­pe­ans. They also focused on helping Italian and Jewish mi­grants caught between laws as they

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had done in 1921, but this time they had to do so while they reckoned with how to adjust to life ­under permanent restriction. The new system discouraged circular migrations of working-­age men who traveled to work, but not necessarily ­settle, in the United States. Once their movements became subject to quotas, ­these mi­grant workers had no choice but to reduce their mobility and bring their families over. This was particularly true for Italians, who had historically been birds of passage, but members of both groups rushed to naturalize so that they could send for f­amily members outside of the quota system. As Italian and Jewish leaders realized that f­ amily reunion would become essential once the new national origins system went into effect, they had to confront at the same time authorities’ continuing efforts to use ­family separation as a way to reduce immigration further. ­These dynamics would only intensify a­ fter 1929, especially once the United States entered the G ­ reat Depression. In the 1930s, the se­niority system guaranteed that the chairs of the U.S. House and Senate immigration committees ­were almost invariably Southern or Western conservatives who worked closely with nativist groups and could count on nativist bureaucrats at the U.S. Departments of ­Labor and State to guarantee the strictest pos­si­ble enforcement of the national origins quota system.4 Despite t­ hese challenges, Italian and Jewish leaders persisted and made ­family reunion the centerpiece of their mobilization against immigration restriction. By the end of the 1930s, the numbers of admitted immigrants slowly began to rise with each passing year ­because of the ­family exemptions critics of restriction had won. Their focus on f­amily reunion paved the way for more changes in U.S. immigration laws a­ fter World War II and demonstrated the continuing tension between restriction and inclusion in U.S. immigration history and the advantages that immigrants from well-­organized groups had in entering or staying in the country.

The Last Challenge to the National Origins Quota System Although the number of Italians migrating to the United States dropped from 220,000 in 1921 to 90,000 in 1925 and the number of Poles went from 95,000 to 50,000 during the same period,5 Johnson and his nativist allies still worried that the antirestrictionist block could find ways to undermine the national origins quota system. To avoid that, he believed that devising the most effective and seemingly objective method to allocate the country quotas of the 1924 act was critical to stifle any opposition and undermine any accusations of partiality and discrimination. The calculations had to appear scientific and objective. In October 1925, the Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, once in ­favor of

Almost as Inaccessible as Tibet 73

immigration from southern and eastern Eu­rope, proposed to introduce special Jewish quotas within each country’s yearly quotas “in the belief that the Jewish prob­lem is becoming more serious all the time.” O ­ thers pushed “to further restrict immigration from Mexico and certain Latin-­American countries from which certain undesirable Eu­ro­pe­ans are entering.”6 In response, Congress commissioned census statistician Joseph Hill, immigration historian Marcus Hansen, and genealogist Howard Baker to devise a “fair and scientific” system to allocate the quotas by national origins ­after 1927. Through a grant from the American Council of Learned Socie­ties, Hill, Hansen, and Baker began by analyzing the surnames of the ­people listed in the census of 1790, since it did not list place of birth, to extrapolate national origins and generate the allocations of the yearly quotas accordingly. As historian Mae Ngai has noted, in addition to the problematic methodology, the three men assumed that the “ethnic” categories they identified had remained unchanged since 1790.7 To antirestrictionists’ delight, the trio’s challenges in formulating an unbiased method to allocate quotas based on national origin repeatedly delayed the start date of the new system. Italian and Jewish immigration reform advocates worked with local YMCAs, religious organ­izations, other nationality groups, and the League of W ­ omen Voters to protest the unfairness of using national origin to determine the yearly quotas. Even more successful in delaying the start of the quota system ­were the actions of a few key politicians in Congress and a handful of members of the Coo­lidge Administration. In 1927, foreign policy con­sul­tant Constantine E. McGuire wrote the representatives of several immigrant groups asking them to come together to support a bill from Senator Henrik Shipstead of Minnesota, which proposed the repeal of the national origins quota system. The son of Norwegian immigrants, Shipstead criticized the national origins system ­because it relied on questionable data and a methodology that even the president’s advisors found problematic.8 He and McGuire believed that if antirestrictionists rallied ­behind the bill, they might have a chance “to get rid once and for all of this proposal of the exclusionist fanatics, which is the first step in bringing about the adoption of a rational policy in the United States.”9 When, also in 1927, the Secretaries of State, Commerce, and L ­ abor warned the president that, “the statistical and historical information available raises grave doubts as to the ­whole value of ­these computations,” Congress relented and postponed the beginning of the new system from July 1, 1927, to April 1, 1928.10 In the election year of 1928, Congress faced renewed pressure when voters of Scandinavian and German origin in the Midwest, worried that the new system would significantly reduce their quotas, protested the national origins quota system.

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The backlash forced both presidential candidates, Herbert Hoover and Al Smith, to relent. During his ac­cep­tance speech for the nomination, Hoover called for “a new basis of quotas.”11 Congress caved and again postponed the start date to July 1, 1929, but it remained determined to make the quota system a real­ity. The American Legion, the Grange, and the ­Daughters of the American Revolution pressed restrictionist legislators to forge on.12 “The failure of Congress to follow the President’s lead in this m ­ atter,” wrote the AJC, “caused keen disappointment in the community where the belief is prevalent that this basis for restricting immigration is artificial.”13 As the date for the implementation of the national origins quota system approached, the Senate Immigration Committee met with Joseph Hill to discuss his third report on the computation of the quotas. Despite his reservations, Hill testified that the “pre­sent computations are as near as we can get on this m ­ atter of determining the national origins.”14 Hill’s reassurances, the relentless lobbying from restrictionists, and the prestige of the quotas’ authors convinced Congress to accept the Quota Board’s calculations.15 ­After July 1, 1929, annual quotas for each country would be based on the national origins—­“ by birth or ancestry”—­of the total U.S. population as recorded in the census of 1920. The overall yearly quota of 150,000 immigrants would be divided among countries in proportion to the ancestry of the 1920 population, with a minimum quota of 100. Just as the president and the Senate Immigration Committee had asked, the new calculations had the veneer of scientific objectivity, even though the new numbers ­were remarkably similar to t­ hose based on the 1890 census.16 The debate over the allocation of quotas exposed the divisions within the Italian and Jewish communities and the challenges facing Italian and Jewish activists in times of constant attacks. Always being on the defensive took a toll. Jewish leaders disagreed over the impact of the quota system. The AJC adamantly opposed the system ­because it “was intended to Nordicize . . . ​the entire population of the United States.”17 In a sign of the effectiveness of nativist attacks, B’nai B’rith wondered instead ­whether the national origins quotas might benefit American Jews b­ ecause it would assuage many Americans’ fear about a large unassimilated mass of southern and eastern Eu­ro­pe­ans.18 Meanwhile, OSIA, the only organ­ization that had succeeded in uniting Italian Americans against restriction, faced a serious crisis that reverberated in Italian communities across the country. In 1925, New York Supreme Court judge Salvatore Cotillo, social worker Edward Corsi, and U.S. representative Fiorello La Guardia withdrew their New York State OSIA chapter and renamed it the Sons of Italy G ­ rand Lodge to protest many OSIA members’ support for the

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Italian Fascist government, particularly OSIA president Giovanni Di Silvestro. The schism echoed a larger po­liti­cal divide within the Italian community over Fascism, hampered OSIA’s ability to mobilize against restriction, and deprived OSIA of three ­people who had long pursued collaboration with other groups.19 For restrictionist outsiders, t­ hese divisions only confirmed that Italian immigrants w ­ ere “a lot of c­ attle that are not fit to live in a decent country.”20 The allocation of quotas was not the only point of contention. The system of remote control that Representative Johnson intentionally introduced in the 1924 Immigration Act represented a new, more complex hurdle to Italian and Jewish advocates’ ability to challenge the new immigration policy. Since the end of the nineteenth ­century, proponents of restriction had concluded that the Immigration Bureau represented a major obstacle to the effectiveness of any immigration policy ­because of its continuing changes in management and priorities, inadequate bud­getary and personnel resources, and, above all, its vulnerability to external pressure from interest groups who assisted rejected immigrants.21 Encouraged by the success of the Passport Control Act of 1918, a temporary mea­sure during World War I that had required U.S. authorities abroad to screen aspiring immigrants before granting visas, Albert Johnson placed the implementation of the national origins quota system in the hands of U.S. consuls abroad in the 1924 Immigration Act to neutralize the Immigration Bureau and deny antirestrictionists a key site to challenge restriction.22 By putting the U.S. State Department in charge of administering it, restrictionists in Congress erected a dual barrier that insulated the law from challenges. Moreover, while the Immigration Bureau had been inconsistent in its enforcement of the country’s immigration laws, at times helping immigrants, many State Department officials consistently embraced restrictionist views.23 With few options left, Italian and Jewish activists doubled down on their efforts to secure the admission of immediate ­family members of residents and naturalized citizens. As they had done ­after the passage of the 1921 Emergency Quota Act, Italian and Jewish leaders first focused on helping the many Jewish and Italian immigrants stranded in vari­ous ports in Eu­rope, Cuba, Mexico, and Canada while en route to the United States to re­unite with their families when the new act went into effect. Between 1924 and 1929, Italian and Jewish American organ­izations joined forces with a small but vocal cluster of religious and civic organ­izations to push for the admission of relatives of immigrants already in the country and lobby for special personal bills to solve hardship cases.24 The Foreign Language Information Ser­vice even launched a nationwide campaign that highlighted “the evils” of ­family separation. From bigamy

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and the disintegration of the institution of the ­family to immigrants’ radicalization and abandonment of Americanization efforts, ­family separation could only wreak havoc on American society, supporters of the campaign insisted.25 While they succeeded in helping many families re­unite, their intervention soon attracted the ire of nativist legislators, immigration authorities, and regular citizens alike who began regarding ­family reunion as a dangerous loophole. In the eyes of many legislators and Americans, not all families ­were created equal and only some families deserved to be re­united even when their separation resulted from bureaucratic mismanagement. For many supporters of immigration restriction, only families whose breadwinners could guarantee that their f­ amily members would not become “a burden on the state” should be re­united, once again confirming the confluence of race, nationality, and class in U.S. immigration policy. Despite clear evidence that the bureaucracy had failed to prepare for the new act, nativist policymakers opposed any legislative change that “would have the effect of increasing to even a l­imited extent the number of persons who are admitted to the United States.”26 Many of them blamed aspiring immigrants for failing to familiarize themselves with the new regulations, while Commissioner General of Immigration Harry Hull suggested that immigrants already in the U.S. ­were to blame ­because they allowed “their wives and c­ hildren to come ­here on the ­gamble that they be able to slip in in the next monthly quota.”27 Many Americans agreed and eagerly voiced their opinions, especially to legislators who ­were still pushing for less restriction. As a constituent wrote to La Guardia, “I am sorry for separated families, but they might re­unite themselves in Eu­rope, from whence they came, if they so desired.”28 Undeterred, Jewish and Italian activists continued to push for f­amily reunion, but their successes often came at the expense of other immigrants trying to enter the country. For three years in a row, Italian and Jewish leaders in New York State put pressure on Representatives Nathan D. Perlman (R) and Fiorello La Guardia (R) and Senator James W. Wadsworth (R) to introduce proposals favoring ­family reunification outside of the quotas.29 Albeit their bills suggested only moderate changes, “so violent was the anti-­alien sentiment in Congress,” noted the AJC, that a 1928 proposal to admit only relatives stranded in foreign ports ­because of the 1924 immigration law “was pigeon-­holed by committees, even though its sponsors ­were willing to insert a provision limiting the number of wives and c­ hildren to be so admitted to 35,000.”30 In the spring of 1928, Louis Marshall took the m ­ atter in front of the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization to urge Johnson and his colleagues to find a solution. Shortly a­ fter, Congress passed a bill sponsored by Represen-

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tative Thomas Albert Jenkins (R-­OH), which set aside one-­half of the annual quotas for each country for immigrants stranded abroad who had relatives already in the United States, but the victory came with a price. Although it solved the prob­lem Marshall and his allies had raised, the bill counted t­ hose quotas against the yearly country quotas from which the immigrants came, thus penalizing “the many aliens who came from countries which previously contributed a large immigration but now have small quotas.”31 The bill set a pre­ce­dent that Congress would follow in the aftermath of World War II, when it mortgaged quotas against sending countries when it fi­nally de­cided to admit refugees from the war. In the context of draconian immigration policies, critics of restriction looked for any pos­si­ble way to undermine the system, but their accomplishments reflected the limitations of the new po­liti­cal and legislative status quo. Dealing with immigration authorities proved just as difficult a­ fter 1924. With the full backing of Congress and the White House, the U.S. Department of ­Labor fully embraced the nativist rhe­toric of the time. Believing that mi­grants took advantage of the ­family reunion provisions only to circumvent the new law, the department sought at e­ very turn to slow down naturalization rates among immigrants from eastern and southern Eu­rope with families still abroad. In 1925, the AJC received a series of complaints that naturalization courts w ­ ere refusing to naturalize eligible immigrants whose wives and minor ­children did not reside in the United States. The committee leadership discovered that, on January 31, 1925, the Department of L ­ abor had issued a memorandum urging its agents to deny citizenship to any applicant whose wives and minor c­ hildren ­were still in Eu­rope in the belief that “among the members of the new citizen’s ­family . . . ​­there might be one or more who would other­wise be inadmissible.”32 ­After further research, the AJC also learned that the Department of L ­ abor had issued another memorandum instructing immigration officials to keep track of judges who overruled the department’s objection to the admission of ­these petitioners for naturalization.33 ­These memoranda, the AJC believed, sought to circumvent any outside pressure or mediation from groups like them. Outraged, Marshall wrote a letter of complaint to President Coo­lidge in which he denounced the memoranda as unmitigated lawlessness that ran c­ ounter to Coo­lidge’s appeals to Congress “not to cause a ­needless separation of families and dependents.”34 Rather than engage, the president referred the letter to Acting Secretary of L ­ abor W. W. Husband, who denied any abuse of power and told Marshall that the tracking of the judges’ decisions was for purely statistical purposes.35 Incensed, Marshall denounced the inherent hy­poc­risy in the department’s guidelines:

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It seems to me exceedingly strange that on the one hand immigrants who have resided ­here for the required period and have not applied for citizenship, are frequently denounced in certain quarters as having no interest in the welfare of the country and as being undesirable, and that on the other hand immigrants who likewise have been ­here for the required period and signify their desire to cast their lot with the country by seeking to become citizens, are sought to be deprived of the right by a chop-­logic which declares that though they are h­ ere in body they are nevertheless absent ­because their families are in a foreign land.36 In return for his searing indictment, Marshall received only a vague promise that the department would investigate any abuse of the field ser­vice officers.37 The Department of ­Labor did not even spare privileged immigrants with desirable skills and education e­ ither if they came from southern and eastern Eu­rope. Instead, it actively sought to undercut the f­ amily provisions privileging ministers and professors in the 1924 Immigration Act that Congress had added ­after the Commissioner of Immigration v. Gottlieb ruling. Although Marshall and the AJC had considered the Supreme Court ruling a victory, their elation vanished when the Department of ­Labor Solicitor de­cided that the provision applied only to ministers and professors admitted ­after July  1, 1924. The case of Rabbi Schevelovitz demonstrated the challenges the decision posed for recent immigrants. ­Because Rabbi Schevelovitz had arrived in the United States in 1923 to minister to a Jewish congregation in Long Branch, New Jersey, his options u­ nder the Department of L ­ abor’s interpretation w ­ ere ­either to return to Riga, Latvia, and then travel back to the United States with his ­family or to leave the country, return to the United States by himself, and then send for his ­family.38 Marshall wrote to Secretary of ­Labor James J. Davis that the decision ran ­counter to Congress’s avowed efforts “to deal humanely with ministers of religion and professors of colleges, academies, seminaries or universities” in the allocation of quotas in the 1924 Immigration Act.39 ­After considerable pressure, the Department of ­Labor did admit Rabbi Schevelovitz’s ­family, but his case exemplified the arbitrary nature of the department’s decisions and the difference an affluent and well-­connected organ­ization made in immigrants’ pleas for admission.40 More troublesome for immigration reform advocates was the decision of the Department of ­Labor to use the “likely to become a public charge” (LPC) clause to prevent ­family reunion of Eu­ro­pean mi­grants. This decision reflected a larger trend to use the LPC clause to exclude other­wise admissible individuals to minimize the number of undesirable mi­grants entering the country.41

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The Duner v. Curran case exemplified the lengths to which immigration authorities went to separate families in the hopes of discouraging more ­people from immigrating, a practice that has a long history and that continues to this day.42 Rabbi Duner arrived in the United States in 1923 and sent for his f­ amily to join him from Poland in 1924. When the ­family arrived, immigration authorities declared the youn­gest of his five c­ hildren, the four-­year-­old Channa, feebleminded and ordered her deported. Rabbi Duner then arranged for an adult to accompany the child back to Eu­rope. Immigration authorities admitted the rest of the ­family as non-­quota immigrants u­ nder the 1924 Immigration Act, but a Board of Special Inquiry excluded the entire ­family as likely to become public charges when it found that another son, Michel, had a heart prob­lem. The board excluded the wife as the accompanying adult responsible for taking him back to Eu­rope and the remaining c­ hildren b­ ecause they would become public charges without two parents taking care of them. Marshall worked with Duner’s ­lawyer to convince the Secretary of ­Labor to reopen the case by arguing that, even u­ nder the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, ministers and professors could be admitted.43 ­After the Secretary of ­Labor reopened the case, Marshall appealed to Representative Perlman to intervene on the rabbi’s behalf. Perlman did, but the Court of Appeals confirmed Michel’s deportation even though it admitted the rest of the ­family.44 The Duner case typified the vicissitudes of the many immigrant families caught in the crossfire of immigration authorities looking for ways to minimize immigration from certain parts of the world without additional legislation, but it also reflected the ­limited options separated families had even when they had connections or received help from prominent members of the community. Not nearly as established and connected, Italian American activists found themselves turning to the Italian government for assistance, but they faced significant pushback in their efforts to use f­ amily reunion to help more Italians reach the United States. The Fascist government’s imperial ambitions and its opposition to letting Italians abroad naturalize represented a major obstacle and forced Italian American leaders to look for ways to circumvent both Italian and U.S. policies. Looking for c­ auses that might seem uncontroversial to both governments, several Italian American organ­izations and Representative Fiorello La Guardia called for the immediate admission outside the quotas of 5,000 Italian American veterans of World War I who had fought for the United States but had remained in Italy a­ fter the war.45 To their surprise, Mussolini’s government refused to recognize their U.S. citizenship and expected them to stay to serve in the Italian army. The impasse came to an end only when the U.S. State Department intervened and reached an informal agreement with

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Mussolini’s government in 1929.46 When all ­else failed, OSIA president Giovanni Di Silvestro, although a fervid admirer of Mussolini, quietly looked for other ways to re­unite Italian families. At one point, he encouraged Italians in the United States to take advantage of the yearly OSIA-­organized pilgrimages to Italy to bring back relatives, since ­these trips ­were very popu­lar with the Italian government which saw them as an opportunity to keep the ties with Italy alive. Unfortunately, very few could afford this option b­ ecause of the expenses involved.47 Despite all ­these obstacles, their per­sis­tence paid off. Already in 1927, more than 60 ­percent of the immigrants admitted to the United States outside of the quotas w ­ ere from Italy, with the next largest groups coming from Poland, Czecho­slo­va­kia, and Greece.48 ­These numbers only convinced Italian Americans and Jewish Americans to continue using ­family reunion to circumvent the national origins quota system, but the obstruction they faced intensified once the 1924 act went into effect in 1929 and the entire country was in the grip of the ­Great Depression.

“Is   the Quota More Sacred than the ­Family?”: ­ Family Reunion versus ­Family Separation By 1931, the imposition of an annual ceiling of 150,000 and the national origins quota system had produced ten-­to seventy-­five-­year waiting lists for immigrants from Hungary, Italy, Poland, and Rus­sia.49 Yet, many restrictionists in Congress continued to worry that southern and eastern Eu­ro­pe­ans would always look for ways to enter in larger numbers. Applicants for ­family reunion remained legislators’ primary target, but they also continued to look for ways to prevent advocacy organ­izations and resettlement agencies from providing any assistance in Congress, in the courtroom, or in the community.50 Although Italian and Jewish Americans flocked in droves to the Demo­cratic Party in the 1930s, a handful of Western and Southern Demo­crats, along with a sizable group of Republicans, systematically shut down their efforts to challenge the status quo. B ­ ecause of their numbers and concentration in cities, “the new immigrants” achieved significant po­liti­cal clout in states critical for Demo­cratic success like Illinois, New York, and Pennsylvania, but their representatives refrained from proposing substantial modifications of the immigration system ­because of the ste­reo­types against them. “If they ­don’t get one of their racial ­brothers on the ticket,” wrote influential reporter Raymond Clapper in the New York World Tele­gram in 1938, “they take it as an insult and shake down po­liti­cal parties for the inclusion of at least one candidate from their group in both state and local tickets.”51 Yet, what made the restrictionist co­ali­tion in Congress an

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insurmountable obstacle for many critics of restriction was the formidable help it received from the U.S. State Department and the unwavering support from patriotic socie­ties and the American Federation of ­Labor. As the country entered the G ­ reat Depression, State Department officials proposed to use existing regulations to curtail immigration quickly while waiting for Congress to take action. Borrowing from strategies that had successfully reduced the un­regu­la­ted flow of Mexican mi­grants to the United States, ­these officials proposed a stricter enforcement of the LPC clause, the provision against contract l­abor, and the literacy test. Upon receiving the suggestion, President Hoover issued an executive order on September 8, 1930, that mandated a stricter application of the LPC clause for all visa applicants.52 The LPC clause was first introduced in Congress in 1882, and its purpose had originally been to exclude immigrants who could not support themselves, not poor ­people, but, a­ fter 1930, the State Department and consular authorities stretched the meaning of the clause to require immigrants to possess substantial assets or provide proof that they had a sponsor in the United States who could provide for them.53 On the heels of Hoover’s executive order, several restrictionist legislators in both Houses of Congress called for the immediate suspension of all immigration for two years except for naturalized citizens’ ­family members, leaving Jewish and Italian leaders with ­little room for negotiation. Given the recent history of Congress passing ever more restrictive legislation in times of crises, the severe economic crisis, and the resurgence of anti-­Semitism across the nation, the AJC never considered objecting to the proposal in its entirety for fear that it would jeopardize ­family reunion for all. Rather, it testified before the Senate Committee on Immigration and Naturalization on December 15, 1930, that the proposal should also exempt permanent residents’ wives and minor ­children. On January 1, 1931, AJC leaders, hoping to find a more understanding audience, coordinated with other immigration reform advocacy groups to send a memorandum of protest asking the Secretary of State not to endorse any legislation that obstructed ­family reunion in any form. Ignoring the memorandum, Secretary of State Henry Stimson, who went on to support the internment of Japa­nese and Japa­nese Americans during World War II, proposed instead that all immigration be restricted to 10 ­percent of the existing quotas and testified against the exemption of relatives of resident aliens ­because it would other­wise “result in the admission of a very large number of Eastern Eu­ro­pe­ans.”54 Without any hesitation, the House Committee on Immigration immediately reported out a bill taking up the secretary’s suggestion. Despite the loud opposition from a large number of immigration reform advocates, the

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House passed the bill with the full support of patriotic socie­ties and ­labor organ­izations. The Senate, however, failed to do the same before the session adjourned.55 Far from discouraged, the House Committee on Immigration advanced another series of proposals to make ­family reunion as challenging as pos­si­ble, leaving Italian and Jewish leaders stunned. First, it considered drafting a bill to make Hoover’s executive order on the LPC clause permanent.56 Without holding any public hearings, the House Committee also reported out a bill requiring a test in U.S. history to naturalize. While the bill was seemingly unrelated to f­ amily reunion, the AJC believed that, if it passed, it would drastically lower the number of immigrants who could naturalize and severely affect ­family reunion, since the majority of wives and minor c­ hildren relied upon a naturalized husband or ­father.57 Although neither bill became law, the regularity of such proposals and the nativist rhe­toric that accompanied them left many Italian and Jewish activists dispirited and scrambling to find new strategies to protect ­family reunion. Among Jewish leaders, no one reflected the impact of the unrelenting pace of restrictionist efforts better than prominent civil rights ­lawyer Max J. Kohler, who often spoke on behalf of B’nai B’rith, the AJC, and the American Jewish Congress. Demonstrating how immigrant groups targeted for restriction often internalized the nativist rhe­toric aimed at them, he came to believe that some restrictions could help ac­cep­tance from the broader society. Kohler, for example, welcomed the LPC executive order as “a salutary ­thing.” He proposed only slight adjustments to help ­family members and “some exceptional persons.”58 Although his stance reflected more the leaders involved in the debate on immigration reform than the immigrant communities they represented, it nonetheless affected the type of reform critics of restriction pursued. Meanwhile, Italian American leaders strug­gled to help Italians and Italian Americans caught between Americans’ desire to keep Italians out and Mussolini’s efforts to divert Italian mi­grants to Africa for his imperial ambitions.59 The Italian government based its policies on its patriarchal views of ­women’s roles in society. At the beginning of the 1930s, the Italian government formalized a longtime practice that required applicants who sought to re­unite with their families to travel to Italy to escort their f­ amily members back to the United States with them. Even OSIA president Di Silvestro, who had enough influence to speed up the release of passports for ­family reunion applicants through his contacts at the Italian Foreign Ministry, could not find a way around the new rule, a proposition that many found financially prohibitive.60 As the story of Giuseppe Sirianni illustrates, b­ ecause the new rule intersected with Hoover’s

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LPC executive order and the emphasis on remote control embedded in the 1924 Immigration Act, it made the f­ amily reunion pro­cess even more difficult. With his application for American citizenship well u­ nder way and a steady income from his factory job, Sirianni, an immigrant from Sicily, de­cided to send for his wife and their c­ hildren. The U.S. vice-­consul in Naples twice rejected his application in 1931 and asked his wife, Maria Giuseppa, to provide further information about their finances to guarantee that she and her ­children would not become a public charge once in the United States. Even ­after Sirianni proved the soundness of his finances, the consul denied his f­ amily their visa one more time. When the f­ amily fi­nally received the visa, Sirianni could not afford to travel to Italy to bring his ­family back.61 Italian American ­women sending for ­family members faced even more challenges than their male counter­parts even when they met all the same prerequisites. Representative La Guardia, a passionate anti-­Fascist, received several letters from his constituents asking for his help b­ ecause of the Italian government’s double standard. Although their f­ amily members in Italy had obtained ­family reunion visas from the U.S. government, the Italian authorities would not issue their passports if they ­were seeking to re­unite with Italian American ­women.62 The intersection between Italy’s citizenship requirement and U.S. authorities’ strict enforcement of the LPC clause added additional challenges. ­After arriving in the United States ­because her sons had sent for her, Ms. Giannunzio submitted an application to re­unite with her husband, Pietro Valeriani. Although she received the visa from U.S. authorities b­ ecause her application satisfied the requirements of the LPC clause, she could not re­unite with her husband ­because “the Italian government does not allow wives to send for their husbands, especially when they are not American citizens.”63 For Maria Mazzone, the U.S. government was her prob­lem. In 1931, she began the paperwork to re­unite with her husband and their child, confident that her U.S. citizenship would hasten the pro­cess. Both OSIA Gran Venerable Di Silvestro and Representative Clyde Kelly (R-­PA) intervened on her behalf, but the U.S. consul in Naples denied Mazzone the visas b­ ecause she had failed to prove that the entire f­amily would not become a public charge once they re­united in the United States.64 The vicissitudes of the early 1930s only reinforced Italian and Jewish activists’ beliefs that they should prioritize their groups in their efforts to undermine the existing immigration system. When Representative Samuel Dickstein (D-­NY), a staunch critic of immigration restriction representing New York’s heavi­ly Jewish Lower East Side, became the chair of the House Immigration and Naturalization Commission, restricted groups ­were hopeful.65 In 1932,

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Dickstein, with the full support of Representatives Celler, Jenkins, and La Guardia, introduced or endorsed several bills to facilitate ­family reunion, ­favor immigrants with skills needed in the U.S., and create an appeals pro­cess to the Secretary of ­Labor.66 Although none of the bills became law, they elicited a response from the U.S. State Department that paved the way for the formalization of f­ amily reunion as a cornerstone of U.S. immigration policy. To avoid further interference with its authority, the State Department issued a memorandum instructing its consuls abroad to review all cases in which they had refused visas to relatives of citizens and resident aliens on LPC grounds and reverse their decision where appropriate. By 1934, they rejected less than 2 ­percent of relatives applying to re­unite with their ­family members in the United States and f­ amily reunion accounted for 60 ­percent of admissions that year alone.67 Dickstein’s efforts to suspend Hoover’s LPC executive order to help Jewish immigrants leave Eu­rope a­ fter Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 proved much less successful and divided the Jewish community. When Dickstein introduced a bill to suspend the executive order, several of the organ­izations supporting immigration reform, but especially the AJC, urged him to withdraw it ­because they feared Americans would view the mea­sure as a slight t­ owards unemployed Americans and perceive it as preferential treatment for Jewish immigrants. ­Under pressure, Dickstein abandoned his bill.68 The concerns raised by AJC turned out to be legitimate. Furious over the repeated calls for an exception to the quota system to admit more Jewish immigrants, Representative Johnson, one of the sponsors of the 1924 Immigration Act, again called on Harry Laughlin for help. In 1934, Laughlin, as director of the Eugenics Rec­ord Office of the Department of Ge­ne­tics at the Car­ne­gie Institute, surveyed 246 ­mental institutions and prisons to assess the impact of eastern and southern Eu­ro­pe­ans on U.S. society. In his report, which drew criticism that his language bore a striking resemblance to Nazis’ justification for Jewish persecution, he once again declared them to be a burden to society and recommended against admitting any additional Jewish mi­grants.69 Seeking to bypass congressional roadblocks, several Jewish leaders turned to the executive for help. Rabbi Stephen Wise of the American Jewish Congress urged President Roo­se­velt to revoke Hoover’s executive order “as a part of the New Deal.”70 Despite the key role of Jewish voters in the New Deal co­ ali­tion, Roo­se­velt, ­under pressure from Southern Demo­crats, continued Hoover’s order and only issued a directive asking U.S. State Department officials for “favorable treatment” of Jewish immigrants. “­Legal exit from Germany,” wrote the AJC in 1934, “is hedged about with technicalities and costs

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which make departure impossible for many.”71 When Herbert Lehman, FDR’s handpicked successor as governor of New York, reached out to the president in 1935 and 1936 to lament that American consuls routinely ignored his directive, FDR merely reissued his instructions.72 In the meantime, the AJC looked for allies from a diverse cross section of U.S. society to intercede with the executive. In September 1933, the American Civil Liberties Union, ­under Roger Baldwin’s leadership, presented a memorandum—­signed by prominent Americans like Jane Addams, Reinhold Niebuhr, Lillian Wald, and Charles Beard—­ asking President Roo­se­velt to issue an executive order requiring the U.S. State Department to issue visas to religious and po­liti­cal refugees from Germany.73 In March 1934, the Mas­sa­chu­setts State Congress and a committee headed by ­women’s rights advocate Carrie Chapman Catt urged the president to liberalize the country’s immigration policy to help German refugees. Disillusioned with their lack of influence and afraid that Congress would reduce immigration further, Kohler wrote the members of the House Committee on Immigration that same month to dissuade them from “enacting permanent legislation in times of emergency, when the aims sought can be achieved . . . ​by the stricter interpretation of existing law.”74 Amidst calls for further restriction, the status quo became preferable. Even if their intercession with President Roo­se­velt had worked, ­little would have changed since the 1924 Immigration Act gave so much power to the U.S. State Department. No one understood how much this s­ haped migration flows more than two staunch supporters of liberal immigration, Secretary of ­Labor Frances Perkins and Ellis Island Commissioner Edward Corsi. B ­ ecause the bill placed so much emphasis on remote control, Perkins and Corsi soon realized that they could do ­little to soften the impact of the national origins system. In 1934, Perkins appointed a special committee of forty-­eight members to study the immigration emergency in Germany. She publicly endorsed the committee’s recommendation to grant asylum to the persecuted and argued that such a mea­sure could be achieved without amending the existing immigration system.75 When the State Department refused to use a provision of the 1917 Immigration Act that allowed private organ­izations to post bonds to help immigrants who might not be admitted on LPC grounds, Perkins ordered the Immigration Bureau to implement it anyway, but it had ­little impact without the support of the State Department officials.76 Similarly, Ellis Island Commissioner Edward Corsi discovered that “deportation was big business at Ellis Island” and that his position gave him ­little leeway in helping immigrants entering the country. E ­ arlier in the c­ entury, Secretary of Commerce and L ­ abor Oscar Straus and Ellis Island Immigration Commissioner Robert Watchorn

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had interpreted the existing immigration statutes liberally to allow thousands of Eu­ro­pe­ans to enter the United States. “Three de­cades ­later,” as political scientist Daniel J. Tichenor points out, “another pair of immigration defenders, Perkins and Corsi, held virtually the same offices but had l­ittle influence on the immigrant screening pro­cess.”77 That power had shifted to new State Department agencies and consular officials. From the Secretary of State down to consular officers, several officials actively obstructed immigration. When Felix Frank­furter, prominent jurist and ­future Supreme Court justice, and Raymond Moley, a leading po­liti­cal economist, begged FDR to appoint Rabbi Stephen Wise of the American Jewish Congress as the U.S. delegate to a 1936 League of Nations Conference on refugees, Secretary of State Cordell Hull, a Demo­crat from Tennessee whose wife was Jewish, advised the president to send a minor functionary instead b­ ecause the law gave the department “no latitude” to discuss “questions concerning the ­legal status of aliens.”78 Although convened at Roo­se­velt’s initiative, the conference was doomed even before it began ­because of his administration’s weak show of support.79 Besides Secretary Hull, restrictionists in Congress could also count on Assistant Secretary of State Wilbur Carr, who was in charge of the consular ser­vice from 1909 to 1937, to interpret the law as strictly as pos­si­ ble. Carr, who had provided Albert Johnson with the 1920 report warning of an imminent invasion of racially inferior Jewish refugees, refused to meet with Jewish leaders in the 1930s to discuss their concerns about the overt anti-­ Semitism among certain State Department officials.80 By the mid-1930s, Jewish reform advocates lamented that President Hoover’s “instruction, the statutory restrictions, and the strict interpretation by consular officials of the vari­ ous other provisions of the [1924] Immigration Act, have combined to reduce immigration to the United States far below the authorized 150,000 per year.”81 The State Department objected that as long as the German quota remained unfilled, adjusting admissions provisions remained moot, ignoring that its agents’ actions caused the unfulfilled quotas in the first place.82 As life for German Jews turned for the worse in 1938, Jewish immigration reform advocates intensified their push for refugee relief. Even prior to Kristallnacht in November  1938, ­there ­were unmistakable signs that living in Germany had become dangerous for the Jewish community. Joined by academics, politicians, artists, the NAACP, and the Congress of Industrial Organ­izations (CIO), Jewish activists in the United States pressed Roo­se­velt to do more while Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis met with the president twice to press him on the refugee crisis. When Roo­se­velt fi­nally de­cided to act, his modest proposals met fierce opposition from restrictionists in Congress. He created

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an Advisory Committee on Po­liti­cal Refugees, ordered an extension of the visitors’ visas to German Jews visiting the United States, and instructed Secretary of State Hull to issue an order to consular officials to interpret liberally the documentation requirements for visa applicants fleeing persecution. Roo­se­velt also asked Hull to or­ga­nize an international conference to facilitate the emigration of po­liti­cal refugees out of Austria and Germany ­under the condition that no country should receive a greater number of immigrants than prescribed by its existing laws. The only major accomplishment of the conference held in Evian, France, in July 1938, was the creation of an Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees, whose relocation plans came to a halt at the onset of the war.83 Incensed over what they perceived to be executive overreach, many restrictionist policymakers pushed back. Senator William  E. Borah (R-­ID) proclaimed that Congress opposed any revision to the existing immigration policy to allow more German refugees and Martin Dies (D-­TX), chair of the recently created House Committee on Un-­American Activities, challenged the right of the president to extend the six-­month visitors’ visa permits.84 By then, Dies and other fellow restrictionists had already rejected a bill introduced by Celler granting asylum to po­liti­cal refugees and a bill proposed by Dickstein allocating unused quotas to admit immigrants from oversubscribed countries.85 Dickstein’s suggestion would gain momentum among antirestrictionists ­after the war, but, in the meantime, the German quota went unfilled ­until 1940. Roo­se­velt’s reluctance to intervene sooner has garnered much scholarly attention. Some scholars argue that his decision stemmed from po­liti­cal calculations. Concerned about preserving support for his economic and ­labor policies, Roo­se­velt avoided taking up any issue that could alienate critical votes in Congress from Southern Demo­crats and the liberal ­labor bloc. Other scholars point to the State Department’s rigidity and anti-­Semitism for the failure to change or relax immigration laws in the 1930s. Committed to protecting its recently acquired authority to grant visas without any interference from immigration reformers, the State Department balked at any changes. When the refugee crisis in Eu­rope intensified, its officials opposed any special treatment for refugees on the grounds that it might antagonize the German government. Yet other scholars blame the American Jewish community itself for its decision to choose caution over confrontation. However, only Jewish-­dominant ­labor ­unions and radical groups close to the Communist Party pushed for the liberalization of immigration laws. Fi­nally, some attribute Roo­se­velt’s silence to the rigidity of an immigration system created in another era. Po­liti­cal scientist Aristide Zolberg suggests that the U.S. response to the Jewish refugee

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crisis represents a power­ful demonstration of the path de­pen­dency theory, whereby “once certain choices are made, they constrain f­ uture possibilities. The range of options available to policymakers at any given point in time is a function of institutional capabilities that w ­ ere put in place at some e­ arlier period, possibly in response to very dif­fer­ent environmental pressures.”86 For critics of restriction of Eu­ro­pean descent, this path de­pen­dency, along with the per­sis­tence of anti-­immigrant sentiments amid a severe economic crisis, made it virtually impossible to push for any significant legislative change despite their ability to naturalize and their growing po­liti­cal repre­sen­ta­tion in the 1930s. Nonetheless, despite all t­ hese challenges, the numbers of immigrants admitted in the 1930s slowly increased b­ ecause immigrants began self-­selecting to adjust to U.S. immigration laws. As the AJC reported, starting in 1933 and ending in 1938, the annual immigrant arrivals ­were: 8,220; 12,483; 17,207; 18,675; 27,762; and 42,494.87 While many immigrants used their ­family connections to enter the country, many o­ thers gained admission b­ ecause they had desirable skills. Critics of restriction immediately sought to frame t­ hese changes in a positive light. As early as 1933, Harold Fields, executive director of the National League for American Citizenship, touted ­these shifts in an article in the South Atlantic Quarterly, ­later reprinted in the New York Times. He wrote that the new immigrants arriving from Eu­rope ­were mostly skilled workers and ­women and ­children reuniting with their f­ amily members in the country. All ­were ­eager to assimilate into American society.88 ­These developments demonstrated that, despite the rhe­toric and the obstruction, immigration did continue during the most restrictionist years of the tenure of the national origins quota system. Immigrants and immigration reform advocates’ ability to adjust to life ­under restriction and work within the system’s constraints was remarkable, but the changes they enacted also reshaped significantly the nature of the immigration flow to the United States. Once Congress took up immigration and refugee reform ­after World War II, legislators built on the trends of ­family reunion and skilled immigrants that had emerged in the 1930s.

Undocumented Immigration and Mobilization against Restriction Many immigrants who lacked skills or f­ amily in the United States or who simply could not afford to wait for their turn to leave chose to enter the country illegally. They joined thousands of Italians and eastern Eu­ro­pean Jews who had lived off the books for years in the United States, but their numbers grew exponentially once Congress passed the Johnson-­Reed Act, which created the

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deportable category of “aliens without proper visas.” By the late 1920s, more than half of all immigrants deported by the Bureau of Immigration fell u­ nder this category. Immigrants without proper documentation quickly became the largest class of deportees, above the qualitative provisions included in the immigration laws passed between 1882 and 1920. Along with their efforts to help regular mi­grants reach the United States and to lobby against additional legislation restricting immigration, Italian and Jewish activists also worked to help immigrants who w ­ ere living unlawfully in the United States. They especially worried about the criminalization of undocumented mi­grants and the legalization of their status.89 Italian and Jewish mi­grants seeking to enter the country “without proper visas” shared many similarities when it came to crossing the Atlantic through an intricate web of forgers and smugglers, sneaking into the country along the southern and northern borders, and staying invisible once in the United States. While historian Libby Garland has superbly traced the story of undocumented immigration among eastern Eu­ro­pean Jews, ­little is known about undocumented immigration from Italy, even though immigration authorities worried intensely about both.90 Italian-­language newspapers regularly reported tales of desperation and abuse among Italian immigrants trying to enter the country illegally. Right ­after the ratification of the Immigration Act of 1924, L’Adunata dei Refrattari reported that the police had just arrested the o­ wners of the Fascist Il Bollettino della Sera ­because, among other charges, they had asked six Italian immigrants to pay them three thousand dollars to be assisted in the passage.91 Before Mussolini closed it in 1927, the General Commission of Emigration in Italy conducted several investigations of smuggling rings on both sides of the Atlantic. In the Abruzzi region, a man named Pollice promised to arrange for a permit to migrate to the United States through a cousin who was a close friend of the American consul if aspiring mi­grants paid him thirty-­two thousand liras.92 Police authorities in Vicenza reported rumors that many prospective mi­grants took advantage of the pilgrimages to Lourdes, France, to leave for North Amer­i­ca.93 The commission also uncovered a traffic in undocumented Italians to the United States from Tunisia through Panama; passport forgers in Palermo and Naples; and the widespread bribery of passport authorities in Calabria and Sicily to facilitate the release of documents to help mi­ grants, especially w ­ omen, leave for the United States. The Italian agency also investigated two sophisticated transatlantic smuggling operations involving Italians living in three dif­fer­ent countries. In the first, Italian mi­grants passed through Bordeaux, France, traveled to Canada, and then entered the United

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States through an intricate web of smugglers often involving Italians who believed they ­were simply helping fellow countrymen find a job. In the second, mi­grants with fake passports traveled from Calabria to Switzerland and then on to the United States. On this side of the Atlantic, the commission discovered an organ­ization in Baltimore that forged passports and reentry permits for the United States.94 Quite a few Italian and Jewish mi­grants entered the country disguised as seamen. During the hearings over the renewal of the Alien Seaman Act of 1926 set to expire in 1931, critics complained that the lucrative traffic of undocumented seamen created competition for American seamen during a time of economic depression.95 They argued that in 1931 alone, Chinese immigrants paid up to $1,100 and Eu­ro­pean immigrants paid from $200 to $400 for clandestine passage to the United States.96 Evoking well-­established ste­reo­types about southern and eastern Eu­ro­pe­ans, the president of the American Seamen’s Union inveighed that “Italian longshoremen in New York could tell much about [the smuggling of immigrants from Italy] if they, as they say, ‘­were tired of life’ ”97 and that Rus­sian Jews ­were “manufacturing fraudulent papers . . . ​so that you can buy them in ­every port in Eu­rope from Greece all around the Mediterranean to Hamburg.”98 Although ­there ­were no official rec­ords available, the Immigration Bureau estimated that approximately 6,000 or 7,000 immigrant seamen remained unlawfully in the United States from 1921 to 1929 compared to the 8,500 from 1911 to 1921.99 With the full support of the American Federation of ­Labor and the American Seamen’s Union, Congress renewed the act. In their efforts to help unauthorized immigrants adjust their status and avoid deportation, Italian and Jewish activists again balanced appeals to ­family ­union with support for tighter enforcement. They argued that deportation would destroy families in the United States and endanger the f­uture of c­ hildren who ­were often American citizens, but they also welcomed stricter regulations for ­those immigrants who had committed serious crimes. Both groups hoped that their support for restriction for some immigrants and benevolence for o­ thers would legitimize their role in the debate over immigration. Luckily for them, their fight against the deportation of unauthorized immigrants coincided with larger criticisms of the deportation system from social welfare advocates and ­legal reformers. Although they accepted the United States’ right to deport, ­these groups argued that the arbitrary nature of the deportations, the lack of an adequate judicial review, and the absence of due pro­cess ­v iolated immigrants’ rights and often caused unnecessary hardships on the deportees and their families.100 Like immigration reform activists, t­ hese advocates and l­ egal reformers centered their critique of deportation around keeping families

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together, but they framed it in dif­fer­ent terms. While Italian and Jewish advocates presented ­family unity as a fundamental right, social welfare advocates and ­legal reformers posited that f­ amily separation constituted a burden for U.S. society as deportation left ­family members without anyone providing for them. At the legislative level, Italian and Jewish activists put pressure on politicians representing ethnic districts to help unauthorized immigrants. In the spring of 1929, they supported Senator Royal S. Copeland (D-­NY) in his push for the passage of the Regulation of Illegal Residence in the United States Act. The act legalized the admission of all immigrants who had entered the country illegally before June 3, 1921, provided they ­were not deportable u­ nder existing laws and contingent upon proof of entry prior to that date, continuous residence in the United States, and good moral character.101 Despite continuing calls for further restriction and nativist attacks against southern and eastern Eu­ro­pe­ans, the passage of the act demonstrated that white mi­grants who had entered the country unlawfully had a better chance at legalizing their status than any of mi­grant of color during the same period. While not a panacea for immigrants from Eu­rope who lived unlawfully in the United States, the 1929 act ultimately helped create a hierarchy of desirability among undocumented immigrants. Italian and Jewish immigration reform advocates also opposed bills proposing alien registration whose goal was to bring undocumented Eu­ro­pe­ans out of the shadows so they could be deported. ­Here too, the double standard between white immigrants and immigrants of color persisted. Alien registration harked back to the Geary Act passed in 1892 in response to the flow of undocumented Chinese a­ fter the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The Geary Act required all Chinese workers to apply for certificates of residence. If they could not provide such certificates on demand, the government assumed that they ­were in the United States unlawfully and, as such, deportable.102 In 1926, OSIA flooded Congress with letters opposing the universal registration of aliens as contrary “to the spirit of the fundamental American princi­ples under­lying the American Government.”103 Senator James Wolcott Wadsworth Jr. (R-­NY) agreed with OSIA’s stance and claimed that such legislation would create extraordinary difficulties and “bring about a condition of affairs in this country closely resembling the Eu­ro­pean espionage system.”104 As many critics of restriction had done before him, he proposed that if aliens entered the United States in violation of the country’s immigration laws, a simpler and more American solution to the prob­lem was to administer the existing laws more effectively rather than criminalize the immigrants themselves.105 Meanwhile, the AJC or­ga­nized a meeting in New York City with “organ­izations

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representing ­every race and creed” to discuss registration and deportation bills before Congress. While interethnic and interfaith collaboration for broader immigration reform remained slow in the making, the committee celebrated that the meeting attracted a broad range of participants, including members of the Presbyterian Church, the YWCA, and the ACLU. The conference also received a strong endorsement from the American Federation of L ­ abor, which, along with the support of a few prominent legislators, persuaded Congress not to pursue registration of Eu­ro­pean immigrants any further since the ­union had long supported immigration restriction.106 If Congress refrained from legislating on the m ­ atter, the Department of ­Labor refused to let it go and took it upon itself to find an alternative to alien registration to tackle undocumented immigration. The Commissioner General of Immigration issued General Order 106, effective July 1, 1928, demanding the issuance of identification cards for newly arriving immigrants.107 Despite Secretary of ­Labor Davis’s efforts to reassure critics that the ID cards could actually benefit incoming immigrants, Jewish and Italian critics objected that the order criminalized ­every foreigner in the country. Like the Geary Act, the order required immigrants to pre­sent their identification cards whenever an immigration officer requested it. Failure to pre­sent it would automatically be considered a tacit admission of illegal entry. Not very dif­fer­ent from immigration enforcement officers’ racial profiling ­today, Jewish critics worried that “­every man who wears a beard and reads a foreign-­language newspaper” could “be suspected ­unless he can produce e­ ither an identification paper or a naturalization paper.”108 The AJC contended that the order could also delay immigrants’ Americanization and subject them “to annoyance and possibly even persecution, besides infringing their natu­ral and constitutional rights.”109 Italian and Jewish activists’ concerns intensified when the Commissioner General of Immigration admitted in public interviews that the ID cards for incoming immigrants represented the first step of a larger plan to issue similar cards to all immigrant residents in the country. Incensed, La Guardia wrote Secretary of ­Labor Davis to protest that the order usurped legislative authority and discriminated against southern and eastern Eu­ro­pe­ans. Drawing a connection back to the Geary Act, the AJC attacked the order as a mea­sure “extraordinary in its oppressiveness and illegality, even if mea­sured by the standards of our ‘Chinese Registration’ procedure.”110 ­Under pressure, the Department of L ­ abor desisted. The congressional debate over undocumented immigrants abated ­until 1935, but Jewish organ­izations continued to push for a solution, especially as anti-­Semitism intensified in Eu­rope. In 1935, several of them endorsed the

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Kerr-­Coolidge bill, which proposed to legalize the status of noncriminal immigrants who had entered the country illegally in the 1920s.111 The sponsors of the bill, Senator Marcus Coo­lidge (D-­MA) and Representative John Kerr (D-­NC), argued that entering the country illegally represented a technical violation, not a criminal offense, and that, in this case, deportation only punished prospective productive and law-­abiding citizens and caused unnecessary hardship and f­amily separation.112 Immigrants had long argued that deportation should not be a punitive tool but with ­little success. In 1893, when the first deportation case reached the Supreme Court in in Fong Yue Ting v. United States, the court dismissed the argument that deportations v­ iolated Fourth, Fifth, and Sixteenth Amendment rights and argued that they could not be considered a punishment ­because they protected national sovereignty.113 When all e­ lse failed, Jewish activists discreetly turned to the executive, Secretary of L ­ abor Perkins, and Commissioner of Immigration and Naturalization Daniel MacCormack to ask for help to shield the bill from attacks from restrictionists in Congress and the State Department. MacCormack lobbied heavi­ly for the passage of the bill, but he cautioned all the “leaders of alien and racial groups against a move for liberalization” ­because “one of the best ways to promote [latent racial and religious antagonism] is to advocate increased immigration, particularly during a period of depression and unemployment.”114 Seeking to help reformers’ cause, Senator Copeland (D-­NY) argued that the exceptional circumstances in Eu­rope warranted the p­ ardon of t­ hese immigrants to avoid sending them back to a destiny of certain persecution, but statements like his only intensified Jewish advocates’ concern that Congress and public opinion, especially ­labor and patriotic socie­ties, would interpret the bill as a mea­sure benefitting only Jewish immigrants.115 William B. Griffith of the IRL confirmed their suspicions when he criticized the bill ­because, in his opinion, it gave too much discretionary power to the already munificent Perkins and MacCormack to decide on deportation cases in f­avor of criminals, dependents, and unemployed during a time of economic crisis.116 Restrictionists in Congress opposed the Kerr-­Coolidge bill and delayed its consideration ­until they had crafted and passed a diluted bill that forced antirestrictionists to accept it or risk getting nothing. In June 1937, Senator Robert R. Reynolds (D-­NC) and Representative Joseph Starnes (D-­AL), a member of the House Rules Committee who prevented the Kerr-­Coolidge bill from ever reaching the floor for debate, proposed four bills to cut the existing quotas, register all aliens in the country, and solve the prob­lem of separated families “by the device of returning t­hose members h­ ere to their native lands.” When the House held hearings on Reynolds and Starnes’s

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bills, all Jewish immigration reform advocates could do was to criticize the bills, support the status quo, and argue for a bill that resembled the Kerr-­ Coolidge bill. Only when Representative Martin Dies (D-­TX), a close ally of Starnes and a staunch restrictionist, introduced a diluted version of the Kerr-­ Coolidge bill did the representative from Alabama cooperate.117 The Dies bill gave the U.S. Department of L ­ abor more latitude over deportation cases involving undocumented immigrants of good character who ­either had resided in the country for more than ten years or had a close relative lawfully admitted into the country. Like many of the ad hoc solutions to prob­lems created by the 1924 Immigration Act, the scope of the bill was narrow and specific. It stipulated that its provisions would last for only four years, enough time to resolve the prob­lem of the undocumented immigrants already in the country.118 Considering the alternative, Italian and Jewish advocates had no choice but to support the bill. Combining the only two arguments that legislators found persuasive, they maintained that ratification of the Dies bill was necessary ­because it preserved ­family unity and avoided turning families torn apart into public charges.119 Generoso Pope, a businessman and prominent New York City politician involved with Tammany Hall, pushed for hearings on the bill and mobilized Italian Americans through the pages of his newspaper, Il Progresso Italo-­Americano. “­There are many families ­today in the United States who live ­under the constant fear that their breadwinners could be deported any day,” one of the articles in Il Progresso read.120 In a widely published letter to Pope, Gaspare Cusumano, an immigration ­lawyer and former member of the Immigrant Aid Society, added that t­ hese undocumented immigrants had committed no crime, had created a new life in the United States, and had no other desire than to become U.S. citizens. Although he praised what Pope and the Italian community had done for the bill, Cusumano believed that the bill would become law only if the president and Perkins endorsed it, so he urged readers to continue their campaign. “­There are still many prejudices and misunderstandings about the foreigner in this Country,” Cusumano wrote, “your most committed personal interest is thus necessary to obtain laws that maintain intact the families and the h­ ouse­holds of t­hese ­future Americans.”121 Despite Cusumano’s confidence in the Roo­se­velt Administration, the Dies bill never became law, demonstrating the challenges that antirestrictionists faced in the 1930s even when they endorsed fairly narrow bills. ­These self-­appointed activists’ willingness to ­settle for some change rather than accept the status quo often angered younger Italian and Jewish Americans who viewed their approach as too much compromise and believed it was

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part of the prob­lem. Older leaders of the Italian community spent most of the 1930s quietly convincing the immigrant generation to assimilate to combat “some of the evils they ­were suffering,”122 but younger Italian Americans bristled at the slow pace of this approach. They found New York City judge Francis Giaccone’s impassioned speeches about the need to create an Italian American voting bloc to oppose the Johnson-­Reed Act more appealing. Emphasizing that “vile is the p­ eople that accepts this law without reacting and combating,” Giaccone called on all Italian Americans to join forces to fight immigration restriction and ask for equality for all immigrants.123 Giaccone’s message resonated among younger, American-­born, Italian Americans, who resented “old stock” Americans b­ ecause they viewed the c­ hildren of the “new” immigrants as Italians, Germans, or Poles rather than Americans.124 The debate over Fascist Italy further complicated the relationship between the immigrant generation and their ­children.125 Few of the American-­born members of the Italian American community realized that immigrant Italians’ ties to their homeland, the pressure to assimilate, and a pervasive sense of inferiority made them an easy target for Fascist propaganda.126 The support for Mussolini and Fascist Italy was also the product of a carefully orchestrated propaganda campaign. Recognizing that Italians abroad represented foreign relations agents from below, Mussolini’s government increased the number of Italian consulates in the major destinations of Italian emigration, subsidized the Italian language press, sponsored after-­school language programs, and or­ga­nized events to celebrate Italian culture. In each of t­ hese venues, Italian officials reminded immigrants that they remained Italians to the seventh generation even if they naturalized.127 In the United States, t­hese initiatives effectively tapped into Italian Americans’ frustration with the 1924 Immigration Act. As Lawrence Frank Pisani ­later argued, “Fascist propagandists who proclaimed the superiority of Italian ­people found a more ­eager reception for their ideas from t­ hose whose spirits w ­ ere mortified by the [1924] immigration act.”128 The popularity of Italian Fascism in the United States began to decline only when the U.S. government condemned Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, ­after which many prominent Italian Americans severed their ties with the Fascist Italian government b­ ecause they could damage their po­liti­cal influence. As the refugee crisis in Eu­rope intensified, the Jewish community divided along generational lines too. While the older generation that constituted the leadership of many Jewish organ­izations was often cautious, preferring to mobilize but maintain a low profile, many younger activists objected strongly to the “sha-­sha philosophy of Jewish polemics, which sought to turn away wrath

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with gentle words, to obscure the Jew from public gaze.”129 Reminiscing about his activism within the ranks of the Anti-­Defamation League (ADL), Alexander F. Miller remembered that during the 1930s its leaders “felt that Jews ­were a powerless minority and therefore would be better off if maintained a low profile. They believed Jews should attempt to fight anti-­Semitism and conquer discrimination with the help of impor­tant Christians rather than speaking up for themselves.”130 By the end of the 1930s, anti-­Jewish sentiment had reached new heights. ­Father Charles Coughlin’s anti-­Semitic commentary during his radio speeches became increasingly virulent. Nazi sympathizers openly held demonstrations, broadcast “Buy Christian” slogans, and distributed anti-­Jewish leaflets without serious repercussions. ­These accusations had their intended effect. Many Americans considered the Depression the result of a moral and spiritual crisis precipitated by a conspiracy of unchristian subversives, especially Jews, and discriminated against them in the workforce and at school.131 By May 1939, the press and radio routinely talked about “the Jewish prob­lem” and speculated that Jews ­were pushing the United States to enter the war. The hysteria around a renewed popu­lar belief in a Jewish conspiracy led many American Jews to fear that the very presence of large numbers of recent Jewish immigrants in the United States would be a constant source of anti-­Jewish feeling.132

Conclusion The older “accommodationists” and the younger “protesters” within the Italian and Jewish communities never reached an agreement about the best strategy to challenge the draconian immigration system Congress had passed in the 1920s. For most of the 1930s, both groups, as ADL member A. Abbot Rosen put it, ­were “an immediate post-­immigrant community” trying to adjust to life ­under restriction during a time of economic hardships and anti-­immigrant hysteria.133 As they transitioned from a prevalently immigrant community to a predominantly native-­born population, both communities worked to negotiate their presence in the United States, carve out a niche for themselves in U.S. society, and attenuate the harshest provisions of the 1924 Immigration Act on both sides of the Atlantic. The Depression and per­sis­tent nativism ­limited the effectiveness of their efforts, but they created the conditions necessary to push for more comprehensive reform l­ ater in the c­ entury, especially as they solidified their presence in the po­liti­cal arena through their support for Franklin D. Roo­se­velt and the New Deal.134

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While Congress remained adamant about maintaining the status quo throughout the 1930s, even as a serious refugee crisis unfolded in Eu­rope, immigration reform activists realized that some negotiation was still pos­si­ble. Like during the 1920s, only moderates w ­ ere welcome during debates over U.S. immigration policy, but their continuing push for ­family reunion, their challenges to the LPC clause, and their support for regularizing the status of immigrants who had entered the country illegally showed them the potential of undermining restriction from the margins, the importance of advocating for reform in the name of f­amily reunion, and the promise of interethnic collaboration. Many of t­ hese developments w ­ ere not as clear by the end of the de­cade, however. In fact, for many, the prospects for reform remained bleak. “No one who knows the situation,” wrote a Jewish activist, “can have much hope that the immigration policy of the U.S. w ­ ill become less restrictive than it is now. On the contrary, the tendency is for more restriction, and it is likely that the next few years ­will see further restrictive legislation.”135 The outbreak of World War II and, even more so, the beginning of the Cold War would change that. Both events opened new opportunities not just for Italian and Jewish immigration reform advocates but for all the ethnic, religious, and civic groups who had long been fighting for immigration reform.

chapter four

International Migration and One World Reframing the Debate on Immigration Reform in a New Era, 1945–1952 World War II and the Cold War afforded all immigration reform advocates a unique opportunity to challenge immigration restriction. As the United States emerged as a global superpower, few could ignore that a racist immigration policy tarnished the U.S. image abroad and undermined U.S. foreign policy objectives.1 World War II forced U.S. policymakers to modify immigration policies to manage demands for dif­fer­ent kinds of l­abor on the home front as well as to honor allies critical to the war effort. Emboldened by their legislative successes during the war, immigration reform activists set their sights on comprehensive immigration reform ­after 1945. With the onset of the Cold War, Italian and Jewish advocates pushed Congress to abolish the discriminatory national origins quota system in the interest of international goodwill, positive foreign relations, economic competitiveness, and racial equality. The rhe­ toric of Cold War civil rights also lifted several of the barriers that had made it difficult for supporters of immigration reform from dif­fer­ent immigrant groups to collaborate in the past. Nativist legislators’ commitment to immigration restriction did not abate, however. They just found new ways to accomplish the same results, setting the stage for a showdown between critics and defenders of the immigration system ratified in the 1920s. Dominated by power­ful personalities like the fervid anti-­Communist and restrictionist Senator Patrick McCarran (D-­NV), both chambers of Congress dragged their feet on changing U.S. immigration laws and attached several strings to any revision they passed. They often accepted a narrow view of Cold War civil rights and, as Mae Ngai puts it, reduced “the concept of immigration reform to a question of formal equality.”2 This rhe­toric, along with vitriolic attacks in the media, constrained immigration reformers’ agenda, l­ imited their strategies, and narrowed their ability to frame immigration reform within a more inclusive immigration rights discourse. Several of the acts passed in the 1940s and 1950s—­like ­those abolishing Chinese exclusion, helping displaced persons, or reuniting GIs with their spouses overseas—­further contributed to the creation of a two-­tier immigration system, one that privileged permanent immigrants with skills and ­family ties but discounted and left vulnerable

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temporary or circulatory mi­grants who had neither. Nonetheless, the incremental changes for which immigration reform advocates fought continued to dismantle the illusion of closed borders, even at the height of anti-­ Communist hysteria. More importantly, t­ hese legislative changes slowly shifted the countries of origin of the new immigrants, paving the way for the demographic change that followed the passage of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act. Despite ­these major milestones, the increased cooperation among immigration reform advocates revealed the challenges of interethnic collaboration that would continue u­ ntil 1965 and beyond. Although they shared a broad commitment to a more humane and less discriminatory immigration system, they disagreed over reform priorities ­because of their dif­fer­ent agendas, ideological convictions, and positions of power in U.S. society. The difficulties in bridging ­these impor­tant differences allowed restrictionists to take advantage of their disagreements to divide liberal reformers and pass narrower reforms.

The “Delayed Pilgrims”: Refugee Legislation and Immigration Reform, 1940–1950 The initial conversations about immigration during World War II eerily echoed ­those that Americans had had during World War I and offered l­ ittle hope that much would change.3 In 1940, a pamphlet titled “The Refugee Invasion of Amer­i­ca through Immigration” revived fears about subversive and dangerous refugees seeking to enter the United States to overthrow its government and destroy U.S. society. If ­there w ­ ere any doubts about who the target was, the pamphlet was reprinted in 1943 and widely distributed along with another pamphlet titled “B’nai B’rith’s Jewish Conspiracy.” B ­ ehind the two pamphlets ­were Earl Southard, secretary of the Citizens USA Committee in Chicago, Homer Mertz, who introduced a resolution at an American First Party’s convention calling for the sterilization of Jews, and Ainsley Horney, member of the German American Bund in Milbourne, Illinois, and owner of real estate property exposing a sign that read “No Jews Allowed.”4 Italian Americans did not fare much better. ­After Pearl Harbor, the government declared noncitizen Germans, Italians, and Japa­nese alien enemies and required them to register.5 U.S. authorities asked 600,000 Italian residents to carry identity cards at all times, forced 10,000 Italians residing in California to relocate, arrested about 1,500 Italians for curfew, travel, or contraband violations, and sent 250 Italians to internment camps.6 Eventually, ste­reo­types about the “soft Italian character,” Italy’s early defeats in the war, the large presence of Italian American soldiers

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in the armed forces, and, most importantly, the 1942 congressional elections persuaded the U.S. government to lift the blanket designation of Italians on U.S. soil as e­ nemy aliens.7 Although the discrimination they faced ended fairly quickly, many Italian Americans resented that to many Americans, “even a descendant of the third generation of an immigrant from a non-­English speaking country of Eu­rope is a foreigner.”8 ­These experiences profoundly ­shaped how Italian and Jewish activists intervened in the debate over refugee and immigration legislation during the war. Since they prioritized sending provisions and funds to ­family and friends in Italy, Italian American activists remained mostly on the sidelines but followed closely legislative developments in Congress. While Jewish critics of immigration restriction did not have that choice, they remained deeply divided over how to advance legislation that could help as many Jewish refugees as pos­si­ble quickly. Several Jewish agencies focused on helping Jewish refugees relocate to third countries.9 Frustrated with Western countries’ reluctance to take in Jewish refugees, the AJC traveled extensively through Latin Amer­ic­ a in 1944 to persuade local governments to admit groups of Eu­ro­pean Jews, but most of the negotiations proved fruitless.10 Exasperated, a growing number of American Jews, including non-­Zionists, called for the creation of an autonomous Jewish state as the only solution to the refugee crisis.11 Yet ­others continued lobbying the U.S. government ­because they believed that the crisis would end only if the United States set an example in admitting refugees and supported the creation of a Jewish state.12 All of them looked at President Roo­se­velt for help. When Roo­se­velt fi­nally de­cided to intervene, several of his decisions profoundly reshaped immigration to the United States for de­cades to come. Many of Roo­se­velt’s initiatives contributed to reframing who deserved admission to the United States along the lines of class, skills, and education. Roo­ se­velt asked his Advisory Committee on Refugees to put together a list of eminent refugees and then instructed the State Department to issue temporary visas in their names. In late 1940, his administration authorized consuls outside of Germany to issue visas to refugees who had reached Portugal, French Africa, and China, and to charge them against the German quota. In January 1941, the administration also stipulated an agreement with Canada that allowed refugees with temporary visas in the United States to cross the border, apply for a quota number in Canada, and reenter the United States as regular immigrants.13 At the same time, Roo­se­velt legitimized many Americans’ fears that recent immigrants and foreign nationals living in the United States posed a threat to national security. In June 1940, the same month that policymakers passed the Alien Registration Act, Roo­se­velt requested Congress to

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move the Immigration and Naturalization Ser­vice from the L ­ abor Department to the Justice Department. The move effectively neutralized L ­ abor Secretary Frances Perkins, the most out­spoken supporter of immigration reform in the Roo­se­velt Administration.14 More importantly, it transformed immigration from an economic concern to a law-­enforcement and national defense issue. If refugee legislation was not forthcoming, Italian and Jewish immigration reformers, like all groups supporting immigration reform, looked at the passage of the Magnuson Act in 1943 as a critical development that highlighted the differences between the two world wars and offered a pathway to broader reform. When the Japa­nese government used Asian exclusion laws to drive a wedge in Sino-­American relations, Congress and Washington officials realized that Chinese exclusion endangered the war effort. Seizing the opportunity, a diverse group of actors came together and persuasively argued for the repeal of Chinese exclusion as an inexpensive way for the United States to demonstrate goodwill, ­counter Japan’s attacks, and rehabilitate the image of the U.S. abroad. The Magnuson Act ended the exclusion of Chinese immigrants and repealed their ineligibility for naturalization, which had been in place since 1882, but it allocated only 105 yearly quota slots to Chinese immigrants based on ancestry rather than nationality. Despite its tokenism, the passage of the act offered valuable lessons for critics of immigration restriction. The act passed ­because its supporters explic­itly connected immigration reform to U.S. international interests, settled on a specific goal rather than w ­ holesale reform, and built a broad alliance.15 Several organ­izations, especially Jewish ones, took ­these lessons to heart when confronted with the millions of displaced persons (DPs) scattered across Eu­rope at the end of World War II. By the fall of 1945, estimates counted no fewer than two million nonrepatriable DPs in Western Eu­rope, who w ­ ere ­either stateless victims of the Holocaust or expatriates of newly Communist countries. Yet the United States, and the West in general, had ­little inclination to help them. By the end of 1945, the U.S. Congress made it clear that it would reject any bill proposing to admit Eu­ro­pean DPs outside of the existing quota system.16 Congress’s position echoed Americans’ attitude ­toward the DP crisis. A 1945 Gallup Poll asked Americans ­whether they would admit more, fewer, or the same number of Eu­ro­pean immigrants than before the war, revealing that only 5 ­percent of the respondents answered “more.”17 “If I ­were in Congress ­today,” a constituent wrote to Representative Adolph Sabath, “I would sponsor a bill to deport all aliens . . . ​admitted to this country within the last ten years.”18

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Frustrated that the predicament of DPs in Eu­rope remained a low priority, Jewish agencies allied themselves with prominent Christian organ­izations to put pressure on President Truman, but, as during the 1930s, U.S. State Department officials represented a bigger obstacle than lack of po­liti­cal ­will.19 Connecting geopolitics to Christian decency, the AJC, World Council of Churches, International Rescue Committee, National Catholic Welfare Conference, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), and Lutheran World Federation argued that helping Eu­ro­pean refugees represented a moral imperative to alleviate the atrocities of the war.20 ­Behind the scenes, Trea­sury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, encouraged by HIAS, convinced Truman to send Earl G. Harrison, former Commissioner of Immigration, to Eu­rope to gather information about the DPs.21 On December  22, 1945, President Truman, a­ fter receiving Harrison’s scathing report of the terrible living conditions of the DP camps, bypassed Congress and issued an immigration directive, which reserved half of the quotas of Eu­ro­pean countries for displaced persons. In recognition of years of activism and experience, the directive assigned voluntary agencies (VOLAGS) a prominent role in the relocation of DPs.22 The directive allowed blanket assurances by recognized VOLAGS for large numbers of persons rather than individual affidavits to increase the number of admissible refugees.23 Despite its importance, the U.S. State Department balked at Truman’s directive and admitted only 5,000 DPs in the first nine months of operation.24 Although it remained frustrated with the State Department’s o­ bstructionism, the AJC saw the directive as a positive development and, working ­behind the scenes, de­cided to launch a national campaign for the admission of all Eu­ro­ pean refugees.25 Similarly to the Citizens Committee to Repeal Chinese Exclusion, the AJC lobbied for a specific cause, tied it to U.S. foreign policy, and sought a broad alliance. Still reeling from the attacks of the 1920s and 1930s, the committee also downplayed “the exceptional need of the Jews for immigration into the United States.”26 The campaign emphasized that 80 ­percent of the DPs in Eu­rope ­were Christians who had lost every­thing and feared returning home.27 This decision proved successful, but, ­because it nonetheless prioritized Jewish refugees, the AJC advocated for the admission of only the approximate 850,000 DPs in Germany, Austria, and Italy, ignoring the 12 million expelled Volksdeutsche and the millions of African and Asian refugees around the world for whom, as Dinnerstein puts it, “the Jewish leaders felt no sense of responsibility.”28 The initiative pushed Truman to take more action. In early October 1946, Truman, disappointed with the meager results of his directive, asked Congress to enact legislation to admit Eu­ro­pean refugees outside

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the quota system.29 Overnight, Truman’s proposal turned the DP prob­lem into an issue of public concern. In a poll conducted a­ fter his announcement, only 16 ­percent of the respondents said “yes” when asked w ­ hether they would allow “more Jewish and other Eu­ro­pean refugees to come to the United States . . . ​ than are allowed u­ nder the law.” An overwhelming 72 ­percent said “no.”30 Truman also drew strong criticisms from Orthodox and Zionist Jews who worried that, if Congress took up his suggestion, the new legislation would hamper the prospects of creating a Jewish homeland to which Jewish DPs could relocate.31 Undeterred, the AJC quietly established the nondenominational Citizens Committee on Displaced Persons (CCDP) as the official advocacy group for DP legislation.32 ­After recruiting Earl Harrison as chair, the AJC or­ga­nized the first strategy session of the new organ­ization in New York City on December  20, 1946. While Harrison strategized with Representative Celler about who should be allies and how they should be recruited,33 the AJC invited several Protestant and Catholic Americans from lay and church groups to attend.34 The meeting accomplished l­ittle in terms of strategy, but the AJC considered it a success b­ ecause it appeared as an initiative launched by noted Americans interested in raising the profile of the DP cause.35 ­After the meeting, Eleanor Roo­se­velt, Fiorello La Guardia, and former Secretary of State Edward  R. Stettinius  Jr. accepted to serve as vice-­chairpersons. The most prominent endorsement from the Italian American community came from Charles Poletti, the “governor” of Italy during the war and former lieutenant governor of New York. Although Italian Americans supported the CCDP efforts and the National Catholic Welfare Conference’s involvement, they remained on the margins of the debate over the DP legislation. They w ­ ere hardly the exception. Despite the numerous endorsements from ethnic organ­ izations, over 90 ­percent of the funds ­behind the committee’s activities came from individual American Jews and Jewish organ­izations.36 When confronted with opposition in Congress, where many continued to propose bills suspending or reducing immigration,37 the AJC turned its attention to finding a sponsor in Congress for the bill drafted u­ nder the aegis of the CDDP.38 ­After failing to recruit a sponsor from among the members of the House Judiciary Committee and being turned down by Republican Senators Arthur H. Vandenberg of Michigan and Robert Taft of Ohio, the AJC settled on Representative William G. Stratton (R-­IL) and Senator Homer Ferguson (R-­OH).39 The Stratton bill proposed the admission of 400,000 DPs outside the yearly quotas for four consecutive years, but, in an effort to build support for the bill, it also required applicants to meet all the admission requirements of U.S. immigration policy and privileged close relatives of U.S. citizens and

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allied war veterans.40 Meant to entice restrictionists, ­these concessions created more, rather than fewer, obstacles to admission and further contributed to changing the expectations about who was an admissible immigrant in the long term. In the short term, the House did agree to hold hearings on the bill. The AJC sent only two witnesses of Jewish origin, Rabbi Philip S. Bern­ stein, a former adviser on Jewish Affairs to the army in Eu­rope, and Herbert H. Lehman, former governor of New York and former director of United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA). Fearing obstruction, Representative Celler wrote to several cabinet officials of the Truman Administration, ­labor representatives, and members of the Catholic hierarchy to encourage them to testify and support the bill.41 When President Truman endorsed the bill, the AJC felt optimistic about the chances for its passage. They ­were not the only ones, though, who had viewed the passage of the Magnuson Act as a good sign for immigration reform, which only angered restrictionists in Congress. The campaign for the passage of the 1948 Displaced Persons Act coincided with several efforts to challenge U.S. immigration policy. ­After the repeal of Chinese exclusion in 1943, new co­ali­tions successfully lobbied Congress to repeal Indian and Filipino exclusion and pass the War Brides Act of 1945 and the Fiancées and Fiancés Act of 1946. Although many believed that they w ­ ere “cosmetic programs and laws” ­because of their narrow scope,42 they nonetheless challenged restriction and began to change the racial makeup of the United States. The Stratton bill fell outside t­ hese par­ameters. Throughout the hearings, Representative Ed Gossett, a member of the Immigration Subcommittee in the House, argued that many of the DPs ­were subversives, complained that too many of them ­were Jewish, and criticized the involvement of Jewish organ­izations in the DP debate. Many policymakers shared his views. While in public many legislators couched their reluctance as concern about job competition, in private they admitted that they worried that the Stratton bill would overwhelmingly benefit Jewish DPs b­ ecause it contained no provision limiting the number of Jewish refugees entering the country.43 In response to the anti-­Semitic undertones of the debate over the Stratton bill, the AJC launched another campaign that portrayed Eu­ro­pean DPs largely as Christian victims of Fascism and Communism, but the success of the campaign ­limited the committee’s ability to fight for the admission of more Jewish refugees. By the summer of 1947, the Displaced Persons bill had received endorsements from several state and local government officials, national and local grassroots organ­izations, and prominent newspapers and magazines.44 More importantly, the major Catholic and Protestant organ­izations, in Genizi’s

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words, “reluctantly and gradually called upon Amer­ic­ a to open its gates to ­those ­people who refused to return to their countries of origin, now dominated by Communists.”45 ­Under pressure, Congress took up the refugee legislation, but the final version of the Displaced Persons Act of 1948 had several constraints that guaranteed that as few Jewish refugees as pos­si­ble be admitted. It placed a December 22, 1945, cutoff date, excluding from eligibility 100,000 Jews who had left Rus­sia or who had fled the Polish pogroms in 1946.46 The bill also favored farm laborers, a group less likely to include Jewish refugees; mortgaged the visas against the quotas of the countries from which they arrived; and applied only to refugees in camps in the British, French, and U.S zones of Austria, Germany, and Italy.47 “This compromise mea­sure,” lamented the AJC, “was a shock and a disappointment to all who had hoped that this country would assume world leadership in the solution of the DP prob­lem.”48 And yet the AJC ultimately supported the bill ­because, despite its anti-­Semitic bias, it represented pro­gress and ­because its leaders worried that protesting its passage ­after arguing for months that the majority of the DPs ­were Christian would be po­liti­cally risky.49 Italian Americans forcefully criticized the 1948 Displaced Persons Act for making it more difficult for Catholic and Jewish refugees to gain admission, but, on the heels of the passage of other immigration acts, they too began to adopt the same tactics that had emerged e­ arlier in the war among critics of immigration restriction. Heavi­ly involved in the Letters to Italy campaign to encourage friends and relatives in Italy to vote against Communist candidates in the 1948 elections, Italian Americans, ­after a de­cade of divisive internal disputes, found unity in their anti-­Communism and support for Italy’s recovery. They explic­itly linked the Soviet Union’s appeal in Italy to U.S. inaction and presented their close ties with the Italian government as an asset to U.S. foreign policy interests.50 They also embraced several aspects of the emerging Cold War civil rights rhe­toric in their critiques of the quota system. “The United States ­will never have the support of the p­ eoples of other countries,” noted an article in Il Progresso Italo-­Americano, “­until ­we’ll seriously . . . ​eliminate ­every practice of racial hatred, religious prejudice, and national origin discrimination among us.”51 The call for racial equality was more expedient than genuine, but the shift in rhe­toric paved the way for major changes in Italian Americans’ role in the fight against immigration restriction. Following the example of other antirestrictionist agencies, OSIA created a Committee on Immigration and Naturalization specifically to lobby for immigration reform. Like many similar committees at the time, the committee set specific goals. It prioritized the liberalization of the quota system, undocumented immigration,

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and dual citizenship.52 It also pledged to fight for “a just, reasonable and humane legislation, not only for the Italian p­ eople but for all the p­ eople throughout the world.”53 It was in this context that OSIA criticized the narrow focus of the 1948 Displaced Persons Act. Despite the shortcomings of the 1948 Displaced Persons Act, detractors and supporters of the law alike ­were in for a surprise. Unencumbered by Congress, Truman stacked the Displaced Persons Commission with members sympathetic to the refugee cause and from dif­fer­ent religious backgrounds: Ugo Carusi, former U.S. commissioner of immigration; Edward M. O’Connor, former director of the War Relief Ser­vices for the National Catholic Welfare Conference; and Harry  H. Rosenfield, a former delegate to UNESCO. As Dinnerstein observes, the three commissioners w ­ ere so imaginative in their interpretation of the act’s provisions, “that many legislators would ­later won­ der how the bill that they had voted for contained so many loopholes.”54 Moreover, building on the Truman Directive of 1945, the Displaced Persons Act formalized the involvement of voluntary agencies in the resettlement of refugees, which guaranteed that more refugees would be admitted. Thanks to more than $1.5 million from the U.S. government,55 ­these agencies—­especially HIAS, the National Catholic Welfare Conference, the Church World Ser­vice, the National Lutheran Council, and the United Ser­vice for New Americans—­covered almost 90 ­percent of the sponsorships filed with the Displaced Persons Commission.56 More than any of the other agencies, HIAS worked hard to pre­sent a positive image of the refugees. With an eye to decades-­old ste­reo­types about Jewish mi­grants, its lit­er­a­ture emphasized that many of the refugees relocated to other U.S. cities shortly a­ fter their arrival in New York City, promptly enrolled in school to learn En­glish, and Americanized as quickly as pos­si­ble.57 Heartened by the unexpected success of the Displaced Persons Commission, Truman’s electoral victory, and a Demo­cratic Congress with more members sympathetic to the refugee cause, many American Jews began to mobilize to amend the 1948 act. Although they again sought to collaborate with other agencies and ethnic groups, Jewish organ­izations remained the driving force ­behind ­these efforts. HIAS repeatedly issued press releases to highlight the inadequacy of the existing law and lament the slow pace of the resettlement.58 New York Representative Emanuel Celler publicly called for more liberal Displaced Persons legislation in the presence of delegates from 2,500 l­abor, religious, and fraternal Jewish organ­izations at the sixty-­fifth annual meeting of HIAS in New York City.59 The chair of the Displaced Persons Commission himself, Ugo Carusi, intervened in the debate and called for changes to the Dis-

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placed Persons Act, but Edward Corsi was the only other Italian American to call for the elimination of any “restrictions which make it impossible for many of the war sufferers to enter the United States.”60 Although many Italian Americans followed with interest the AJC’s efforts,61 they remained on the margins of the DP debate once again and quietly continued to focus on ­family reunion. Some a­ dopted nephews and nieces, married aspiring mi­grants, sent for one ­family member in the hope of bringing other relatives left ­behind, or vouched for tourist visas for applicants who anticipated remaining in the United States and hoped to adjust their status once in the country. O ­ thers tried to naturalize as quickly as pos­si­ble ­after settling in the United States so they could send for other ­family members, asked their employers to offer a job to their friends arriving from Italy, or entered the country illegally with the plan of regularizing their status soon ­after their arrival and bringing the rest of their families over afterwards.62 Yet Italian Americans’ apathy ­toward refugee legislation represented only one prob­lem for Jewish activists. The main obstacle remained a restrictionist co­ali­tion in Congress that objected to many of the acts passed during and immediately ­after World War II and wanted to stop the tide for reform. Senator Patrick McCarran (D-­NV) led the counteroffensive. A devout Catholic and staunch anti-­Communist, the se­ nior senator from Nevada—­who at one point chaired the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization, the Judiciary Committee, the Appropriations Subcommittee, and the Subcommittee on Foreign Aid all at the same time—­ had the power and influence for the job and was not afraid to go against his own party.63 Unlike Truman, who viewed immigration policy in a global context in which the United States accepted its responsibilities of leadership, McCarran considered it an instrument of domestic policy intended to preserve the racial status quo enshrined in the 1924 Immigration Act and protect U.S. democracy. Guided by a mix of anti-­Communism, nativism, and anti-­Semitism, he believed that the Displaced Persons Act placed the country at risk of “a flood of undesirables” and blamed its passage on Jewish politicians and the Jewish organ­izations with which they collaborated closely.64 The debate over the renewal of the 1948 Displaced Persons Act infuriated Senator McCarran, but the AJC, through the CCDP, successfully staved off his attacks. The CCDP coordinated yet another national campaign to recruit supporters, orchestrated a letter writing campaign to legislators, and encouraged newspapers across the country to endorse the extension and support the elimination of any form of discrimination on grounds of race, religion, or national origin from the act. In addition to receiving the endorsement of the

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Displaced Persons Commission, 140 welfare, civic, and l­abor organ­izations publicly supported changes to the law. “Prominent among ­these groups,” the AJC noted, “­were the national ­labor organ­izations, the CIO and AFL, which unequivocally endorsed the effort to secure adequate and non-­discriminatory legislation,” a fact of considerable significance since or­ga­nized ­labor had traditionally supported immigration restriction.65 No major Italian American groups adhered, but the broad co­ali­tion made it impossible for Congress to ignore the 1948 Displaced Persons Act. More complicated for the CCDP was the friction within the co­ali­tion it had carefully orchestrated. While the AJC and the American Jewish Congress wanted to bring more Jewish DPs to the United States, secular Zionists, Orthodox Jews, and the Yiddish press opposed the renewal ­because they worried that fewer Eu­ro­pean Jews would move to the newly established state of Israel if offered the opportunity to ­settle in the United States.66 Moreover, the National Catholic Welfare Conference (NCWC) asked for the allocation of visas in the new Displaced Persons Act to be based on religious affiliation ­because very few Catholics had made it to the United States ­until then even though they represented the largest group of DPs.67 More troubling, several legislators, fearing that “without this provision a disproportionate number of Jews might continue to swell the totals,”68 endorsed the suggestion from the NCWC. The crisis reached new heights when the Lutheran Resettlement Ser­v ice pushed to double the quota allotted to the Volksdeutsche despite opposition from State Department officials and from members of the Jewish community who worried that it would facilitate the admission of former Nazis or Nazi collaborators. Concerned that Senator McCarran would use the two proposals to obstruct the passage of the amended act, the AJC, a­ fter a series of intense meetings with their Catholic and Protestant counter­parts, accepted a carefully worded provision allowing for the entry of more Volksdeutsche in exchange for the withdrawal of the religion provision.69 The impasse came to an end when Representative Emanuel Celler (D-­NY), chair of the House Judiciary Committee and one of McCarran’s nemeses, reported out a bill that appeased the dif­fer­ent factions in the DP co­ali­tion. The Ferguson-­Kilgore bill stipulated the admission of an additional 179,000 DPs (over and above the original 205,000 in the 1948 act), 56,623 persons of German ethnic origin in eastern Eu­rope, 18,000 members of the Polish Army then residing in ­Great Britain, 4,000 refugees in Shanghai, 5,000 nonquota orphans, and 15,000 recent po­liti­cal refugees. More importantly, the bill set a cutoff date of January 1, 1949, rather than December 22, 1945, to make eligible refugees

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from Nazism and Communism. In June 1949, the House of Representatives passed the bill in three hours a­ fter overcoming the opposition of a few representatives who insisted on keeping the cutoff date of the original act. Any hope for a similarly expeditious passage in the Senate faded when Senator McCarran announced that his committee would neither report nor schedule hearings on the bill within the year.70 In January 1950, amid the t­ rials of Alger Hiss, the “loss” of China, and the Soviet Union’s first detonation of the atomic bomb in 1949, McCarran proposed a restrictive immigration bill to counteract his opponents’ DP bill. The bill, which eventually became the McCarran-­Walter Act of 1952, completely ignored liberal reformers’ agenda and proposed new restrictions.71 Although the Senate de­cided not to consider his bill, McCarran, arguing that the Ferguson-­Kilgore bill would “tear down our immigration barriers to the end that this country ­will be flooded with aliens,” stalled debate on the renewal of the Displaced Persons Act u­ ntil April.72 ­After lengthy debates, the conferees fi­nally agreed on a compromise bill on June 1, 1950. A mixture of progressive and restrictive mea­sures typical of the Cold War era, the 1950 Displaced Persons Act allocated 415,744 additional refugee visas and set a cutoff date of January 1, 1949, but it also continued to mortgage the visas against each country’s yearly quotas and, to weaken the influence of the lenient Displaced Persons Commission, assigned equal authority to consuls, Immigration and Naturalization Ser­vice officials, and the Displaced Persons Commission to rule on the applicants’ admissibility. Reflecting its Eurocentrism, the act privileged Volksdeutsche, Greek displaced persons, Polish veterans in exile, post-1948 refugees from Czecho­slo­va­kia, and Eu­ro­pean refugees in China.73 While not perfect, many immigration reform activists saw the passage of the 1950 act as pro­gress. The DP co­ali­tion’s euphoria turned out to be short-­lived, however. Immediately ­after Congress voted for the compromise bill, McCarran redoubled his efforts to limit its impact. As Leonard Dinnerstein observes, McCarran lost the legislative b­ attle on the DP issue, but he won the administrative fight.74 His tour of the Displaced Persons Commission’s Eu­ro­pean offices in the fall of 1949 and his repeated accusations of malpractice took a toll on the committee officers who, in response to his criticisms, enacted stricter screening procedures that led to backlogs and delays.75 Chances for the admission of more DPs dwindled even further when McCarran pushed through Congress his Internal Security Act purportedly to reduce the admissibility of potential subversives. In real­ity, the act allowed McCarran to undermine the 1950 Displaced Persons Act.76 Passed over Truman’s veto, the act, among other t­ hings, introduced

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what civil rights critics called the princi­ple of “permanent guilt,” which made any visa applicant who had previously belonged to a totalitarian or Communist organ­ization ineligible for entry.77 Coupled with the delayed passage of the Displaced Persons Act and the Displaced Persons Commission’s stricter evaluation pro­cess, the 1950 Internal Security Act significantly reduced the number of DPs who entered the United States. By the time the act expired in 1953, 5,000 quota slots had gone unused. More importantly, in spite of the Jewish leaders’ efforts and willingness to compromise, only one in six of the 410,000 refugees admitted in the United States between 1945 and 1953 was a Holocaust survivor. If neither of the Displaced Persons Acts lived up to activists’ expectations, both of them, along with the other ad hoc mea­sures Congress passed during the same period, expanded the opportunities for more mi­grants to come to the United States and offered a roadmap for immigration reform advocates in the early Cold War years. First, all of the mea­sures reaffirmed a preference for immigrants with education, f­amily ties, and economic potential, a trend begun as early as 1882, when Congress exempted students, merchants, and diplomats from the Chinese Exclusion Act.78 Immigration reform activists took note, even though many of them found ­these preferences cruel when applied to refugees and discriminatory when affecting unskilled mi­grants. Second, many immigration reform advocates realized that the momentous changes in U.S. foreign policy of the 1940s represented a double-­edge sword. While World War II and the Cold War provided a much-­needed opening for reform, they made them vulnerable to attacks from power­ful and entrenched politicians like McCarran. In response, many advocates of Eu­ro­pean descent de­cided to refrain from calling for the outright abolition of the national origins quota system and focused instead on advocating for greater “flexibility in the administration of quota limitations.”79 Lastly, while diffidence lingered, many activists realized the value of interethnic and interreligious collaboration. American Jews ­were at the forefront of promoting cooperation as an effective strategy to neutralize anti-­Communist hysteria and advocate for immigrant rights for all. Many Jewish activists felt that this was a natu­ral progression, but they also realized that the creation of the State of Israel gave Jewish refugees a new destination and the Cold War made it hard for them to help Jews ­behind the Iron Curtain. Although much less active than American Jews in the 1940s, Italian Americans too learned that collaboration, especially with the Catholic Church, helped them advance the cause of Italian migration more effectively ­because it legitimized their professed anti-­Communism and cast their ties with Italy in a positive light. ­These co­ali­tions soon faced their hardest test yet.

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Between Restriction and Inclusion: The McCarran-­Walter Act 1952 McCarran’s push for the Internal Security Act represented only the beginning of his larger plan to wrestle the reform pro­cess away from liberal immigration reform advocates. In January 1951, McCarran resurrected the immigration bill he had proposed a year e­ arlier to protect U.S. democracy “in this black era of fifth column infiltration and cold warfare,” a not-­so-­veiled reference to what he elsewhere referred to as “Jewish interests.”80 With its combination of restrictive, anti-­Communist, and Cold War civil rights mea­sures, McCarran’s bill incarnated the po­liti­cal atmosphere of the early 1950s. While it retained the national origins quota system, introduced more screening mea­sures, and tightened exclusion, deportation, and naturalization procedures, it also included a small quota for refugees, ended Asian exclusion altogether, and removed all remaining racial, gender, and nationality barriers to citizenship. Many of the civil rights mea­sures revealed a continued preoccupation with maintaining the existing racial makeup of the United States, however. Although it abolished Asian exclusion, the bill granted only a minimal quota of 100 to each of the countries in the Asia-­Pacific Triangle to remove, in McCarran’s words, “the pre­ sent racial discriminations in a realistic manner,” and calculated Asian quotas on the basis of ancestral origin rather than place of birth. To restrict the growing flow of nonwhite immigrants from Jamaica, the bill introduced the first yearly quota (of 100) on immigration from the Ca­rib­bean islands u­ nder British rule, previously included in the generous British quota. At the same time, it continued to exempt the Western Hemi­sphere from the quota system to allow the importation of returnable and cheap Mexican workers.81 Lastly, the bill systematized and proposed a preference system that explic­itly favored immigrants with f­ amily ties, education, and economic potential.82 By the 1950s, prioritizing f­ amily reunion was emerging as the best mechanism to retain the existing racial makeup of the United States since only immigrants who w ­ ere already in the country and had been vetted and presumably assimilated could send for ­family members. When, following McCarran’s lead, Representative Francis Walter (D-­PA) introduced a similar immigration bill in the House, immigration reform advocates from dif­fer­ent immigrant groups mobilized immediately. Although immigration reform activists found Walter’s bill less objectionable than McCarran’s ­because it allowed the reallocation of unused quotas, they sought to propose an omnibus bill of their own.83 In February 1951, Representative Emanuel Celler, hoping to unite all immigration reform advocates, introduced

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a more liberal but pragmatic bill centered on the reallocation of unused national quotas to ease the burden of oversubscribed quotas among key Cold War allies in Eu­rope, especially Italy.84 He enlisted Senator Lehman, a longtime champion of liberal immigration and refugee legislation, to sponsor a similar “good practical bill” in the Senate.85 Lehman, recognizing that such a bill offered a major opportunity to advance liberal immigration reform, instructed Julius Edelstein, his chief of legislative staff, to draft a more ambitious bill and mobilize widespread support for broad reform. The senator, who had served on the AJC’s executive board, forged an alliance with the organ­ization and together coordinated much of the opposition against McCarran’s agenda. Hoping to thwart this nascent opposition, McCarran and Walter took the unorthodox move of calling for joint hearings on their bills from March 6 to April 9, 1951, allowing them to exclude Celler’s bill from consideration and blunt his influence as the new chair of the House Judiciary Committee. For McCarran, the hearings represented an opportunity to drum up support for his brand of Cold War activism and his vision of immigration policy with handpicked sympathetic witnesses like the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars.86 As early as 1950, McCarran had suggested that, “­unless the patriotic organ­izations express themselves promptly and forthrightly to the members of the Senate, we s­ hall shortly be faced with destruction of our protective immigration barriers.”87 He also tried to recruit the support of l­abor and the business community but was less successful. Although employers and or­ga­ nized ­labor had played a major role in the restrictionist movement e­ arlier in the ­century, they ­were conspicuously absent from ­these hearings. By mid-­ century, employers still in need of unskilled workers in the postwar economy had replaced Eu­ro­pean immigrants with immigrants from Mexico, who remained exempted from the quota system.88 Or­ga­nized ­labor, for its part, was divided on the issue. The AFL supported the McCarran-­Walter bill b­ ecause its members hoped that McCarran would regulate Mexican immigration or end the bracero program. The CIO, on the other hand, with scores of descendants of southern and eastern Eu­ro­pe­ans among its members, condemned the bill and welcomed more immigration from Eu­rope.89 As McCarran and Walter had hoped, the short notice on the hearings forced immigration reform advocates to scramble to pre­sent a united front on a 300-­ page omnibus bill, but, from the beginning, they sought to cast the antirestriction camp as broadly as pos­si­ble. The witnesses Celler and his congressional allies called to testify against the bill included representatives from Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Japa­nese, and Italian organ­izations as well as members of professional organ­izations like the Association of Immigration and Nationality

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­ awyers; ­unions such as the CIO and the International Ladies’ Garment L Workers Union; and civil rights organ­izations like the NAACP and the ACLU.90 Although the witnesses had l­ ittle time to prepare and coordinate, their testimonies revealed a broad commitment to comprehensive immigration reform that was not lost on legislators.91 They also demonstrated clear expectations about what they could accomplish and sought to be conciliatory. Many of them expressed appreciation for the lawmakers’ efforts to codify existing immigration and naturalization laws, but they argued that the bills did not go far enough in eliminating discrimination. Like many of their colleagues, Italian and Jewish American witnesses did their best to strike a balance in their testimony. Despite the quota system’s unpopularity among reformers, only the American Jewish Congress openly criticized it as racist and assimilationist and called for its repeal. In private, the AJC acknowledged that many activists feared that attacking the quota system in public would destroy any chance for reform b­ ecause legislators considered it an untouchable “sacred cow.”92 Instead, Italian and Jewish activists strongly advocated for the reallocation of unused quotas. Italian Americans pragmatically supported reallocation ­because it would provide relief for Italy’s oversubscribed quotas.93 Jewish Americans praised the pooling of unused quotas too and welcomed the bill’s prioritization of f­ amily reunion, but they objected to the prominence McCarran’s bill gave to immigrants with special skills or education “on the ground that immigrants should be viewed as persons and not as economic commodities.” Nonetheless, many of them ­were ready to accept the proposed preference system if the bill provided for more flexibility elsewhere.94 As a compromise, some of the Jewish witnesses advocated expanding the preference system to include “new seed” immigrants to compensate for the selectivity of the preference system McCarran proposed.95 This represented one of the last concerted efforts on the part of a Eu­ro­pean American group to make a case for including unskilled mi­grants in any new major immigration bill. Their inability to gain traction on the issue demonstrated the consolidation of the narrative that the United States no longer needed unskilled mi­grants and the increasing expendability of unskilled l­ abor in the eyes of many Americans, which ­after the 1924 Immigration Act, was mostly comprised of immigrants of color. Unlike McCarran, who did not even bother to attend the hearings he had called, the AJC and Senator Lehman listened carefully to ­those who testified for clues about the type of bill Lehman should introduce to rally a strong antirestrictionist co­ali­tion. Before the hearings, the senator had hoped to draft an alternative liberal omnibus immigration bill, but, as the hearings unfolded,

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he recognized that the length and complexity of the McCarran-­Walter bill had divided immigration reform advocates and de­cided that a shorter, more focused bill might be more effective.96 Many Euro-­American activists, for example, expressed surprise when Mike Masaoka, Washington representative of the Japa­nese American Citizens League ( JACL), praised the symbolic quota for Asian immigration in the McCarran bill as a major step t­ oward mending the relationship between the United States and Asia.97 Although his decision provided another example of how immigration reform advocates pragmatically worked with racist legislators in order to move reform forward,98 many of the other witnesses failed to understand his motivations. For Lehman, Masaoka’s testimony demonstrated that a bill focusing on eliminating discrimination from the U.S. immigration system rather than repealing the quota system would have a better chance of passing. Lehman came to believe that the national origins quota system remained “so ingrained in our laws that it is, perhaps, unrealistic to try to root it out completely. What we can and should do is to modify it to take the racist taint away.”99 He feared that few immigration reform advocates would endorse such a controversial proposal without a ­viable alternative and recognized that reformers faced “the danger ­today of having even the pre­sent amount of immigration—­as inadequate as it may be—­choked off by such mea­ sures as the McCarran bill.”100 Leh­man’s bill, framed within the context of civil rights reform at home and demo­cratic leadership abroad, challenged McCarran’s narrative of immigrants as a menace. Drafted by renowned ­lawyer Felix Cohen in consultation with “all the voluntary agencies interested in immigration legislation representing all religious faiths,”101 the bill raised the yearly quota by 100,000, pooled unused quotas, and recalculated the annual quotas for the Eastern Hemi­sphere using the 1950 census. His proposal also placed a stronger emphasis on ­family reunification than skills, removed all racial and gender barriers, and guaranteed the right to appeal and protection u­ nder the law.102 Beyond incorporating ele­ments that could appeal to a broad co­ali­tion, Lehman also hoped that his bill would spark a national debate about immigration reform and attract wider support for his agenda.103 In this, he joined a long line of immigration reform advocates who believed that reformers only needed to educate mainstream Americans about the cruelty of the existing immigration system to garner momentum for liberal reform. That only the liberal Senator Hubert Humphrey (D-­MN) and Representative Franklin D. Roo­se­velt Jr. (D-­NY) agreed to sponsor Leh­man’s bill spoke volumes about the hostile environment immigration reformers faced in Congress and the lack of broader support.

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While Leh­man’s office continued to look for co-­sponsors in Congress, the AJC worked to build an interethnic and interreligious co­ali­tion along the lines of the religiously diverse co­ali­tion that had emerged during the debate over the Displaced Persons Acts. The AJC encouraged a series of meetings between the Joint Conference on Alien Legislation—­a co­ali­tion of religious and civic organ­izations interested in immigration policy—­and the National Community Relations Advisory Council (NCRAC), a national association of Jewish organ­ izations committed to interethnic collaboration. Except for the NCWC, all the major immigration reform groups who attended the meetings committed to lobbying their legislators for liberal immigration reform, mobilizing their chapters, and arranging for articles and editorials on the bills in local and national newspapers.104 Although the AJC had found working with Catholic groups on the Displaced Persons Acts difficult, they felt cautiously optimistic when ­Father Gibbons of the National Catholic Rural Life Conference wrote that he found the Lehman bill “useful in helping to ground a positive, rather than a purely negative, approach to the prob­lem of immigration law reform.”105 Despite the initial positive reactions to Leh­man’s bill, however, several of the organ­izations disagreed about the timing and scope of the bill and counseled caution.106 Groups like JACL worried that antagonizing McCarran could jeopardize Asian quotas, while religious groups expressed concern that the senator from Nevada might block the extension of the Displaced Persons Act. Many organ­izations believed that the time had come to ask for changes bolder than what Lehman had in his bill as not to squander liberal senators’ po­liti­cal capital on a short bill.107 Yet this prospect rattled other agencies, who already found Leh­man’s bill too ambitious.108 ­After de­cades spent on the defensive, immigration reform activists strug­gled to come together. The anti-­Communist hysteria of the early Cold War years and the concentration of power in McCarran’s hands made finding common ground all the more challenging. Nonetheless, they came together when McCarran submitted a revised version of his bill in August 1951. Many activists felt that the win­dow for liberal reform was rapidly closing, especially as McCarran appeared ready to use the upcoming presidential election to press his agenda on his more hesitant colleagues. A ­ fter a new round of consultations, Senators Lehman and Humphrey fi­nally introduced their short immigration bill in October 1951 with the endorsement of twelve other senators.109 As soon as Lehman introduced his bill, his office contacted immigration reform advocacy groups to encourage them to drum up support for it.110 Edelstein hoped that if Americans saw immigration reform as a human-­interest issue—­as they had during the debate over the Displaced Persons Acts—­they would support the liberal reform co­ali­tion.111

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Following his suggestion, several of the organ­izations waged a national public education campaign to advocate for an immigration system “consonant to our princi­ples of democracy and humanity” in collaboration with “religious, veteran, racial, ­labor, nationality, and liberal groups” in their communities.112 The same month Lehman introduced his bill, the Italian American community witnessed the most impor­tant development in its history of mobilization for immigration reform, namely the creation of the American Committee on Italian Migration, an advocacy organ­ization that played a pivotal role in the push for liberalizing U.S. immigration laws through 1965. In October 1951, New York judge Juvenal P. Marchisio, a leader in the postwar relief efforts for Italy, flew to Chicago for a meeting with Cardinal Samuel A. Stritch of Chicago and Monsignor Edward E. Swanstrom of the National Catholic Resettlement Council to discuss the creation of an immigration committee focusing on immigration from Italy. The council, explained Stritch, included immigration committees representing practically e­ very nationality group in the United States except for Italian Americans.113 Marchisio immediately seized on Stritch’s and Swanstrom’s proposal. In February  1952, he became the president of the American Committee on Italian Migration (ACIM) with headquarters in New York City. Unlike OSIA, ACIM focused exclusively on lobbying for immigration reform and, ­because of its affiliation with the National Catholic Resettlement Council, received a prominent seat at the negotiating ­table and financial support.114 Adopting the familiar language of Cold War civil rights, the committee set out to fight for immigration reform to help Italian mi­grants as a response to Italy’s vulnerability to the Soviet Union’s influence ­because of its unemployment and overpopulation prob­lems.115 With the full support of prominent Italian Americans, Italian government authorities, U.S. politicians, and members of the Catholic hierarchy in Italy and the United States, ACIM initiated local chapters across the country open to both lay and clerical members, men and ­women.116 While ACIM leaders worked on building a nationwide network for the organ­ization, McCarran, rattled over the Humphrey-­Lehman bill, went on the offensive. Although Leh­man’s bill was hardly radical, McCarran worried that the bill could unify the antirestrictionist co­ali­tion, just as had happened with the Displaced Persons Acts. McCarran refused to hold any more public hearings on immigration despite Leh­man’s repeated requests117 and exerted enough pressure on Senate Majority Leader Ernest McFarland (D-­AZ) to thwart Leh­man’s attempt to postpone Senate debate on McCarran’s bill u­ ntil ­after the 1952 presidential election.118 Although the new geopo­liti­cal landscape that emerged at the end of World War II afforded immigration reform advocates an impor­tant

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opportunity to challenge restrictive immigration policy, their previous successes benefitted from influential allies in Congress, the unwavering support of the executive, and Americans’ confident outlook about their global leadership. By the beginning of 1952, the power balance in Congress had changed, Truman was a lame duck president, and McCarthyism raged rampantly. In this new environment, seeking comprehensive, albeit moderate, reform left immigration reform advocates vulnerable to vicious attacks and endangered the social and po­liti­cal pro­gress they had achieved ­until then. McCarran’s actions had a r­ ipple effect on liberal immigration reform advocates in and out of Congress. In Congress, while Lehman continued to push for his bill and worked to keep the co­ali­tion together, Celler unexpectedly scheduled two executive sessions in January 1952 on the revised Walter bill. Pressured by members of the House Immigration Committee, of which Walter was chair, Celler de­cided to speed along the Walter bill in the hopes that it would replace the more restrictive McCarran bill, give him a chance to amend it, and provide him leverage on more refugee legislation.119 A month l­ ater, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to report McCarran’s bill out of committee, killing any chances of further consideration of Leh­man’s bill. For Edelstein, McCarran had “succeeded in bullying his bill through,” but Celler’s decision to endorse Walter’s bill marked a major turning point for many of the organ­ izations involved in the co­ali­tion against the McCarran-­Walter bill.120 That a longtime critic of restriction like Celler had relented came as a shock to many members of the co­ali­tion and was further evidence of the limits of liberal reformers’ ability to influence the legislative pro­cess. In the wake of McCarran’s show of force and Celler’s decision to negotiate, the co­ali­tion splintered. While the majority of the European-­American organ­ izations held out for a complete rejection of the bill, JACL and several religious agencies preferred “to strive for amendments in the McCarran-­Walter bills.”121 The descendants of southern and eastern Eu­ro­pean immigrants believed that retaining the quota system unchanged reaffirmed their inferiority,122 undermined their status in U.S. society, and denied the pro­gress they had made since the passage of the 1924 Immigration Act. The harshest of t­ hese critics was OSIA, which wrote all members of the House to inform them that they planned to initiate a vigorous campaign to press their representatives to vote against it ­unless McCarran and Walter drastically amended the blatantly discriminatory national origins system.123 JACL and NCWC, who shared McCarran’s anti-­Communist concerns, could not have disagreed more. Mike Masaoka of JACL and Bruce Mohler, director of NCWC, believed that even modest reform was a step in the right direction. During another meeting of

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the antirestrictionist groups in March 1952, Masaoka called out ­those organ­ izations that criticized the McCarran-­Walter bill as racist but ignored that “the Asiatics are not given the same consideration as Eu­ro­pe­ans.” Arguing that “anything is better than nothing,” he urged the attendees to endorse the McCarran-­ Walter bill b­ ecause it allowed for more immigrants to enter the United States through the new nonquota categories for ­family members, protected the United States from external threats, and lessened discrimination against Asian immigrants.124 McCarran’s actions and Celler’s decision also caused a rift within the Catholic hierarchy, which divided between supporting Truman’s international view of immigration policy and McCarran’s domestic policy understanding of immigration. Whereas Swanstrom of the Catholic Relief Ser­vices and John O’Grady of the National Conference of Catholic Charities viewed immigration reform as an international relations issue, Mohler of the NCWC considered it a tool to advance h­ uman rights at home. They also disagreed over strategy. Swanstrom and O’Grady advocated prioritizing special legislation to alleviate overpopulation and unemployment in Eu­rope and collaborating with other faith groups on McCarran’s bill.125 Mohler instead preferred to negotiate directly with McCarran and resisted collaborating with other groups b­ ecause he believed that Jewish and Protestant groups ­were not “interested in furthering Catholic immigration into the United States.”126 Given his role within the Catholic hierarchy, Mohler’s position carried the most weight. Meanwhile, the organ­izations that stood in between the two fronts worked to bridge the gap in the hope of retaining a role at the negotiation ­table. At the beginning of March 1952, prior to the floor debate over the Walter bill, Read Lewis of the Joint Conference on Alien Legislation urged all its members to sign a joint statement co-­written by representatives of three faiths, Jules Cohen, Roland Elliott, and ­Father Gibbons, asking Congress to revise the McCarran-­Walter bill.127 “While recognizing that immigration cannot be unrestricted,” their statement read, “we are convinced that our nation stands to benefit by retaining as much as pos­si­ble of the liberal immigration policy which prevailed in ­earlier years,” especially at a time when totalitarianism threatened the survival of democracy around the world.128 Thirteen organ­izations endorsed the statement, most of which w ­ ere groups of southern or eastern Eu­ ro­pean descent, but neither the NCWC nor JACL agreed to sign.129 Undeterred, on March 12, 1952, the day before the Walter bill was scheduled for debate on the House floor, the same thirteen organ­izations issued a new press release that, among other ­things, criticized the proposed preference system for limiting admission “to a select class of highly educated persons and

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close relatives of persons already in the United States,” and attacked the stricter denaturalization, exclusion, and deportation procedures of the bill.130 ­Under pressure, House Majority Leader John McCormack (D-­MA) removed the debate on Walter’s bill from the calendar at the request of House Judiciary chair Emanuel Celler, but the decision frustrated Mohler, who complained in private that the Jewish organ­izations’ efforts to derail the McCarran-­Walter bill stood in the way of the church’s “­great need for Catholic nuns from abroad.”131 As the co­ali­tion appeared to gain traction, President Truman publically intervened in the debate for the first time but fractured the liberal front further. Convinced that the McCarran-­Walter bill would undermine U.S. Cold War interests in Eu­rope, Truman asked Congress to prioritize special legislation to solve “one of the gravest prob­lems arising from the pre­sent world crisis, . . . ​the overpopulation in parts of Western Eu­rope.”132 The president’s opposition to McCarran’s bill was impor­tant for the liberal cause, but his intervention on only one aspect of the co­ali­tion’s agenda further divided the religious organ­izations in the alliance. Whereas Swanstrom and O’Grady welcomed the news, Mohler’s office grew worried a­ fter hearing rumors that Truman had supported the efforts of Jewish organ­izations and their allies to stop the debate on the Walter bill in the House.133 When Celler, at Truman’s suggestion, proposed a bill to admit 300,000 Italians, ethnic Germans, and other nationals, the American Friends Ser­vice Committee and the National Lutheran Council narrowed the focus of their campaign and demanded that Congress pass the bill and accept its fair share of Cold War refugees to uphold “the moral stature of the United States” in its fight against the Soviet Union.134 As the co­ali­tion agonized over how to respond to Celler’s bill, its member organ­izations faced a barrage of attacks to “expose the Jewish influence,” as Representative Walter put it.135 Walter recruited Blair Taylor of the Tolstoy Foundation “to have a few words with the NCWC boys” to persuade them to endorse the McCarran-­Walter bill openly. McCarran, instead, focused on the media to shape the public perception about the debate on immigration reform and intimidate critics. He contacted several of his supporters and provided them with talking points to use with the press that blamed the popularity of the Lehman-­Humphrey bill on “a certain radical group, which for many years, has been dedicated to the destruction of our protective immigration system.”136 Almost on cue, on March  19, 1952, twenty-­three organ­izations, including JACL, issued a joint statement praising the McCarran-­Walter bill as a much-­ needed revision and codification of existing laws, condemning the organ­izations that opposed it, and urging the law’s immediate passage.137 On May 1, 1952, the same organ­izations, hewing closely to McCarran’s talking points, issued

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another statement that criticized a small but very active radical minority of Jewish groups for carry­ing out a campaign of misrepre­sen­ta­tion of the McCarran-­Walter bill. The statement also accused critics of the bill of supporting an immigration agenda that could destroy Amer­i­ca’s “protective immigration system, weaken the procedures designed to exclude and deport Communists and other subversives, and overrun the United States with a flood of aliens.”138 Not content, McCarran held a series of interviews to talk about an impending invasion of spies and subversives, blame any objection to his law as Communist-­inspired, and stoke rumors about Jewish organ­ izations leading a conspiracy against his bill.139 As Mary Dudziak shows in Cold War Civil Rights, the hysteria of McCarthyism often transformed critics of American society into potential subversives in many Americans’ eyes, forcing reform advocates to repeat time and again that their goal was to fill out rather than undermine the contours of U.S. democracy.140 In the midst of Walter and McCarran’s counterattack in the late spring of 1952, Masaoka and Mohler, breaking with the rest of the liberal co­ali­tion, de­ cided to lobby actively for the McCarran-­Walter bill. In his attacks against his erstwhile allies, Masaoka denounced special interest groups’ parochial agendas and singled out Italian organ­izations b­ ecause they appeared more interested in helping ease Italy’s overpopulation and unemployment prob­lems than in advancing broader immigration reform.141 Although Masaoka’s alliance with traditionally restrictionist organ­izations stunned Leh­man’s supporters and ­later struck many in the Japa­nese American community as too accommodationist, he pragmatically concluded that supporting McCarran’s bill represented the best guarantee for the long-­sought repeal of racial barriers against Asian immigrants, especially since McCarran had twice blocked legislation repealing the Asia-­Pacific Triangle that the House had already passed.142 On the fence from the beginning, Mohler also de­cided that the NCWC should openly support the McCarran-­Walter bill if it reached the Senate floor. He followed the debate over the Walter bill closely. In the House, the only opposition came from Representative Adolph Sabath (D-­IL), who, born in Slovakia of Jewish parents, gave a passionate speech charging that if his colleagues passed the McCarran-­Walter bill and the President ratified it, “the United States ­will itself become an iron-­curtain country.”143 Demonstrating the strength of the restrictionist front in the House, members only debated the Walter bill for three days before passing it by 206 to 68 on April 25.144 When the debate in the Senate began, Mohler persuaded Paul Tanner, his superior, to endorse the McCarran-­Walter bill publicly b­ ecause “the practical choice was one between

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the McCarran-­Walter bill or the ‘status quo,’ and, bad as the McCarran-­Walter bill is, the ‘status quo’ is worse.” To convince him, Mohler told Tanner that Walter had threatened to derail Celler’s refugee bill if his bill failed to pass, which would undermine an impor­tant cause for many Catholic resettlement agencies.145 Fi­nally, revealing yet again his bias against Jewish groups, he suggested that, “Jewish agencies” ­were at “the forefront in propagandizing against the McCarran-­Walter bill.”146 Long ambivalent about their support for Leh­man’s bill, other organ­izations soon followed in Mohler and Masaoka’s footsteps and endorsed the Mc­ Carran bill. On May 17, 1952, F ­ ather William Gibbons of the National Catholic Rural Life Conference and Read Lewis, chair of both the Common Council for American Unity and the Joint Conference on Alien Legislation, disavowed their support for the Humphrey-­Lehman bill and endorsed McCarran’s bill, claiming that, despite its shortcomings, it made “a number of extremely impor­ tant, indeed historic, steps” and represented “an advance over the existing law.”147 Other stakeholders, including Chinese and Filipino groups and the U.S. State Department, soon followed suit.148 Although the State Department had been involved in the drafting of McCarran’s bill and had endorsed it during the hearings, many liberal reformers had hoped that Secretary of State Dean Acheson would remain neutral. While some speculated that Acheson threw his support ­behind the bill b­ ecause he feared that McCarran would retaliate against the Department’s bud­get as chair of the Appropriations Committee, Acheson privately urged Truman to support the McCarran-­Walter bill ­because its repeal of Asian exclusion would benefit American Cold War interests in Asia.149 The Senate debate on the McCarran-­Walter bill also revealed that most legislators’ lack of interest in immigration reform constituted another major obstacle for advancing reform. As the AJC noted, the Senate debate showed “the general attitude of hostility to liberal princi­ples which has characterized Congressional reaction to civil rights; civil liberties . . . ; and social welfare mea­ sures.”150 Even when Lehman and his supporters in the Senate relented and tried to work with McCarran on his bill, McCarran incorporated only minor amendments and rejected their proposals to pool unused quotas, create a statutory Board of Immigration Appeals, allocate the Asian quota by country of birth rather than origin, and abolish the mortgaging of the quotas for Displaced Persons against the sending countries’ quotas.151 On May 22, the Senate passed the McCarran bill by a roll call vote ­after a final effort to send the bill back to the immigration committee failed 44 to 28. The next day, the House and Senate

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immigration subcommittees began to negotiate on a compromise bill. On June  10 and 11, respectively, the House and the Senate ­adopted the new version.152 The ensuing ­battle to influence President Truman’s decision over the bill confirmed both the divide that had emerged within the liberal co­ali­tion and McCarran and Walter’s influence over the legislative pro­cess. Whereas Jewish organ­izations exhorted Truman to veto “this Pandora’s box of anti-­Semitic, anti-­Catholic, anti-­colonial, anti-­European, anti-­African, anti-­A siatic, anti-­ immigrant, and anti-­American prejudices,” JACL’s Randolph Sakada urged the president to sign the bill to erase “the anti-­Oriental philosophy” in U.S. immigration policy and eliminate a barrier “between our government and the ­peoples of the Far East.”153 When thirty-­six Catholic resettlement agencies joined several Protestant and Jewish organ­izations to endorse Truman’s veto at Swanstrom’s urging, Mohler published two articles in which he argued that if the president vetoed the bill b­ ecause it was “not sufficiently liberal, he would, in effect, postpone the codification of existing laws and, in the name of liberalism, ­really defeat a first step ­toward a more liberal immigration policy.”154 Furious over Mohler’s public defense of the bill, Monsignor O’Grady answered with articles of his own in which he singled out Mohler for the NCWC’s stance on “a Bill that virtually regards millions of our ­people . . . ​as second-­class citizens” and that discriminated against Asian, Ca­rib­bean, and unskilled immigrants.155 “If we had worked hand in hand on this m ­ atter with other religious denominations,” O’Grady observed, “the McCarran Bill would never . . . ​have passed the Senate,” especially considering the pieces of legislation Congress had passed since the outbreak of World War II.156 Echoing Masaoka, Mohler retorted that his critics opposed the McCarran bill only “­because of one bad feature, its failure to eliminate the restrictive national origins formula.”157 As the co­ali­tion faltered, Walter again hinted that he would block the Celler refugee bill if Truman vetoed the bill and McCarran used his position on the Appropriations Committee to put pressure on the State Department to urge the president to sign the bill.158 In the end, Truman vetoed the bill b­ ecause he believed it perpetuated longstanding injustices and stifled U.S. Cold War goals abroad. While the outcome of the vote to overturn the veto in the House had long been a foregone conclusion, the Senate remained uncertain and McCarran unleashed all his influence to persuade his Senate colleagues to support his bill “in God’s name, in the name of the American ­people, in the name of Amer­i­ca’s ­future.”159 In the end, the House overrode the president’s veto 278 to 113 and the Senate 57 to 26, including 25 Demo­crats. A shift of just two votes in the Senate would have prevented the McCarran-­Walter bill from becoming

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law.160 Southern Demo­crats, including Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, who would eventually—­as president—­sign legislation to overturn the act, voted with their Republican colleagues to override the veto. Only politicians from heavi­ly immigrant areas in the Northeast, including Representative John F. Kennedy, voted to sustain it.161 While the debate over the passage of the McCarran-­Walter Act demonstrated the challenges that interethnic and interreligious co­ali­tions faced when it came to immigration reform, the act ultimately changed the course of immigration flows to the United States in ways that neither McCarran nor Walter had anticipated. More than any of the ad hoc immigration laws that followed the passage of the 1924 Immigration Act, the McCarran-­Walter Act opened new ways for mi­grants to enter the United States even as its sponsors sought to restrict entry further. ­Under the new law, just over two million immigrants should have arrived from 1952 to 1965. In real­ity, 3.5 million came, only about a third of whom (35.5 ­percent) ­were quota immigrants.162 Many of ­these new immigrants arrived from Asia and took advantage of the ­family reunion provisions of the act, thus circumventing the meager yearly quota allocated to their countries and shifting the main locus of emigration to the United States from Eu­rope to Asia.163 The restrictionist McCarran-­Walter Act too shows that the so-­called restrictive era (1924–1965) was never entirely restrictive, but rather a mix of inclusion and exclusion.

Conclusion ­ hese outcomes would not become clear for a while, however. In the short T term, the passage of the McCarran-­Walter Act over Truman’s veto represented a major defeat for Italian and Jewish activists who had hoped that the successes in challenging the existing immigration regime during World War II combined with the new geopo­liti­cal order that emerged ­after the war would lead to the abolition of the national origins system and thus remove the taint of the undesirability on southern and eastern Eu­ro­pe­ans. Trying to learn from the experience, the AJC identified at least four reasons ­behind McCarran’s victory. First, Senator McCarran held a strategic position as chair of the Judiciary Committee to influence immigration and naturalization legislation. Second, “the effective working relationship between the Southern Demo­crats and conservative Republicans” during the Senate debate on the McCarran bill prevented the liberal immigration forces from shaping it in any way.164 Third, the breadth and complexity of the 300-­page bill added to McCarran and his allies’ victory. Fi­nally, McCarran continuously played “on the fears of other ele­ments in the

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United States,” arguing that the pooling of unused quotas would change the ethnic composition of the country and that the elimination of the “one-­half ancestry” concept for Asian countries would result in flooding the country with Asian immigrants.165 Examining the ­battle to defeat the McCarran-­Walter bill in hindsight, the chair of OSIA’s Committee on Immigration and Naturalization did not blame McCarran or Walter but rather “all our legislators who voted for the Bill over President Truman’s veto.”166 Immigration reform advocates’ experience during the debate over the McCarran-­Walter Act convinced them that they could be more successful by working separately to pursue targeted, piecemeal immigration reform. They also adapted their strategies and expectations to fit the narrow scope of American Cold War politics, which silenced any debate over a radical alternative to the status quo, particularly to the national origins quota system. Foregoing sweeping and idealistic co­ali­tions, ­after 1952, they worked with liberal and restrictionist legislators alike and allied with each other only when their interests aligned.

chapter five

A ­Thing of Shreds and Patches Challenging Immigration Reform from Within, 1952–1960 Italian and Jewish supporters of liberal immigration reform took the passage of the McCarran-­Walter Act as proof that, despite their communities’ advances in U.S. society, they ­were still not on secure footing. “The statement, ‘I am not afraid of Dagoes’ by one of the authors of the Immigration and Nationality Act indicates . . . ​that discrimination was intended in the drafting of the Act,” railed George Spatuzza of OSIA.1 Similarly, Representative Celler, writing to President Truman, denounced as “immorally discriminatory” the U.S. State Department’s decision to categorize only Jewish immigrants by their religion rather than race and ethnicity u­ nder a new provision in the McCarran-­Walter Act.2 “To protect ourselves against our own fear” of immigrants, New York Industrial Commissioner Edward Corsi lamented, “we have ­adopted an immigration policy which keeps out one hundred good ­people for fear that one bad may come in.”3 Although Italian and Jewish advocacy groups vowed to persist in their fight for liberal immigration reform, the opportunities for overarching reform dwindled over the rest of the de­cade. Mike Masaoka of JACL and Bruce Mohler of the NCWC had been correct: changes to the existing immigration system would need to happen through a piecemeal approach in the 1950s. Lingering fears of Communism, many Americans’ lack of interest in or outright opposition to immigration, and Representative Walter’s and Senator Eastland’s hold on the legislative pro­cess ­after McCarran’s death in September 1954 forced antirestrictionists to regroup and pivot to minor amendments to the McCarran-­Walter Act and ad hoc legislation as ways to weaken the existing immigration system. Learning from de­cades of mobilization, reformers identified issues that aligned with legislators’ priorities. They supported any proposal that facilitated ­family reunion or the admission of immigrants and appealed to U.S. foreign policy interests with the executive to admit more refugees. Even though many of them believed that the United States should not discriminate against unskilled mi­grants, they abandoned this fight for the most part and began to support any policy proposal that brought in more skilled mi­grants who in turn could send for their families. Like in the case of ­family reunion, they understood that this represented

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another issue around which they could find common ground even with the most restrictionist legislator. Their targeted lobbying helped Italian and Jewish reformers, along with other advocacy groups, undermine the very premise of the McCarran-­Walter Act by driving up the number of immigrants entering the United States outside of the quota system during the 1950s. However, the ad hoc changes for which they pushed si­mul­ta­neously solidified the new immigration and refugee policy regime that prioritized immigrants with ­family ties and skills. Yet, this retreat of sorts happened only ­after Italian and Jewish leaders, along with other groups, organ­izations, and policymakers interested in liberal immigration reform tried once more to push for a more ambitious overhaul. As had happened during the debate over the McCarran-­Walter Act, they faced enormous outside re­sis­tance and internal divisions on how to maximize their efforts. By 1956, compromise remained the only ­v iable option.

The Intersection of the Fights for Refugee and Immigration Reform Before resigning themselves to focusing on piecemeal legislation for the rest of the de­cade, several European-­American critics used the months before the McCarran-­Walter Act went into effect in December 1952 to launch a last ditch effort to pressure Congress to pass more liberal legislation.4 Lehman believed that it would be “as hard a fight as the strug­gle to get civil rights legislation,”5 but he and the AJC felt encouraged that several of the organ­izations that had supported Leh­man’s bill appeared “prepared to conduct a vigorous campaign for a major liberalization of the country’s immigration policy.”6 Many hoped that the impending elections could nudge legislators, especially ­those r­ unning for reelection, into supporting a more liberal immigration policy. On June 25, 1952, ­after Congress overrode President Truman’s veto, NCRAC issued a statement of protest on behalf of the Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant organ­ izations it represented to plead with the Demo­cratic Party to commit to liberalizing U.S. immigration laws. On August 2, the Catholic Association for International Peace criticized the newly passed act for using a “white supremacy” princi­ple to allocate quotas to immigrants from Eastern Eu­rope and ignoring Asian immigration needs.7 Over the summer, several Italian and Jewish organ­izations—­including ACIM, AJC, the American Jewish Congress, ADL, HIAS, and OSIA—­all publicly criticized the act. Si­mul­ta­neously, major national publications like the Washington Post, New York Times, St. Louis Post

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Dispatch, San Francisco Chronicle, Commonweal, Collier’s, and CIO News echoed liberal reformers’ criticisms.8 Supporters of the McCarran-­Walter Act put an equal amount of energy in their pushback to defend the act but often singled out Jewish activists as the culprits ­behind the backlash. Continuing to draw on deep-­seated xenophobic ste­reo­types and Communist paranoia prevalent during the debate over the act, restrictionists argued that the renewed “attempts to liberalize the act ­were part of a Marxist-­Jewish plot to flood the country with aliens determined to abolish the American form of government.”9 Several publications accused American Jews of plotting against the McCarran-­Walter Act to secure the admission of millions of their co-­religionists to dominate the United States.10 “The fact that Christian agencies, both Catholic and Protestant ­were also opposed to the new immigration law,” the AJC lamented, “was made light of, if not completely ignored.”11 As the two sides sparred in public, Senators Lehman and Humphrey introduced a resolution to institute a bipartisan commission to study the country’s immigration policy, hoping to thwart the act. The proposal failed, but Truman’s executive order 10392 resurrected it in early September by creating the Special Commission on Immigration and Naturalization.12 The president appointed to the commission some of the major liberal actors involved in the debate over immigration reform during his presidency, namely Earl G. Harrison, Monsignor John O’Grady, and Harry Rosenfield. His choices, while religiously diverse, lacked ethnic diversity, pointing to his prioritizing of Eu­ro­pean mi­grants and refugees. Truman’s view was quite common. For the rest of the 1950s and the early 1960s, immigration reform became synonymous with abolishing the national origins quota system. This demonstrated that, even though their track rec­ord remained mixed at best, Italian and Jewish activists and their allies had clearly succeeded in raising awareness about the discriminatory policy in place since the 1920s. It also attested to their growing po­liti­cal influence and the increasing ac­cep­tance of immigrants of eastern and southern Eu­ro­pean descent. Nonetheless, the narrow focus on the quota system obscured the other equally problematic aspects of the country’s immigration policy. Truman directed the commission “to study and evaluate the immigration and naturalization policies of the United States” and to make policy recommendations “in the interest of the economy, security, and responsibilities of this country.”13 The commission’s hearings gave immigration reform advocates a venue to point out negative repercussions of immigration restrictions and propose specific reforms. Several of the organ­izations involved in the debate over the McCarran-­Walter Act testified to repudiate it, while AJC leaders,

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liberated from the constraints of po­liti­cal negotiations, called for the repeal of the national origins quota system and objected to considering immigrants as economic commodities.14 The hearings and the committee’s recommendations demonstrated how ingrained the quotas had become by the 1950s. Like many of the organ­izations that testified, the Commission could not reach a consensus on an alternative to the quota system and simply made broader recommendations, but its proposals faced an immediate backlash. In a report published in January 1953, titled Whom We ­Shall Welcome, the commission recommended the repeal of the national origins system, an increase in immigration, and flexibility in the preference system to guarantee the admission of more refugees and mi­grants with skills needed in the United States.15 ­Eager to preserve his legacy, McCarran attacked Truman even before the report appeared in print for selecting “radicals” to serve on the commission to incite “racial and religious groups for po­ liti­cal purposes.” The members of the commission, he argued, ­were of the same ilk as the radical clique that had opposed his bill in Congress and that “would have opened the gates to a virtually unrestricted flood of aliens, irrespective of qualifications or assimilability.” Exploiting the specter of Communism and old fears about ethnic voting, McCarran lamented that “the out-­and-­out Reds” had the support of “the ‘pinks,’ the well-­meaning but misguided ‘liberals’ and the demagogues who would auction the interests of Amer­i­ca for alleged minority-­bloc voting.”16 Unable to disguise his contempt for his opponents, Representative Walter complained that “professional Jews are shedding crocodile tears for no reason whatsoever.”17 Despite the high profile of the commission, Walter and McCarran refused to hold hearings on its report. Outside of Congress, reactions to the report’s recommendations echoed McCarran’s and Walter’s attacks. Headlines of the American Nationalist read “Jews Sabotage McCarran Act” before the report came out and “Jews Use ‘Anti-­ Semitic’ Scare to Open U.S. Immigration Flood Gates” a­ fter it appeared in print.18 An editorial published in the Saturday Eve­ning Post in February 1953 contended that the national origins quota system represented “pretty well the views of the average American on how new arrivals should be distributed among the vari­ous emigrating nations.” In a reference to Jewish lobbyists, the editorial argued that any change to the existing immigration policy would mean that “the racial group with the best public-­relations setup and the highest squeeze on politicians would win all the arguments.” Fi­nally, taking a jab at immigrants from overcrowded countries like Italy, the editorial concluded that “we cannot destroy our immigration standards to take care of ­people who are a surplus elsewhere.”19

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The backlash against Truman’s Commission and liberal immigration reformers’ public criticisms of the McCarran-­Walter Act persuaded many advocates to abandon broader immigration reform for the moment and concentrate on refugee legislation. As historian Carl Bon Tempo notes, refugee admissions represented a back door around the hated quota system.20 Unlike the b­ attle for the 1948 and 1950 Displaced Persons Acts, Italian Americans played a more prominent role than Jewish advocates during the debate over the 1953 Displaced Persons Act. They too prioritized Eu­ro­pean refugees. ACIM took the lead on refugee legislation ­because several of the new proposals ­under consideration in Congress addressed Italy’s perceived unemployment and rapid population growth, twin dangers that ACIM cited whenever they pushed for refugee legislation. Whom ACIM defined as an Italian refugee remained problematic. About 200,000 of the ­people ACIM referred to as refugees ­were Italians returning from former Fascist colonies in Ethiopia, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia; 115,000 ­were from the annexation of Venezia Giulia and Dalmatia; about 125,000 arrived from the Eu­ro­pean countries to which they had migrated before the war; and about 5,000 returned from the Dodecanese Islands once the islands returned to Greece ­under the 1947 peace treaty with Italy.21 Given its priorities, ACIM threw its support b­ ehind Celler’s resurrected Refugee Relief bill—­which Walter had threatened to derail if the House failed to pass the McCarran-­Walter bill—­­because it set aside 100,000 slots for immigrants from Italy and Trieste out of the 328,000 Eu­ro­pean refugees it proposed to admit outside the quota system within the following three years. ACIM’s ability to rise so quickly among the organ­izations that promoted immigration reform stemmed from its connections with the U.S. Catholic hierarchy, which helped with building support for its campaigns and lobbying for reform. Each diocese appointed a priest con­sul­tant to assist the local ACIM chapter in its activities and publicize ACIM’s agenda, campaigns, and fund­rais­ing activities in their parishes.22 By the end of 1953, the organ­ization boasted eighty-­five chapters spread across the United States and 40,000 subscriptions to ACIM Dispatch, the organ­ization’s newsletter. When it came to its reform campaigns, ACIM worked closely with Monsignor Swanstrom, whose connections with key religious and po­liti­cal figures proved vital and provided the visibility the organ­ization needed. In February 1953, Swanstrom, in his roles as executive director of War Relief Ser­vices and director of the National Catholic Resettlement Council, arranged a meeting with ACIM national chair Judge Juvenal Marchisio, as well as Representative Celler, Aloysius Wycislo, assistant executive director of War Relief Ser­vices, and James J. Norris, Eu­ro­pean director of War Relief Ser­vices. While Celler told his guests that

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the recent wave of religious persecution in Eastern Eu­rope gave renewed urgency to his bill, Marchisio urged every­one to support it b­ ecause it represented the only mea­sure that could give Italians “a ray of hope that would insure a demo­cratic victory” against the Italian Communist Party in the coming elections.23 This exchange was an early indicator of ACIM’s willingness to find common ground to support policies that advanced its priorities. Yet despite the broad support for Celler’s bill, Congress refused to consider any refugee legislation ­until April 1953, when President Eisenhower, appropriating a recommendation from Truman’s commission, requested emergency legislation for the admission of 240,000 refugees outside the quota system within the following two years. As restrictionists in Congress worked to sabotage Celler’s bill, which they saw as an affront to the McCarran-­Walter Act, ACIM continued to pursue the president’s support even though immigration reform remained a low priority for him. Through the intercession of Monsignor Swanstrom, ACIM convinced New York Senator Irving M. Ives to or­ga­nize a meeting at the White House between the president and a few ACIM officers to discuss emergency refugee legislation.24 During the meeting, Eisenhower told his guests that he was “most sympathetic” ­toward some form of immediate emergency relief for overpopulated countries in western Eu­rope, applauded the idea of the reallocation of unused quotas, and shared the attendees’ concern that a policy of apathy or neglect on the part of the United States would have disastrous po­liti­cal and economic consequences in western Eu­rope.25 Although he intervened in the debate over the need for more refugee policy, Eisenhower made it clear that he would support any legislation. The president’s flexibility allowed Congress to reject Celler’s bill and take up a narrower bill proposed by Senator Arthur Watkins (R-­UT), who belonged to the Republican-­Dixiecrat co­ali­tion intent on protecting the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act. Modeled on Eisenhower’s suggestions, the bill allowed for the entry into the United States of 240,000 refugees and nationals from overpopulated countries outside the quotas, 75,000 of whom would be Italians.26 Happy with making any headway on refugee policy, ACIM along with several Jewish resettlement agencies endorsed the Watkins bill and mobilized to generate support for it. ACIM or­ga­nized a letter-­writing campaign, during which the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and President Eisenhower received over 100,000 messages calling for the passage of the Watkins bill.27 ACIM also met in New York City to pledge its support for the bill with thirty-­ two other organ­izations affiliated with the Catholic Church and “interested in aiding refugees from Communist-­controlled countries and in relieving

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overcrowded conditions in ­free Eu­rope.”28 If ACIM leveraged U.S. Cold War priorities in its support for the bill, Jewish leaders, feeling that they had ­little to lose ­after the anti-­Semitic rhe­toric that had characterized the passage of the McCarran-­Walter Act, used the fight over the bill as an opportunity to push for broader reform as a challenge to McCarran. In June 1953, several Jewish organ­izations sent a joint written statement to the House Judiciary Committee to encourage legislators to consider the elimination of the national origins quota system as a solution to any f­uture refugee crises, but many in Congress considered this proposal too radical. When the congressional hearings on the Watkins bill began a few days ­later, most of the religious and ethnic groups at the forefront of liberal immigration reform lined up to press for its passage.29 During his passionate testimony in the Senate, Marchisio declared that, if the bill w ­ ere to pass, the United States would reap huge economic benefits and undermine the threat of the Italian Communist Party.30 ­Little did he know, but Marchisio’s emphasis on the positive impact the act would have on Italy provided McCarran with the leverage he needed to guarantee that Congress would leave his 1952 Immigration Act intact. The senator vowed to withhold his support for the Watkins bill u­ ntil it excluded Italians. Concerned, ACIM invited its members to write letters of protest to Senator McCarran and Marchisio sent him a tele­gram that criticized “the intolerance manifested in your insistence to exclude Italian nationals from the provisions of the Refugee Bill.”31 While ACIM l­ ater claimed that the bill passed b­ ecause of its mobilization, the passage of the 1953 Refugee Act over McCarran’s opposition resulted from a private agreement among legislators that completely excluded immigration reform advocates. In the summer of 1953, rumors, ­later confirmed by f­ uture leader of the House John McCormack, circulated that “the champions of the McCarran-­Walter Act” negotiated with the Senate Republican leadership for the passage of the 1953 Refugee Relief Act in exchange for no changes to the McCarran-­Walter Act ­until 1957 and for a smaller quota reserved for Italians.32 This is precisely what happened. The final bill did include visas for Italians, but the number of admissible Italians shrank from the original 75,000 to 60,000.33 In keeping with the well-­established preference for refugees with skills, the act required applicants to provide assurances of employment and housing and a certification from the United States Employment Ser­vice.34 Despite its limitations, ACIM celebrated the 1953 act ­because it accomplished the committee’s first goal since its founding, namely pushing for legislation admitting additional Italian immigrants outside the quota system.35

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The impact of the deal ­behind the passage of the 1953 Refugee Act became clear in the summer of 1953 when Senator Lehman and Representative Celler introduced an omnibus bill to replace the McCarran-­Walter Act that they had been working on since December 1952.36 Spearheaded by Leh­man’s office, the AJC, and the American Jewish Congress, the bill was the product of months of consultations with l­egal experts, sympathetic legislators, lay and religious advocacy groups, and ­labor leaders of the AFL and CIO.37 It incorporated several of the recommendations of Truman’s Special Commission on Immigration and Naturalization and had the support of eight senators and twenty-­four representatives. In the name of “justice, equity, and welcome,” the bill proposed the establishment of a uniform right of review and appeal, the creation of an in­de­pen­dent agency in charge of all immigration and naturalization functions, and the replacement of the national origins quota system with a unified quota system. Promising equality, Leh­man’s quota system raised the annual cap to 251,000 based on the 1950 census of the entire population,38 eliminated the Asia-­Pacific Triangle and the discriminatory quotas introduced by the McCarran-­Walter Act for some of the British colonies in the Ca­rib­bean, and included the Western Hemi­sphere ­under the quota system. The bill allocated each country the same yearly quota and proposed to adjust the global cap ­every ten years depending on the census, economic needs, and geopo­liti­cal interests. The preference system it proposed included five categories with flexible percentages, the largest of which was ­family reunion (between 25 and 35 ­percent of the total) followed by immigrants with skills needed in the U.S. (between 5 and 10 ­percent); immigrants of “national interest” from “friendly nations” with economic or other prob­lems (between 20 and 25 ­percent); refugees fleeing racial, po­liti­cal, and religious persecution (between 15 and 25 ­percent); and new seed immigrants (a minimum of 20 ­percent).39 The Lehman-­Celler bill crystallized many liberal immigration reformers’ priorities a­ fter forty years of mobilization, but the bill also reflected their compromises and contradictions. By 1953, no one believed that Congress would eliminate the national origins quotas, but immigration reformers hoped they could be less discriminatory and more flexible. In addition to the expected emphasis on f­ amily reunion and skills, the flexible categories reflected a more internationalist view of immigration, a more generous refugee policy, and a recognition that immigrants without skills or f­ amily ties also deserved an opportunity to enter the country. While the bill clearly had Eu­ro­pean immigrants and refugees in mind, if passed, it would have benefitted immigrants from everywhere, just as the McCarran-­Walter Act unintentionally did. As scholars Ngai and Zolberg have noted, the most controversial aspect of the bill was its proposal to include the

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Western Hemi­sphere ­under the quota system, especially ­because Senator Sam Ervin (D-­NC) and his allies would resurrect it during the final negotiations over the 1965 Immigration Act to justify restrictionists’ call for a ceiling on the Western Hemi­sphere.40 A closer look at the documents reveals more an example of misguided egalitarianism than racism, however. Lehman believed that the nonquota status for immigrants in the Western Hemi­sphere had led to “the practice of administrative restriction on the number of visas issued” and “arbitrarily established unofficial ‘quotas’ ” that penalized indigenous and Latin American immigrants of African descent. Lehman hoped that his system would eliminate such discriminatory practices. While he remained open to proposals of alternative formulas to “give special privilege” to immigrants from the Western Hemi­sphere, he remained firm in his belief that something needed to be done.41 That discussion never took place, however, as Congress refused to hold hearings on the Lehman-­Celler bill and President Eisenhower completely ignored immigration reform in his 1954 agenda. A seething Celler issued a press release criticizing the president and denouncing that “the agitation surrounding the McCarran-­Walter Immigration Act has been too violent to permit us to believe that the omission can be anything but deliberate.”42 In fact, Celler and Lehman had strug­gled to find any Republican open to work with them on immigration reform or willing to co-­sponsor their bill. In the spring of 1954, eight months a­ fter they had first submitted the bill, they w ­ ere still looking for Republican support. Believing that bipartisan support would be crucial to move forward, Lehman and Celler repeatedly approached Representative Jacob Javits, a moderate Republican from New York State, to co-­sponsor their bill or co-­sponsor a new, jointly drafted bill. Not only did Javits rebuke them, but he introduced his own, significantly more modest bill without seeking Demo­cratic co-­sponsorship.43 Outside of Congress, many Americans shared the Keep Amer­i­ca Committee’s sentiments on liberal immigration reform. In an open letter to Congress, the committee, a nativist and isolationist organ­ ization, called on Congress to “stop the talk and put t­ hese One Worlders down with their noise and effrontery by making a clean, irrevocable and drastic decision to stop all immigration for 10 years.”44 Despite the backlash, Celler and Lehman continued to ask for hearings on their bill well into the summer of 1954, a year ­after they had first proposed it.45 As the summer recess approached, Celler and Lehman disagreed over their next step. Their dif­fer­ent strategies highlighted the challenges immigration reformers faced as they contended with constant attacks and years of opposition. As the midterm elections approached, Lehman proposed calling for

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hearings over the recess as an opportunity to advance the immigration reform cause, but Celler disagreed. “Such hearings,” the representative wrote to Leh­ man’s executive assistant Julius Edelstein, “would be held in a hostile climate and perhaps provide a sounding board for the opposition.”46 He suggested waiting ­until ­after the midterm elections in the hopes that Demo­crats would win and he would become the new chair of the Judiciary Committee. Like his boss, Edelstein considered an election year the perfect time to call for a recess hearing. Even though he knew that hearings ­were unlikely to occur, especially given Watkins’s determination “to oppose any revisions to the McCarran-­ Walter Act,”47 Edelstein argued that simply calling for recess hearings would provide liberal immigration reform advocates another opportunity to be on rec­ord against the McCarran-­Walter Act and pressure candidates up for election to take a stance on immigration.48 Celler found the argument unpersuasive and told activists to wait u­ ntil ­after the election to act49 while Edelstein urged them to continue calling for hearings.50 Several Italian and Jewish organ­izations, as well as other religious agencies and ethnic groups, responded to Edelstein’s appeal, but legislators remained unmoved.51 Activists called on President Eisenhower to support reform and renewed their pressure on the Senate and House Judiciary Committees to hold hearings on the Lehman-­Celler bill b­ ecause U.S. immigration and citizenship policies “should embody princi­ples of individual dignity, racial equality and ­human brotherhood.”52 Even the American Jewish Congress, which could not fully endorse the Lehman-­Celler bill ­because it did not entirely eliminate the national origins system, called for hearings ­because it represented an improvement over the status quo.53 The OSIA branch in Mas­sa­chu­setts did the same to protest against the “imposition of evil theories of racial superiority upon the regulation of immigration.”54 The chair of OSIA’s Immigration and Naturalization Committee even testified before the parties’ platform committees to urge the adoption of immigration planks.55 Despite their pleas, Congress refused to consider the Lehman-­Celler bill for a second year in a row. On February 25, 1955, Celler and Lehman submitted a third version of their bill and again mobilized their bases. In March 1955, over forty Jewish organ­ izations, rallied by the AJC, came together to urge immigration reform and criticize deportation and immigration quotas as concepts that had wrongly become “sacrosanct and immutable.”56 In June 1955, several supporters of liberal immigration reform held a protest meeting in Car­ne­gie Hall to urge Congress to amend the McCarran-­Walter Act. In addition to OSIA and several of the Jewish organ­izations that had long been at the forefront of the opposition to immigration restriction, sponsoring organ­izations of the protest now included

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l­ abor organ­izations, the Jamaica BWI Progressive League, and the NAACP.57 ACIM was conspicuously absent. Revealing his bias, ­Father Donanzan suggested not to participate ­because too many left-­leaning Jewish organ­izations would attend.58 For the remainder of 1955, activists and organ­izations from across the country regularly encouraged Celler, Lehman, and their allies in Congress to continue their tireless efforts to repeal or amend the quota system and all the other “objectionable provisions” of the McCarran-­Walter Act.59 In a letter to the editor of the Jewish Forum in October 1955, Celler admitted that ­there had been l­ ittle pro­gress on amending the McCarran-­Walter Act. He blamed a co­ali­tion of southern Demo­crats and Midwest Republicans who opposed immigration reform, the low number of U.S. citizens demanding change, and an administration that “proclaims much but does l­ ittle.”60 When the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization fi­nally de­cided to hold a hearing on the Lehman-­Celler bill in November 1955, immigration reform activists took advantage of the opportunity to draw attention to the unfairness of the immigration system even though they realized that the bill lacked the support of key players in Congress and the executive. Like several of the organ­izations that participated in the hearings, OSIA acknowledged that Congress might not be willing to repeal the quota system. They hoped, however, that legislators would be open to improve it and make it more humane by raising the yearly cap on the Eastern Hemi­sphere, reallocating unused quotas to help countries with backlogs, and making stepchildren and ­adopted ­children eligible for f­amily reunion. OSIA also criticized the harshness of deportation a­ fter 1952 and immigrants’ inability to appeal.61 In his testimony, Lehman denounced the McCarran-­Walter Act as bearing “the dark stains of prejudice, of fear and suspicion.” For him, the act isolated Americans rather than protected them.62 The Eisenhower Administration and Senator Harley Kilgore (D-­WV), chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization, “ducked ­every invitation to testify” ­because, as the chair of OSIA’s Committee on Immigration and Naturalization put it, they “failed to come to grips with this vital issue and formulate a policy.”63 In the House, the 1956 Lehman-­Celler bill never even received a hearing, even though Celler was chair of the House Judiciary Committee, b­ ecause the other members outvoted him ­after Walter lambasted his bill.64 To Lehman, Celler, and their supporters, the failure to move on immigration legislation for three consecutive years confirmed yet again the influence of an entrenched co­ali­tion of restrictionist legislators in Congress but also many Americans’ support for the status quo. Lehman received hundreds of letters protesting his and Celler’s efforts to amend the McCarran-­Walter Act.

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He heard from private citizens and organ­izations that had long supported immigration restriction like the ­Daughters of the American Revolution, the Ju­nior Order of United American Mechanics, and chapters of the American Legion. The number of constituents who wrote to him to applaud his efforts paled in comparison.65 To Edelstein, t­ hese letters made clear that “we are entirely lacking ­today in the national feeling of emergency which gave the Displaced Persons Commission the opportunity to make the impact it did.” Getting at the heart of immigration reform since the 1920s, he noted that the AJC’s Citizens Committee on Displaced Persons succeeded ­because what “it sought was a one-­shot program,” while liberal immigration reformers continued to strug­gle ­because they w ­ ere “seeking a permanent change in our permanent immigration and citizenship laws.”66 OSIA leaders agreed. They too believed that reform would happen only if as many Americans as pos­si­ble called for reform since both po­liti­cal parties considered the “prob­lem of immigration and naturalization . . . ​a po­liti­cal football—­rather than a serious humanitarian issue.”67 Edelstein also identified the other major obstacle in accomplishing broad immigration reform that had plagued antirestrictionists from day one, namely the lack of a cohesive and wide-­ranging co­ali­tion of ethnic groups, church groups, ­labor u­ nions, and chambers of commerce. This had become increasingly difficult ­after 1952. The experience with the Displaced Persons Acts and the McCarran-­Walter Act had created suspicion and tensions among liberal immigration reformers. The charged po­liti­cal climate and the configuration of the legislative committees further exacerbated the relationship among them. Catholic and Jewish activists remained particularly divided. Leery of spearheading another co­ali­tion of religious, l­abor, civic, and ethnic organ­izations to push for the Lehman-­ Celler bill, Edelstein and the AJC worked ­behind the scenes to create a national committee with prominent individuals from religious, l­abor, civic, business, and nationality organ­izations instead in the hopes that it would be easier to find common ground.68 The committee prioritized educating Americans, especially outside the Northeast, about the need for reform ­because “Walter and Eastland are able to get away with what they get away with only ­because they have the tacit support of the majority of the members of their respective ­houses.”69 ­After the challenges of working with them during the debate over the McCarran-­Walter bill, Lehman remained particularly leery of collaborating with members of the Catholic hierarchy. Monsignor O’Grady confidentially encouraged him to stay away from Mohler and the NCWC.70 Mohler continued to believe that Catholics should pursue immigration reform on their own, while

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O’Grady and Swanstrom encouraged them to reach out to the leaders of the Protestant and Jewish groups in their community to advocate for immigration reform together.71 The Catholic hierarchy remained more divided than ever. Unable to agree on a proposal to replace the national origins system, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops simply issued a statement calling for the adoption of a just and workable substitute, which retained the nonquota status for countries in the Western hemi­sphere and provided more relief for refugees.72 Italian American leaders remained divided as well. While OSIA’s Committee on Immigration and Naturalization took an active role in drafting the Lehman-­Celler bill and participating in Edelstein’s committee of prominent Americans,73 ACIM joined other ad hoc committees with similar goals. Marchisio sat on the advisory committee of the Coordinating Council for Amending the McCarran-­Walter Act74 and Donanzan represented ACIM in the American Immigration Conference, an umbrella organ­ization of approximately sixty groups that promoted cooperation and collaboration against immigration restriction, including the American Jewish Committee, American Friends Ser­v ice Committee, ADL, CIO, Common Council for American Unity, National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and OSIA.75 Yet, as Donanzan noted a­ fter a meeting on “the plan of attack upon the National Origins Quota of the Immigration and Nationality Act,” participants could not reach consensus on how to proceed even on this one single item. While many felt that the organ­izations should act individually, o­ thers believed that they should collaborate u­ nder the aegis of the American Immigration Conference.76 Even OSIA, which was usually more out­spoken and militant than ACIM, argued that concentrating exclusively on the repeal of the national origins quota system was inadvisable considering the alignments and climate in Congress.77 The proliferation of special committees targeting the McCarran-­Walter Act enraged supporters of the law who promptly launched accusations of Communism against its critics. In 1956, Robert C. Alexander, former assistant administrator for the Refugee Relief Program, published an article in Law and Con­temporary Prob­lems in which he argued that the recent discovery that a member of the American Communist Party had been involved in the National Committee to Repeal the McCarran Act, the very committee on which ACIM’s Marchisio sat, demonstrated the dangers that immigration reform posed to the American way of life. “This does not mean, of course,” he continued, “that all ­those who criticize the McCarran-­Walter Act are Communists, or even Communist sympathizers, but it should cause patriotic Americans who have no po­ liti­cal ax to grind to ponder before joining any movement to attack the law.”78 For the rest of the de­cade, Representative Walter insisted that Communists

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had infiltrated a large number of churches in the United States to persuade their members to push for immigration reform.79 If pushing for immigration reform proved challenging before 1957, antirestrictionists’ work in assisting refugees to come to the United States u­ nder the 1953 Refugee Relief Act proved just as difficult. This was particularly discouraging as many of them had seen the passage of the act as a victory and hoped that t­ hose arriving u­ nder it would, in turn, be able to send for f­amily members u­ nder the McCarran-­ Walter Act.

Working to Overcome an Imperfect Law: The 1953 Refugee Relief Act As had happened with e­ very new piece of major legislation passed, immigration reform activists again had to overcome red tape when the 1953 Refugee Relief Act went into effect. ACIM regularly complained about the “constant delays, ­needless administration pitfalls and many complex ‘safeguards’ in the name of ‘security.’ ”80 While many activists had accepted a flawed act ­because it represented pro­gress, they had hoped that its implementation would go smoothly, but they again had to contend with nativist bureaucrats at the U.S. State Department. As it had done for most of the 1930s, the department added further requirements to regulate the refugee flow. Revealing longstanding ste­reo­­types about radicals abusing the refugee system to enter the United States and then undermine U.S. democracy, State Department officials declared that the additional provisions ­were in place “to prevent subversives from taking advantage of the refugee operation.”81 ­These early efforts of aggressive examination of refugees underscore the prehistory of the intricate web of checks and controls many refugees undergo ­today, making them the most scrutinized groups ever to try to enter the United States. The additional provisions exemplified another tool of remote control that made it difficult for immigration reform advocates to intercede on their behalf. In response, Italian and Jewish leaders and relocation agencies worked to find sponsorships, searched for alternative destinations, and continued to lobby the U.S. Congress for more piecemeal immigration reform. While finding sponsorships in the U.S. for prospective refugees contributed to the success of the act, it also concentrated a lot of power in fewer organ­ izations. Working with Monsignor Swanstrom and the nationwide web of ethnic and religious agencies with which he collaborated, ACIM launched a national campaign and secured 45,000 job and housing assurances for Italian immigrants who qualified u­ nder the 1953 act.82 ACIM’s success pushed aside

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other Italian American organ­izations and advocacy groups. ­After months of bickering, UNICO, the American Resettlement Council for Italian Refugees (an impromptu organ­ization created by Fortune Pope and supported by the Order Sons of Italy), and the Comitato Italiano Pro Profughi Stati Uniti (an Italian refugee agency in Rome) all de­cided to work with ACIM to coordinate assurances for employment and housing and the reception and resettlement of Italian refugees.83 Similarly, HIAS, the United Ser­vice for New Americans, and the Joint Distribution Committee merged to become the United HIAS Ser­vice to pool their resources and serve Jewish refugees and immigrants more effectively.84 Most of the new agency’s work, like ACIM’s, initially went into securing work and housing assurances for applicants that qualified ­under the 1953 Refugee Relief Act and collaborating with local communities for refugees’ integration, rehabilitation, and naturalization.85 When relocating refugees in the United States failed, Italian and Jewish organ­izations searched for alternative destinations. The United HIAS Ser­vice opened new offices in more than forty countries to work with refugee families.86 Thanks to this vast network and de­cades of experience assisting refugees and mi­grants, it successfully relocated Jewish refugees in Australia, China, Israel, and Central and South Amer­i­ca.87 Also with contacts in more than forty countries, ACIM tried to resettle Italian mi­grants in Central and South Amer­ i­ca, but it was far less successful. At the beginning of 1953, Marchisio and Donanzan, with the help of Monsignor Swanstrom, began negotiations with General Rafael Trujillo to resettle Italian mi­grants in the Dominican Republic ­because of the general’s longstanding efforts to strengthen the country’s ties with the Catholic Church and to recruit Eu­ro­pean immigrants.88 Part of Trujillo’s Dominicanización program, ­these initiatives, however, represented more “a despot’s racist efforts to remake his own society,” as Allen Wells puts it, than a humanitarian view of world migration flows.89 Trujillo was also an unpredictable partner. In the spring of 1953, through the intercession of the Vatican, ACIM representatives and the Italian Consul General in New York met with him in New York City.90 At the end of the meeting, Trujillo pledged to admit 100,000 “God-­fearing, anti-­communistic Italians who wish to s­ ettle for a life of stability and security.”91 ­Later in the year, representatives from ACIM and other resettlement agencies traveled to the Dominican Republic to discuss “the type of immigrants needed by the Republic,” namely seamen, fishermen, marble cutters and setters, upholsterers, mechanics, and farmers.92 Despite ACIM’s enthusiasm, the arrangement fell through b­ ecause Trujillo kept postponing the beginning of the program. Undeterred, ACIM collaborated with several Catholic resettlement agencies and the Intergovernmental Committee

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on Eu­ro­pean Migration to assist Italian postwar mi­grants to relocate to South Amer­i­ca.93 As they worked to resettle refugees in the United States and abroad, Italian and Jewish reformers continued to lobby Congress to modify the 1953 Refugee Relief Act. Echoing criticisms from Senators Ives and Lehman and Commissioner of Immigration Joseph M. Swing, United HIAS Ser­vice advocated for changes to the act in the name of f­ amily reunion, the h­ uman right to asylum, U.S. foreign policy interests, and civil liberties.94 Aware of the critical role Italy played in Cold War geopolitics, ACIM warned legislators that “if Italians and ­others are left without hope of immigration, their oppressive conditions cannot be borne for long.”95 Starting in October 1953, ACIM Dispatch published a series of articles by the likes of Clare Boothe Luce (then U.S. ambassador to Italy), Senator John F. Kennedy, Monsignor John O’Grady, and Manlio Brosio (Italian Ambassador to the United States) that warned that Italy’s overpopulation prob­lem threatened the survival of democracy in the country and Western Eu­rope.96 In August 1954, Congress succumbed to the pressure and modified the 1953 Refugee Relief Act, but the amended version was hardly an improvement. It reduced the number of visas available to refugees without relatives in the United States and, at McCarran’s insistence, required all applicants to show evidence of a job and housing rather than just sponsorship to receive a visa.97 As ACIM leaders pointed out, the amended act unduly penalized the “aliens whom the law was intended to help.”98 Confirming t­ hese suspicions, ACIM reported that, by September 1955, only 600 of the 20,000 Italians admitted to the United States u­ ntil then w ­ ere refugees. The rest w ­ ere immigrants with relatives already in the United States.99 In a familiar scenario, restrictionists found power­ful allies among immigration and visa officials. In the spring of 1955, Scott McLeod, head of the Bureau of Security and Consular Affairs and the U.S. State Department’s chief “red hunter,”100 fired Edward J. Corsi, his Special Assistant for Refugee and Migration Prob­lems, ­because he had publicly denounced the poor administration of the 1953 act. In firing Corsi, a prominent New York Republican with extensive experience in immigration, McLeod yielded to Representative Walter’s pressure to dismiss him ­because “he had shown contempt of Congress, addiction to falsehood, and scorn of the law,” as well as Communist affiliations.101 Corsi, who often said that in his part of the country “McLeod’s name was used to frighten babies,” denied the charges and retorted that “the security gang” around Secretary of State John Foster Dulles was administering the Refugee Relief Act unsympathetically.102 Reacting to the uproar that followed Corsi’s firing, Senator William Langer (R-­ND), chair of the Subcommittee on Refugees and

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Escapees of the Senate Judiciary Committee, announced public hearings from April 15 to 23, 1955, to scrutinize Corsi’s charges and the administration of the act in general. Neither the hearings nor the public protests reversed the decision to terminate Corsi’s position. Nor did they lead to the removal of the refugee program from Scott McLeod’s leadership.103 For OSIA, which had opposed Corsi’s ouster vehemently, Walter’s “­great influence in the drafting, recommendation, and passage of laws affecting Immigration and Naturalization” demonstrated how the power of the congressional committees on immigration extended beyond the halls of Congress and thrived on anti-­immigrant sentiments among immigration officials.104 Unexpectedly, Eisenhower, a few weeks a­ fter the scandal, urged Congress to amend the 1953 Refugee Relief Act, renewing liberal reformers’ hope for better legislation. Echoing the proposals put forward by several resettlement agencies, the president, who realized the value of refugee policies for U.S. foreign policy interests, recommended the pooling of unused quotas, the elimination of the requirement of a complete two-­year history for each visa applicant, and the recognition of job and housing assurances given by voluntary agencies. In response, Senator Langer held public hearings in 1956 on a bill that he put forward to amend the 1953 act. ACIM and the AJC immediately called on their members and supporters to contact members of Congress to vote the bill out of committee before Congress went on recess.105 Despite the immediate mobilization and the support for the Langer bill, the restrictionist co­ali­tion held to its 1953 deal. Senator James Eastland (D-­MS), a close ally of McCarran’s who had replaced him on the immigration subcommittee ­after his death, derailed the bill’s passage. A segregationist and white supremacist, Eastland attacked the reallocation of unused quotas, saying that it would “change the cultural pattern of our immigration system from northern and western Eu­ro­ pe­ans to southern and eastern Eu­ro­pe­ans” and would lead the United States to “veer from its traditions of freedom and democracy.”106 As a compromise, Senators Lyndon B. Johnson (D-­TX) and Everett Dirksen (D-­IL) proposed attaching an amendment to redistribute unused quotas to another pending immigration bill. The Senate passed the Johnson-­Dirksen amendment despite Eastland’s obstruction, and, for the first time in twenty-­two years, many immigration reform advocates of eastern and southern Eu­ro­pean descent felt ­there was a chance that Congress would fi­nally undo some of the damage that the national origins system had caused. The House never acted on it, however, ­because Walter refused to endorse it.107 The disappointment among immigration reform advocates was palpable. Few at the time realized that, challenges and obstruction notwithstanding,

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liberal reformers won the domestic po­liti­cal b­ attle over the 1953 Refugee Relief Act. Despite the numerous setbacks and the red tape that followed its ratification, as historian Carl Bon Tempo has noted, the act brought in thousands of refugees outside of the quota limits set by the McCarran-­Walter Act, who, in turn, ­were able to send for families.108 What immigration reformers took consolation in as the debate over the renewal and modifications of the 1953 Refugee Relief Act unfolded was that it kept immigration reform in the public eye, something they hoped would help once Congress de­cided to tackle changes to the entire immigration system. This time, they did not have to wait long.

1957: Rumors Come True True to the “deal made in the Senate against any amendments to the McCarran-­ Walter Act u­ ntil 1957,”109 Congress took up immigration in 1957, the year in which the 1953 Refugee Relief Act was set to expire. Several other ­factors paved the way for Congress to consider reform that year. ­After an election year in which both parties had included immigration reform on their party platforms, Eisenhower appeared more committed to reform than during his first term.110 The refugee crisis that followed the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 made it impossible to ignore his calls—­it also helped that the refugees w ­ ere from Eastern Eu­rope and fleeing a Communist country. Lastly, as Representative Kenneth Keating noted, Congress and Americans appeared ready for reform b­ ecause “of the long years of hard effort by fine organ­izations such as ACIM in dramatizing the needs and desires of ­those who have already come to this country and become worthy citizens.”111 Celler lost no time and on January 21, 1957, introduced a bill to revise the McCarran-­Walter Act sponsored by twenty-­ seven members of the House. Ten days ­later, Eisenhower called on Congress to reform the national origins quota system, remedy the proliferation of private bills for hardship cases, and fix the judicial review for deportation.112 A revision of the 1955 Lehman-­Celler bill, Celler’s new bill contained many familiar ele­ments, but it also tested Congress’s and the executive’s interest in considering substantive changes to the national origins quota system. It also sheds light on what mainstream reformers considered a fair admissions system. For the first time since 1921, Celler proposed a new formula for the admission of immigration “not based on national origins and not depending on any ‘nose count’ of the United States population.”113 ­Under his proposal, the new overall annual immigration quota was based on the average number of immigrants admitted in the United States during the previous ten years. In a

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continuing effort to wrestle the power over immigration legislation away from Congress, Celler’s bill also proposed that the president establish the yearly cap and the allocation of quotas in consultation with the attorney general and the secretaries of State, Commerce, and L ­ abor and then submit it to Congress for approval within sixty days. The flexibility of the new quota system would “permit the United States to adjust its intake of immigrants in enlightened self-­ interest to the fast changing po­liti­cal, economic and social situation of the world.”114 Celler’s five preference categories included ­family reunion, occupation, refugees, national interest immigrants, and resettlement immigrants. In perhaps the most obvious sign of liberal reformers’ ac­cep­tance of what represented the ideal immigrant in post–­World War II United States, Celler proposed to expand f­ amily reunion provisions by adding parents of U.S. citizens to the category of nonquota immigrants as well as professors to increase the number of highly educated and skilled mi­grants. While the major Italian and Jewish organ­izations ­were ready to support Celler’s bill, they found some of its ele­ments problematic. Their criticisms paled in comparison to the backlash the bill received from restrictionists. Exemplifying many liberal reformers’ concerns, Palmer Di Giulio, chair of the OSIA immigration and naturalization committee, believed that the bill would do l­ ittle to alleviate the proliferation of private bills sponsoring hardship cases and found Celler’s proposed system too “complicated and obscure” to attract widespread support among already skeptical legislators. He also objected to the provisions in the bill that harshly punished Mexicans who crossed the border illegally since t­ hese immigrants entered the country “with the connivance of our own p­ eople who need their ser­v ice.”115 If supporters sought to provide constructive feedback, critics considered Celler’s bill “a drumfire attack” against the McCarran-­Walter Act. Their attacks intentionally mixed decades-­old ste­ reo­types about the “new” immigrants with Cold War fears. Many restrictionists blamed Eisenhower Republicans and liberal Demo­ crats for taking advantage of the Hungarian Revolution “as a means of making an emotional attack on our immigration laws” and admitting communist spies, saboteurs, and agitators. “If they succeed,” wrote journalist Dan Smoot, “they ­will open the doors and flood our country with Asians and Eastern Eu­ro­pe­ ans who have been drenched with communist-­socialist propaganda.”116 The American Legion, echoing other nativist socie­ties, went on rec­ord against “efforts to emasculate the Act” and Representative Walter warned that if Congress changed the McCarran-­Walter Act, it “would deprive the American ­people of the safeguard of our national economy, our po­liti­cal system, and our standards of life.”117 Celler’s bill did not survive, but its call for a flexible quota

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system resonated among many liberal reformers, who saw it as a fair compromise between their agenda and restrictionists’ goals. Congress instead took up two bills narrower in scope but sponsored by John F. Kennedy in the Senate and Walter in the House. Both bills sought to provide immediate relief to the backlog created by the expiration of the Refugee Relief Act of 1953 and to solve minor procedural prob­lems in the McCarran-­ Walter Act, but Kennedy’s version included the reallocation of unused quotas. This difference set off an intense debate ­because restrictionists feared that the pooling of unused quotas would profoundly change the racial balance in U.S. society that the national origins quota system had helped maintain. Critics of immigration restriction took advantage of this opportunity to voice their opinions whenever pos­si­ble. All the major Italian and Jewish organ­ izations ­were at the forefront of the debate, but they supported the Kennedy-­ Walter bill for dif­fer­ent reasons. OSIA and the AJC endorsed the bills b­ ecause they felt that ­there ­were no good alternatives left, while ACIM went all in. Palmer Di Giulio of OSIA believed the organ­ization should support both Walter’s and Kennedy’s bills ­because “they may be the only legislation which Congress may adopt during the pre­sent session.”118 He suspected that it was the last opportunity to push for reform in the 1950s and they had an obligation to pursue it. For the AJC, the passage of the bill “would help in the reuniting of families, would aid in solving some of the existing refugee situations, and would . . . ​mitigate some of the harsh and inflexible features of the basic immigration law.”119 To this end, the AJC worked with the American Jewish Congress, ADL, HIAS, and many other Jewish agencies to issue several statements from February to August 1957 that praised President Eisenhower’s support for reform and endorsed Kennedy’s bill but expressed disappointment for the inaction on a refugee policy that would admit refugees fleeing both Communist and non-­Communist countries.120 ACIM emerged as the most engaged organ­ization in the debate by far. Leveraging f­ amily unity, ACIM leaders proposed that the pooling of unused quotas should f­ avor immigrants with f­ amily ties and t­ hose with skills needed in the United States and suggested expanding the list of ­family members eligible to enter the United States outside of the quota system.121 ­These proposals would give Italy an additional 50,000 yearly slots, but, in their meetings with Senators Keating, Kennedy, and Eastland, ACIM leaders emphasized that ­these tweaks would help the Italian government make a case against the “red propagandists” who used the restrictive U.S. immigration policy as a recruiting tool.122 Encouraged by the favorable reaction to ­these ideas, ACIM

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tried again to set up a meeting with Representative Walter, but, for the second time, he refused to meet with them. Given his power and influence, however, ACIM leaders had no choice but to endorse his bill b­ ecause it met some of their goals.123 Although liberal immigration reformers contended that the pooling of unused quotas would not profoundly alter the status quo, many in Congress disagreed and made its retraction from Kennedy’s bill a sine qua non condition for reform. Kennedy assured his colleagues that the bill primarily focused on ­family reunion and that “the number of aliens which this bill would admit is relatively small—­less than 90,000 over a two-­year period—­but the advantage to the United States and the ­people affected are tremendous.”124 Yet, ­after an informal poll among his colleagues showed that very few supported his bill but ­were willing to vote for Walter’s bill, Kennedy dropped the provision for the reallocation of unused quotas and reintroduced the bill. ­After Kennedy revised his bill, both h­ ouses of Congress swiftly approved the Kennedy-­Walter bill. The 1957 Immigration and Nationality Act erased the mortgaged quotas accumulated since the Displaced Persons Act of 1948, released previously authorized but unused refugee visas to more than 60,000 persons fleeing persecution, and granted non-­quota status to orphans ­adopted by U.S. citizens up to 1959.125 Yet the act was just as notable for t­ hose whom it excluded. In yet another example of legislators’ racial biases, the act, at Walter’s insistence, discriminated against Cold War refugees from outside of Eu­rope. Ignoring Chinese refugees fleeing Communism, the new act allocated the unused visas outside of Eu­rope only “to non-­indigenous refugees in the Far East.”126 It also failed to address refugees fleeing the Suez crisis, which had erupted while Congress debated the act. As the AJC put it, while the Hungarian Revolution provoked “a widespread sentiment in the United States and other countries of the ­free world in ­favor of relaxing immigration restrictions,” the United States attributed its inability to help refugees of the Suez crisis “to the minimal immigration quota for Egypt and to the inflexible character of the basic immigration law.”127 A continuing preoccupation with race superseded Cold War interests and the national origins quota system provided the perfect justification for inaction. Jewish organ­izations’ experience with the two refugee crises crystallized the impact that the race of refugees had on the success of their efforts. For the Hungarian Jewish refugees, all that American Jews had to do was to activate their efficient and well-­oiled voluntary agency machine to assist them to come to the United States. From November 1956 to June 1957, HIAS assisted 3,926 Hungarian Jewish escapees, the majority of whom e­ ither had f­ amily members already in the country or possessed skills in demand in the United States.128

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Jewish agencies’ relocation work with Hungarian refugees aligned perfectly with the U.S. government’s anti-­Communist crusade in Eastern Eu­rope. In fact, the U.S. government provided assistance in relocating Hungarian refugees to the United States. Jewish organ­izations’ efforts for Jewish refugees fleeing Suez did not go as well. During the early months of 1957, several Jewish and non-­Jewish agencies beseeched the president, the Department of State, and the Department of Justice to admit more refugees from Egypt. On March 22, Senators Case, Ives, and Javits wrote an open letter to the attorney general to ask him to extend the parole procedure to Egyptian refugees. Since they w ­ ere neither Eu­ro­pean nor living in a Communist country, the “repeated pleas by Jewish and other civic and religious organ­izations for admission of a fair share of the Egyptian refugees . . . ​on the same basis as the Hungarian refugees, went unheeded.”129 From January to June 1957, HIAS could assist only twenty-­four Egyptian Jews to enter the United States even though, as in the case of Hungarian Jews, it had prioritized individuals with relatives in the United States or with desirable skills. This was a pattern for Anglo-­Saxon countries. During the same period, HIAS, in collaboration with other agencies, resettled over 7,500 Jewish refugees from Egypt to Israel and 1,446 to Latin Amer­i­ca, but only forty-­eight to Canada and sixty-­five to Australia.130 Although ACIM leaders considered the passage of the 1957 Immigration and Nationality Act a resounding success, they too intervened in the debate over Egyptian refugees ­because of the presence of Italians in Egypt. ACIM could hardly contain its satisfaction for “the initiative, the effort, and the unity put into the campaign by the members and friends which constitute the 107 ACIM chapters throughout the United States.”131 This was a major accomplishment for a group whose leaders had long been on the margins of the debate over immigration reform. The act allocated nearly 34,000 of the 62,556 visas reserved for refugees in the pipeline to Italians. Yet, ACIM believed that Italian refugees fleeing Egypt should also be admitted. In the pages of ACIM Dispatch, the organ­ization complained that the Italian exodus out of Egypt to Italy exacerbated the Italian economic woes and called for legislation to assist and resettle ­ these families elsewhere. ACIM also endorsed the testimony of Monsignor Aloysius Wycislo, director of the resettlement division of the National Catholic Welfare Conference, before the Senate Subcommittee on Refugees who asked for the admission of at least 15,000 Italians displaced from Egypt. Appeals to Congress fell on deaf ears and, time and again, the U.S. Department of State insisted that the extension of the parole provision to groups other than Hungarians depended upon congressional action.132

A ­Thing of Shreds and Patches 147

ACIM soon discovered that the alliance between restrictionists in Congress and the U.S. State Department also stalled the smooth implementation of the 1957 Immigration Act. Demonstrating the lack of enthusiasm among many of its members, Congress was slow to allocate funds to hire additional staff for the administration of the act while immigration authorities continued to slow down the admissions pro­cess. By January 1958, ACIM lamented, “only some 4,000 visas have been issued for Italy and this snail paced rate of issuance defeats the purpose of the law which is immediate reunion.”133 Undeterred, ACIM leaders returned to Washington, D.C., to pressure Congress to expedite the implementation of the 1957 act and plead for the allocation of more visas to the fourth preference group of the McCarran-­Walter Act reserved for naturalized citizens’ sons, ­daughters, ­brothers, or s­ isters.134 During their visit, ACIM leaders met with several senators and representatives, many of whom admitted that congressional action on the fourth-­preference immigrants would remain difficult b­ ecause of the weak economy but promised action on the allocation of funds.135 ­Later in the spring, to ACIM’s satisfaction, Congress allocated more funds to hire additional personnel to expedite ­family reunion visas ­under the 1957 Immigration Act.136 Although ACIM leaders’ pragmatically targeting their activism to match Congressional priorities proved a successful strategy, it also had the unintended effect of legitimizing t­ hose priorities. In an article published in ACIM Dispatch, Senator John F. Kennedy praised ACIM for its “constant watch over the public administration” of the laws, but he also reminded ACIM supporters that 63 ­percent of the 20,967 immigrants admitted during the first nine months of the 1957 act came from Italy, attesting to the U.S. government’s attention to Italy in the context of the Cold War. By contrast, he noted, only 8 ­percent of the visas issued had gone to orphans, refugees, and expellees over the same time period. While he understood ACIM’s focus on ­family reunion, he urged the organ­ization to take up the refugee cause too.137 Kennedy’s appeal revealed an inherent contradiction in Italian Americans’ targeted activism. Although the product of congressional obstructionism and many Americans’ re­sis­tance to immigration reform, ACIM’s pragmatism nonetheless contributed to the perpetuation of the status quo by working with rather than challenging Congress’s idea of who was a desirable immigrant in the 1950s. At the same time, the push for ad hoc legislation proved an effective way to challenge the national origins system b­ ecause it proved the untenability of the policy in place. Kennedy’s appeal did ­little to dissuade ACIM from its push for fourth-­ preference visas as part of its campaign for ­family reunion. ACIM leaders firmly believed that f­amily reunion represented the most palatable aspect of

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immigration policy they could leverage with legislators and that fourth-­ preference visas would benefit immigrants and refugees. The rhetorical emphasis on f­amily and the calls to return to traditional gender norms that characterized the 1950s further legitimized their approach. When ACIM leaders realized that the red tape continued, they de­cided to take the prob­lem directly to the president of the United States. In October 1958, through the intercession of Senator Keating, F ­ ather Donanzan met with Eisenhower to discuss the backlog of fourth-­preference visas during one of the president’s visits to New York City. During the meeting, Eisenhower vaguely appealed to Congress for reform to expedite ­family reunions, but his appeal failed to persuade legislators.138 Undeterred, ACIM continued its campaign insisting that it was “unfair to permit U.S. citizens to file petitions for their b­ rothers, ­sisters, sons, or ­daughters, granting them approval and then letting them pile up in a huge backlog at American consulates abroad without the hope of any visas being issued.”139 Marchisio returned to Washington, D.C., and met with Senators Eastland, Keating, and Kennedy, and Joseph M. Swing, Commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Ser­vice, to drum up support for a resolution of the backlog ­under the fourth preference of the McCarran-­Walter Act. ­These efforts paid off when, in February 1959, Senator Keating introduced a bill proposing to grant nonquota status to ­brothers, s­ isters, sons, or d­ aughters of U.S. citizens.140 A month l­ ater, Kennedy presented a bill, discussed with Representative Walter, that replaced the 1920s formula of the existing national origins system “with a formula based upon the blood relationship between citizens and resident aliens already ­here and ­those who seek admittance,” raised the annual cap to 250,000, and allocated 150,000 visas to relatives of U.S. citizens or resident aliens through the third degree of consanguinity outside of the quotas.141 In making a case for his bill, Kennedy argued that the McCarran-­Walter Act divided rather than unified Americans, discriminated against “friendly nations,” and, “perhaps most impor­tant, it is based upon an unnatural fear that we cannot assimilate ­people with dif­fer­ent customs and dif­fer­ent habits.”142 ACIM exulted. Even though Kennedy had consulted with him, Representative Walter persuaded Congress to replace the Keating and Kennedy bills with his more modest bill. Senator John O. Pastore (D-­RI), one of ACIM’s closest allies, sponsored it in the Senate. Although he would have liked bolder changes, Celler endorsed it too b­ ecause it favored f­amily reunion and b­ ecause, a­ fter de­ cades in Congress, he had learned that “he who w ­ ill take all or nothing is an irresponsible legislator.”143 ­After much debate, the final version of the bill

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admitted nearly 57,000 immigrants from Western Eu­rope outside of the yearly quotas, with 35,000 of the visas set aside for Italians. Of t­ hose 35,000, 33,000 ­were for Italians who fell ­under the second, third, and fourth category of the preference system of the McCarran-­Walter Act and who had registered at a U.S. consulate prior to December 31, 1953 and about 2,000 for spouses and minor ­children of ­those admitted ­under the Refugee Relief Act of 1953. Walter’s bill went through Congress quickly, and in September 1959 Eisenhower signed it into law.144 More importantly for critics of immigration restriction in general and ACIM in par­tic­ul­ar, the new act expanded the possibilities for ­family reunion. It moved U.S. citizens’ unmarried sons and ­daughters over twenty-­one years of age from the fourth to the larger second preference category, placed U.S. residents’ unmarried sons and ­daughters over twenty-­one years of age ­under the third preference category, and included spouses and minor ­children traveling with ­brothers and ­sisters or adult married sons and d­ aughters of U.S. citizens ­under the fourth preference.145 ACIM’s singular emphasis on f­ amily reunion paid off again, consolidating a larger trend t­ oward prioritizing f­ amily reunion and immigrants with skills. Aside from a few isolated voices, no one—­ critic or supporter of immigration—­objected to or obstructed this shift in immigration policy. Legislatively, the 1950s ended with further confirmation of legislators’ efforts to reshape who was the ideal immigrant by favoring f­ amily reunion and skills. Only a few months a­ fter passing Walter’s bill, Congress passed another bill sponsored by Walter that also dealt with t­ hese priorities. The new Walter bill (H.R. 9385) streamlined the section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that allotted 50 ­percent of the annual quota of each country to immigrants whose education, technical training, specialized experience, or exceptional ability benefited the United States. The bill also gave nonquota status to the spouses and ­children of t­ hese immigrants, and the fifth section of the bill provided for the admission of fiancés and fiancées of U.S. citizens as visitors for a three-­month period to allow them to get married. As the ACIM Dispatch noted, this law did not eliminate all the prob­lems of the McCarran-­Walter Act, but, along with the other bills passed ­after 1957, it introduced enough significant changes to generate hope among critics of immigration restriction that Congress would soon overhaul the entire system.146

Conclusion By the end of the 1950s, despite congressional recalcitrance, Communist hysteria, and many Americans’ lack of interest in immigration, Italian Americans

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and Jewish Americans, along with other groups, had undermined the immigration system first created in the 1920s and renewed in 1952 through several piecemeal changes. Along the way, they found an ally in the executive and set smaller achievable goals, but they also realized that their success hinged upon the ­will of legislators in key positions in Congress and their willingness to work within the par­ameters set by t­ hose same legislators. They pushed for ­family reunion, skilled immigrants, and refugees b­ ecause ­those ­were the issues that ­those same legislators believed to be impor­tant for domestic or foreign policy reasons, and in so ­doing, reformers normalized this shift in priorities. Even when they compromised, they could still fail b­ ecause, as Celler wrote to a constituent, “the general temper of Congress has always been conservative” when it came to immigration.147 When all ­else failed, liberalizers turned to personal bills, which clogged congressional logs and had a fairly low success rate but still demonstrated the unsustainability of the McCarran-­Walter Act. During the 83rd Congress alone, legislators considered over 2,000 bills related to adjustment of immigration status but approved only a few hundred.148 The experiences of the 1950s also made it clear that educating Americans about the need for reform and creating a broad alliance remained necessary to overturn immigration restriction. As Swanstrom put it in an address to ACIM delegates in 1959, advocates for immigration reform needed to come together ­because “­there are not too many ­people around the country who think as we do, who would tomorrow permit a change in our basic immigration laws, or our national origins quota system.”149 The groundwork Italian Americans and American Jews laid and the rhe­toric they developed in the 1950s would serve them well in the 1960s. With John F. Kennedy’s campaign pledge to abolish the quota system and his close working relationship with Walter, the 1960 presidential elections marked the beginning of the last phase of the history of the repeal of the national origins quota system.

chapter six

Reform at Last A Victory for Whom? ­ fter John Fitzgerald Kennedy became president of the United States, critics A of immigration restriction believed that sweeping reform was imminent, but when the first Catholic president and the grand­son of Irish immigrants turned his focus away from immigration, reformers quickly lost hope. Without the support of the executive branch, many Italian and Jewish activists understood that they would only succeed at pushing for minor changes to the country’s immigration policy considering that Representative Walter remained, as an Italian activist put it, “the absolute, unchallenged boss of legislation on immigration” and had “control of life and death over immigration bills.”1 Sidney Liskofsky, chair of the Immigration Committee of the AJC, remembered that “­until 1963, reformers had not dared hope to obtain more than an improvement of the existing system.”2 Similarly, F ­ ather Caesar Donanzan, executive secretary of ACIM, admitted that the organ­ization had de­cided to “be practical and e­ ither ­settle for the most of what we can get or nothing at all.”3 Even ­after they secured the support of the executive branch, the endorsement of the most liberal Congress to date, and the long-­sought public demand for reform in 1965, supporters of liberal immigration reform, burned by years of disappointments, remained concerned that restrictionists in Congress would again find a way to sabotage their efforts. E ­ ager to see the national origins system repealed, Italian and Jewish activists w ­ ere prepared to compromise even before the debate began, but they also found themselves on the margins of the negotiations over the final bill. Their fears were hardly unfounded. Exploiting liberal reformers and the Johnson Administration’s eagerness to abolish the racist national origins quota system and Asia-­Pacific Triangle, a group of Southern Demo­crats marginalized liberal reformers in Congress in the final negotiations over the bill. They leveraged their votes and committee positions to obtain crucial concessions from Johnson that legitimized other discriminatory forms of qualitative and quantitative se­lection. The passage of the 1965 Immigration Act, like much of the ­Great Society legislation, crystallized the growing po­liti­cal clout of new constituencies but also the failure to create a po­liti­cal environment in which all interested parties enjoyed the same amount of power at the negotiating ­table.

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Immigration Reform ­after JFK’s Election: Between Hope and Despair The 1960 presidential election between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon provided yet another opportunity to rekindle the debate over immigration reform for liberal immigration reform advocates. On June 21, 1960, New York attorney Edward J. Ennis testified before the Demo­cratic Platform Committee on behalf of seventeen l­abor, nationality, professional, and religious organ­izations interested in immigration, including ACIM, American Jewish Congress, and ADL. In his testimony, Ennis urged the Demo­cratic Party to include immigration reform in its platform and advocated for the use of the 1960 census to determine quotas, a statute of limitation on deportations, the elimination of any distinction between native born and naturalized citizens, and assistance to refugees fleeing Communist countries. Most of all, he argued that the elimination of the national origin system should become the primary goal for the United States, the “leader of the demo­cratic forces of the world.”4 Many of the groups he represented had expressed a similar desire during discussions over the Republican Party platform. The pressure worked: the Republican Party called for the replacement of the 1920 census with the 1960 census and the Demo­cratic Party committed to end the national origins system.5 That by the beginning of the 1960s, the abolition of the national origins quota system had become reformers’ priority demonstrated how much ground they had lost since the 1920s. It also underscored their conviction that if the law discriminated against white immigrants, ­little could be hoped for other groups. When Kennedy won, critics of immigration restriction believed that, as “a member of a so-­called minority group,” the new president would prioritize immigration reform.6 After his election, supporters of immigration reform pledged to “stand together, fighting for princi­ple and not settling for quarter loaves,” rally popu­lar support, and connect reform to U.S. international interests since foreign policy remained among the top concerns of the American ­people in 1960.7 They also believed that Kennedy’s past working experience with Representative Walter would help. During his tenure as chair of the Immigration Subcommittee in the Senate, Kennedy had accomplished what other supporters of immigration reform had been unable to do, co-­sponsor legislation with Walter that liberalized immigration law.8 Despite the high hopes, Kennedy showed l­ ittle interest in immigration reform during the first two years of his term. Prioritizing Cold War imperatives, Kennedy pushed for the Migration and Refugee Assistance Act in 1962 to help Cuban refugees and signed

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a law that authorized minimum quotas of one hundred for newly in­de­pen­dent nations and all the countries in the Asia-­Pacific Triangle. The disappointment among activists of southern and eastern Eu­ro­pean descent was palpable. “The administration . . . ​is behaving not like an ardent swain but more like a selective suitor, looking elsewhere than in immigration’s direction,” wrote the American Council for Nationalities Ser­vice (ACNS).9 It also did not help that the bulwarks against immigration reform—­Senate Judiciary Chair James Eastland (D-­MS) and House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Chair Francis Walter (D-­PA)—­retained their positions of power over immigration legislation. As the Kennedy administration dithered on immigration, supporters of liberal reform continued to focus on f­amily reunion. A ­ fter 1952, Italian American advocates and other groups turned to private immigration bills to facilitate ­family reunion and circumvent restriction. If a legislator agreed to submit a bill, the immigrant would avoid deportation for at least a year ­because the Immigration and Naturalization Ser­v ice did not deport while the bill was pending in Congress. Since the primary beneficiaries of private bills ­were immigrants who had entered the U.S. when the yearly quotas for their countries had already been filled, the delay could be indefinite, as legislators could reintroduce a private bill in each new session of Congress ­until a quota slot opened up. By the early 1960s, as Celler repeatedly pointed out, private bills clogged the congressional schedule. In 1961–1962 alone, 2,677 private immigration bills came up for discussion, but pushing for legislation proved just as challenging.10 With its 120 chapters across the country, ACIM lobbied tirelessly for ­family reunion legislation, but, once again, its success depended on the ­will of Representative Walter.11 By May 1961, t­ here w ­ ere 171,210 pending f­ amily reunification applications, 138,378 of which w ­ ere from Italian applicants.12 Given the staggering backlog, ACIM contacted legislators and immigration officials to urge them to consider stopgap legislation “to re­unite families who are separated only by an inadequacy in our laws.”13 ACIM expressed concern that the inclusion of unmarried sons and ­daughters over twenty-­one in the third preference in the 1959 Immigration Act penalized spouses and minor ­children of U.S. residents b­ ecause the majority of unmarried sons and d­ aughters over twenty-­one had ­earlier registration dates.14 Congress listened, but once again the result was dif­fer­ent from what ACIM had hoped. Representative Walter, in an effort to wrestle reform from liberal legislators, successfully pushed through a bill that admitted all second-­and third-­preference cases whose petitions had been filed by July 1, 1961 outside of the quota system.15 ACIM had initially endorsed Representative Walter’s proposal but soon realized that the

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date chosen was not a coincidence. It strategically penalized countries with large backlogs like Italy, Greece, China, and the Philippines. ­Under the new law, only 10,000 Italians in the pipeline would benefit.16 Less than a year ­later, as the number of backlogged applications for Italians mushroomed to 140,000, ACIM resumed its push to ease f­amily reunion to remedy “the inadequacy and unfairness of Amer­i­ca’s immigration policies.”17 ­After Congress rejected Senator Philip Hart’s bill proposing a drastic revision of the quota system and the Kennedy administration de­cided to postpone immigration reform to 1963, ACIM joined forces with the Catholic Relief Ser­ vices to make its voice heard.18 Bishop Swanstrom and Marchisio wrote a letter to the Senate and House Judiciary Committees to propose to solve the backlog ­either by reallocating unused quotas or to change the eligibility deadline for second-­and third-­preference cases ­under the 1961 law. ACIM even asked its chapters to contact their local, state, and national legislators to urge action.19 Despite the flurry of bills that followed the repeated appeals made by ACIM, Walter refused to consider any of them, leaving ACIM leaders to won­der ­whether the bills ­were simply “po­liti­cal smoke screens” from politicians ­running for reelection. For his part, Walter made it clear in his reply to Swanstrom and Marchisio’s letter that the passage of new immigration legislation remained unlikely given the uncertain economic and po­liti­cal climate.20 ­After receiving Walter’s response, Marchisio and Donanzan turned to the executive branch, as supporters of immigration reform had regularly done in the 1950s. They asked Senator Edward Kennedy, an ally, to raise the issue with President John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. At the end of May 1962, Senator Kennedy discussed the need for f­ amily reunion legislation in a meeting with his ­brothers and with Representative Walter about Chinese refugees in Hong Kong. ­Because Walter had already declared that he would block the passage of any new legislation in 1962, President Kennedy agreed to work on revising the 1959 act to assist fourth-­preference applicants as proposed by Pastore in the Senate and Walter in the House. The final Walter-­Pastore bill called for the admission outside of the quota system of fourth-­preference applicants—­sons, ­daughters, ­brothers, and ­sisters of U.S. citizens—​with spouses and ­children whose applications had been filed by December 31, 1954, and approved by the attorney general by January 1, 1962.21 Legislators estimated that approximately 15,000 immigrants would benefit from the bill, the majority being Italians, Greeks, and Portuguese, but the legislation left ACIM leaders and their allies frustrated.22 Although a complete revision of U.S. immigration laws remained their ultimate goal, they felt compelled to ­settle for piecemeal legislation since “the opposition to liberalize the

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U.S. immigration policies even for the benefit of close relatives of U.S. citizens is obstinate and reflects the attitude of the majority of U.S. Congressmen, who, in turn, reflect the attitude of their constituents.”23 Walter’s legislative influence and the reluctance of supporters of immigration in Congress and the White House to challenge him also ­shaped how Jewish and Italian activists advocated for refugee legislation. Although Jewish advocates remained on the margins of the policy debates over ­family reunion, they continued to play an active role in the discussions over refugee policy.24 While the bulk of Jewish refugees still hailed from Eu­rope at the beginning of the 1960s, Jewish activists now also focused on the rising number of Jewish refugees fleeing countries like Egypt or Cuba. This change pushed American Jews to continue pleading for refugee rights for non-­European immigrants as well, but, like in the 1950s, Jewish refugees from t­hese areas remained their priority.25 Italian Americans ­were equally pragmatic.26 In 1960, as Congress considered passing a refugee bill sponsored by Walter to honor the first World Refugee Day, ACIM asked to include “Italians expropriated and ­dispossessed . . . ​by the Tunisian government” in the bill.27 Citing high unemployment, the Italian government had called on ACIM for help relocating t­ hese Italians to the United States even though their eligibility for refugee or expellee status was questionable since 39,528 of the 51,702 Italians in Tunisia ­were “second and third generation born Tunisians with, however, technical Italian citizenship.”28 Although several resettlement agencies intervened to support ACIM’s plea, the House rejected it despite the pre­ce­dent of Dutch nationals from Indonesia.29 Incensed, ACIM criticized Walter’s Fair Share Refugee Act ­because it prioritized refugees from Communist countries and ignored “the plight of the vast number of refugees in parts of the world other than Eu­rope.”30 AJC leaders too blamed Walter’s obstructionism for the slow and piecemeal pro­gress of immigration reform. Roy Millenson argued that the “installment-­ plan, back-­door changes” to the McCarran-­Walter Act ­after 1952 represented a masterful po­liti­cal maneuver that had changed “the fire-­breathing 1952–53 dragon of immigration reform to the tractable pussycat it is t­ oday.”31 Millenson believed that a gag rule from Walter a­ fter the passage of the Immigration Act in 1959 had stifled any momentum for immigration reform even as Congress made pro­gress in other long-­ignored civil rights ­matters. He feared that restrictionists’ “divide and conquer” approach doomed any push for comprehensive immigration reform and discouraged antirestrictionists, particularly Italian Americans who, in his opinion, had emerged as the most vocal critics of immigration restriction.32 For AJC, like for ACIM, reform would not be complete without the elimination of the national origins quota system. In their eyes,

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only abolishing the system would take away the stigma of undesirability for their communities and legitimize their presence in U.S. society. Nonetheless, their piecemeal approach, especially considering the obstruction they had faced through the de­cades, had worked. As statistics show, between 1953 and 1964, only 1,140,479 of the 3,197,857 immigrants who arrived in the United States did so ­under the national origins quota system. The rest entered the country ­either as nonquota immigrants ­under special provisions of the McCarran-­Walter Act (1,681,285), especially t­ hose facilitating f­ amily reunion, or ­because of ad hoc legislation, including refugee laws, passed by Congress (376,093). Many of the immigrants who entered the country during this period hailed from countries that the United States had long targeted for restriction. Despite a yearly quota of 5,666, 185,491 Italian immigrants arrived in the United States between 1951 and 1960. During the same period, 9,567 Chinese immigrants arrived despite an annual quota of 105; 46,250 Japa­nese entered despite an annual quota of 185; and 47,608 Greeks immigrated despite an annual quota of 308.33 ­These numbers clearly challenged the often-­repeated mantra that the period from 1924 to 1965 successfully brought immigration to the United States to a halt and represented a palpable mea­sure of antirestrictionists’ success at undermining the status quo. The more careful if frustrating approach that characterized many antirestrictionists’ efforts in the late 1950s and early 1960s ultimately created the best pos­si­ble conditions for comprehensive immigration reform, especially given the power that Walter had over the legislative agenda. By the beginning of the 1960s, two of the three conditions supporters of liberal immigration reform had long believed to be necessary for comprehensive reform had become a real­ ity: both po­liti­cal parties had made immigration reform part of their platforms and immigration had remained in the spotlight since 1952 thanks to their lobbying and educational efforts. They also approached interethnic co­ali­tions more productively and deliberately. Mindful of the setbacks of the 1950s, supporters of immigration reform from dif­fer­ent groups joined forces u­ nder umbrella organ­izations to create po­liti­ cal momentum. By 1960, many Italian and Jewish advocates belonged to one or more of the four major national organ­izations advocating for immigration reform: the American Immigration Conference, the National Council on Immigration and Citizenship (NCIC), the ACNS, and the American Council for Voluntary Agencies (ACVA).34 Given the overlap among the four, most supporters of immigration reform welcomed the merger of the National Council on Naturalization and Citizenship with the American Immigration Conference

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in the American Immigration and Citizenship Conference (AICC) with headquarters in New York City.35 AICC was critical to the growing participation of immigrant and ethnic organ­izations in immigration reform and provided a strong institutional structure for reformers’ civic engagement. It had about one hundred affiliated and cooperating agencies for which it functioned as a clearing­house and coordinator of information, research, and educational activity. Its member agencies included several influential Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish organ­izations; ­labor ­unions; and an array of nationality organ­izations.36 Hoping to avoid the divisions that had splintered the co­ali­tion during the debate over the McCarran-­ Walter Act, AICC rallied ­these disparate groups around two goals, the end of the national origins quota system and the abolition of the Asia-­Pacific Triangle, which they considered ambitious but attainable b­ ecause they intersected with U.S. foreign policy priorities. In response to the secrecy that had characterized previous interethnic collaborations, AICC also emphasized transparency, and open communication among its member organ­izations and worked closely with the executive branch from the very beginning to communicate reformers’ priorities.37 Antirestrictionists just needed a po­liti­cal opportunity.

The Final Push for an Imperfect Reform The opportunity materialized in 1963, when several ­factors created an environment more conducive to immigration reform. At the beginning of the year, the U.S. Department of ­Labor issued a positive report on the occupational distribution of the 3,500,000 immigrants who had arrived in the United States between 1947 and 1961. Commenting on the report, Secretary of ­Labor W. Willard Wirtz noted how “by providing a haven for the oppressed, the nation has reaped g­ reat profits” b­ ecause the new immigrants arrived with skills needed in the United States.38 The outlook in Congress also seemed more promising, as many legislators appeared open to taking on immigration reform at last. Thirty-­five Senators from twenty-­three states co-­sponsored an immigration bill spearheaded by Senator Hart that the Senate had refused to consider the year before. The bill proposed allocating immigration quotas based on population ratios and patterns of immigration to the United States during the previous fifteen years. Many of the nationality, civic, and religious organ­izations involved in immigration reform since World War II endorsed Hart’s bill ­because it proposed a more flexible approach to immigration.39 In the House, Representative Michael A. Feighan (D-­OH) became chair of the

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House Subcommittee on Immigration when Walter died. Although he shared many of Walter’s ideas on immigration, Feighan appeared more open to tackle substantive reform than his pre­de­ces­sor. Despite ­these positive developments, immigration reform advocates realized that, without presidential support, immigration would remain low on the congressional agenda. Although President Kennedy had fi­nally embraced immigration reform, he remained indecisive about which immigration bill to take up. Emanuel Celler wrote a personal and confidential letter to Kennedy on June 24, 1963, urging him to take up the most ambitious immigration bill ­because the final bill would inevitably be much tamer. “The climate in Congress is not favorable for immigration legislation which would considerably increase the number of immigrants we admit annually,” Celler wrote the president. “I am convinced that compromise w ­ ill have to be worked out before we reach the voting stage of our deliberations,” he continued. His own bill offered “large areas for such compromises” and could best “satisfy ­those who might vote with us, or our foreign friends and Allies, or the noncommitted nations of the world.”40 The president listened. In July 1963, Kennedy proposed a bill that called for elimination of the Asia-­Pacific Triangle, the discontinuation of the quota system over a five-­year period, and the continuation of the nonquota status of the Western Hemi­sphere. It also set a global cap, excluding the Western Hemi­sphere, with each country allowed no more than 10 ­percent of the total and prioritized immigrants with skills first and ­family ties second. Supporters of immigration reform could hardly contain their enthusiasm. “The President’s recommendations give new impetus and new hope to the proposals for revising our immigration legislation,” wrote Ann S. Petluck and James P. Rice of HIAS. While they admitted that early passage of this bill might be difficult, “­there is nevertheless reason to believe that passage in the not-­too-­ distant ­future ­will be pos­si­ble.”41 AICC coordinated a letter of endorsement signed by seventy-­two national, religious, ­labor, and civic organ­izations.42 The list of the undersigned included several of the same organ­izations that had strug­gled to stay united in 1952, namely the American Civil Liberties Union, AJC, AFL-­CIO, JACL, and NCWC. The main new addition was ACIM.43 Kennedy’s assassination in November brought any plan to overhaul the country’s immigration system to a halt. His successor’s weak track rec­ord on immigration worried critics of immigration restriction who feared that the moment for reform had already passed. When Lyndon B. Johnson became president, even many of Kennedy’s advisers found Johnson’s rec­ord discouraging. As historian Irving Bern­stein points out, Johnson had voted to override Truman’s veto of the McCarran-­Walter Act, had played no role in the passage of

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any major immigration legislation since entering Congress, and was a Southern Demo­crat, leading many to assume that he shared his colleagues’ support for immigration restriction.44 According to Tichenor, ­these concerns w ­ ere legitimate, as Johnson was initially reluctant to embrace immigration reform, both ­because of his e­ arlier support for the McCarran-­Walter Act and ­because he feared that the controversial nature of the issue could sabotage the rest of his reform agenda.45 Sensing his indecision, grassroots advocates sent the new president letters, resolutions, and tele­grams to urge him to finish what President Kennedy had started with his immigration bill.46 Only when Meyer Feldman, Abba Schwartz, and other staffers from the Kennedy Administration persuaded Jack Valenti and Bill Moyers, Johnson’s closest advisers, to intercede did Johnson change his mind. As Tichenor observes, ­these advisers drew a clear connection between immigration reform and the administration’s foreign policy and civil rights agenda. Valenti and Moyers told Johnson that the national origins quotas damaged the United States’ reputation abroad as much as Jim Crow laws and contradicted Johnson’s pledge to eradicate ethnic and racial discrimination in the country. If ­these reasons w ­ ere not enough, they also told him that reforming the country’s immigration system had been among Kennedy’s highest priorities at the time of his death and that Johnson’s endorsement would appeal to voters in the Northeast.47 ­Because Johnson left l­ittle in writing about his decision-­ making pro­cess, the reasons for his ultimate endorsement of immigration reform remain unclear. Nonetheless, the existing evidence suggests that Johnson’s initial reluctance l­ater influenced the final negotiations on the immigration bill.48 Once converted, Johnson devoted considerable energy to immigration reform and worked closely with Kennedy’s former advisers. On January 8, 1964, during his first State of the Union address, Johnson criticized the existing immigration law and called for change.49 Two days ­later, the White House contacted Abba Schwartz to ask him to or­ga­nize a meeting with the key stakeholders involved in immigration reform on January 13, 1964—the same day the Senate had scheduled hearings on Kennedy’s bill—to introduce the administration’s bill. The sixty attendees included members of the House and Senate immigration subcommittees, representatives of religious and lay organ­izations involved in immigration policy and refugee resettlement, ­union leaders, and the media.50 With the addition of ACIM and AICC, several of the p­ eople invited belonged to the same organ­izations involved in the debate over the McCarran-­Walter Act almost a de­cade ­earlier, namely the AFL-­CIO, AJC, American Jewish Congress, ADL, Catholic Relief Ser­v ices, Church World

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Ser­vices, JACL, National Chinese Welfare Council, National Community Relations Advisory Council (NCRAC), NCWC, and United HIAS Ser­vice.51 Johnson’s bill closely resembled the 1963 Kennedy bill. The product of a tense collaboration of a team in the Department of Justice headed by Assistant Attorney General Norbert Schlei, a team in the Department of State led by Abba Schwartz, and White House staffer Feldman, the bill had three objectives: eliminate any form of discrimination from immigration policy, set a permanent refugee policy, and create a more flexible immigration system that adapted to changing domestic ­labor needs, refugee crises, and evolving migration patterns. First, the bill proposed the immediate elimination of the Asia-­ Pacific Triangle and the abolition of the national origins system over a five-­year period. Second, it reserved 20 ­percent of all visas for refugees fleeing tyranny, war, or natu­ral calamities.52 Lastly, the proposal included the creation of an immigration board that would make regular recommendations to the president and the attorney general on how many and which immigrants should be admitted, continued to exempt the Western Hemi­sphere from the global ceiling, and suggested a preference system for the Eastern Hemi­sphere that would prioritize immigrants with skills and ­family reunion.53 White House staffers painstakingly choreographed the January 13 meeting to show momentum for reform. Surrounded by tele­vi­sion cameras, Johnson urged the immediate passage of his bill with bipartisan support and reminded the audience that ­every president since Truman had criticized the national origins quota system ­because it hurt the country’s Cold War mission. Almost on cue, Senator Hart praised Johnson for “stepping up and swinging on an issue that ­really ­isn’t po­liti­cally good” and urged ­those in attendance to rally support for the president’s proposal.54 While most of the audience rejoiced at the president’s announcement, Feighan, chair of the House Subcommittee on Immigration, and James Eastland (D-­MS), chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization, expressed ­little enthusiasm.55 Veterans of the immigration subcommittees since the 1950s and impor­tant actors in the passage of the McCarran-­Walter Act of 1952, Feighan and Eastland knew well how to use congressional procedures to their advantage. When urged to take a stance during the meeting, Feighan proposed the revival of the long dormant Joint Committee on Immigration and Naturalization to evaluate the existing immigration policy. Although many, including Johnson, ­were encouraged by his statement, some of the liberalizers in the room feared that Feighan would use the joint committee hearings to take charge of immigration legislation.56 Similarly, Eastland vaguely responded that he was prepared to look into the ­matter “very carefully and very expeditiously.”57

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All of the organ­izations pre­sent at the meeting promised to rally support for the administration bill,58 but they soon realized that action on the bill was out of their hands. Although Senator Edward Kennedy (D-­MA), acting chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization, began hearings on the bill on the same day as Johnson’s meeting at the White House, the hearings, Schwartz remembered, “­were not extensive and no rec­ ord was published.”59 The push for immigration reform quickly came to a halt in the House as well. On February 10, 1964, when Johnson called Celler to ask him to start working on the bill immediately, Celler admitted that he was having trou­ble pushing the House to move forward on it.60 Celler did not mention that a feud between he and Feighan had raged for weeks over whose committee—­the Judiciary Committee or the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization—­had the authority to initiate immigration policy changes. Their clash came to a head when Feighan asked the House Appropriations Committee for $160,460 to conduct a study of the impact of the existing immigration policy and Celler convinced the committee to allocate only $20,000. Feighan retaliated by bringing his case to the entire House on April 10, 1964. Although his appeal failed, Feighan further delayed the beginning of the hearings and made it clear that he was ready to fight on what exactly constituted immigration reform.61 While immigration reformers found hope in the thirty-­seven senators and sixty-­four representatives who came out in support of the administration’s bill,62 they worried about Feighan’s views on immigration reform.63 While he had voted 75 ­percent of the time with the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, he was, according to the New York Times, “an intellectual bedfellow with the conservative and patriotic groups” who supported the status quo in immigration.64 Although many of his constituents descended from southern and eastern Eu­ro­pe­ans, Feighan had strongly supported the McCarran-­Walter Act and, according to Schlei, considered “the traditional supporters of the national origins system” his only real constituents.65 At a policy level, he believed that ­family reunion should take priority over skills, opposed the exemption of Western Hemi­sphere immigrants from numerical limits, and objected to including newly in­de­pen­dent countries in the West Indies in the exempted category ­because he feared ­those immigrants of color would change the fabric of American society. Feighan also resented that, when crafting its immigration proposal, the Kennedy Administration had collaborated with Celler, his longtime po­liti­cal nemesis, rather than with him.66 Worried that the rift between Celler and Feighan might ruin the chances for legislative action, liberal immigration activists renewed their pressure on

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the administration. In April, the AICC wrote Johnson to prod him to continue working on immigration reform.67 OSIA and the Italian American L ­ abor Council met with the president to encourage him to get immigration legislation out of the House Subcommittee.68 The most active of all, ACIM urged its supporters to contact their representatives69 and to or­ga­nize rallies to persuade legislators “to translate sentiments privately expressed into positive action in . . . ​Congress.”70 To their frustration, Republican members of the House and Senate immigration subcommittees replied that they supported reform but blamed the delay on the Demo­cratic majority on the Judiciary Committees. “In other words,” wrote Joseph De Serto to Donanzan, “the Republicans are making hay out of the delaying tactics of the Demo­crats who are supposed to f­avor legislation.”71 ­Behind the scenes, ACIM corresponded with Jack Valenti, Johnson’s closest aid and, by mid-1964, the person in charge of immigration legislation.72 “It would be tragic,” Donanzan wrote to Valenti, “if the hopes of so many w ­ ere dashed to the ground . . . ​­because of antagonisms emanating from segments of the House Judiciary Committee.”73 Taking advantage of the pressure of an election year, he also reminded Johnson’s adviser that tens of thousands of American voters, particularly t­ hose residing in New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Mas­sa­chu­setts, Rhode Island, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, and California “hopefully look to the U.S. Congress to humanize the quota system.”74 The AJC was less hopeful. Millenson feared that if Feighan got his way, he would use the hearings “for a Red-­hunting expedition” and that the squabble between Feighan and Celler left immigration reform advocates outside of Congress “on the sidelines watching the fracas.”75 Once the hearings fi­nally began in June 1964, Feighan protracted them ­until September despite liberal reformers’ push for quick action and the White House’s efforts to persuade him to collaborate. The list of witnesses in f­avor of reform at the House hearings included advocates from ethnic groups, voluntary agencies, and the Johnson Administration. Secretary of State Dean Rusk, during testimony critics termed “an event of importance,” denounced the national origins system and the Asia-­Pacific Triangle as “indefensible from a foreign policy point of view,” and argued that they endangered the United States’ relationship with many allies.76 When it came to immigration from the Western Hemi­sphere, Rusk pointed out that Congress’s policy had always been “to recognize the common bond uniting the Amer­i­cas by exempting from any quota restrictions t­ hose immigrants who w ­ ere born in in­de­pen­dent countries of the Western Hemi­sphere.”77 Echoing Rusk, Marchisio spoke of Italian families separated by immigration barriers as “unwanted ­children of misfor-

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tune”78 and Secretary of ­Labor Wirtz reiterated his belief that immigrants with desirable skills helped the U.S. economy.79 As Feighan slowed down the hearings, liberal immigration reform advocates took advantage of the election year to keep immigration in the spotlight and put pressure on both parties to support immigration reform. ­After the Republican Party only vaguely promised immigration reform in its platform on July 15, 1964, thirty-­five immigration agencies, including all the major Italian and Jewish organ­izations, issued a statement to criticize “the failure of the 1964 convention at least to reaffirm the Republican Party pledge in the 1960 platform.”80 The Demo­cratic plank, on the other hand, received sweeping praise, as Johnson called for immediate immigration reform and said that he had a bill ready for the next Congress to consider.81 Several groups, from the Columbia Civic League to JACL, wrote the president’s office to urge Johnson to keep immigration reform front and center.82 Concerned that the elections might turn the tide against immigration reform, ACIM and HIAS suggested pushing for the passage of the bill before the new Congress began. ACIM approached Victor Anfuso, former House representative (D-­NY) and member of the New York Supreme Court, to ask him to arrange a meeting with Valenti to convey the frustration that Congress continued to ignore the appeals of ­unions, regular Americans, and organ­izations that represented thirty-­nine million foreign-­born and first-­generation Americans and to urge the president “to step in and prod Congress into passing the immigration law” before the end of the 88th Congress.83 Similarly, James Rice of HIAS wrote Celler to arrange a private meeting to discuss the pending immigration legislation before the elections with himself and representatives of the AJC, American Jewish Congress, ADL, and NCRAC.84 The AJC had similar hopes, but, as Roy Millenson put it, “what seemed to be a bright year of promise turned out to be but a flimsy shadow.” For him, the biggest prob­lem was that t­ here was “no g­ reat public demand for immigration reform.” Seemingly out of touch with the emergence of new immigration reform activists and the uptick in immigration from within and outside Eu­ rope, Millenson argued that “­every year, as memories fade and as individuals and organ­izations become increasingly occupied with other issues such as civil rights, the drive for immigration reform becomes weaker and weaker.”85 Ceasar Donanzan of ACIM could not have disagreed more about the prospects for reform, but he worried that if the 88th Congress failed to act on the country’s immigration policy, “years ­will elapse before reaching the momentum that has been built during the past de­cade.”86

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Johnson’s crushing victory in 1964 immediately restored immigration reform advocates’ confidence. For ACIM, the victory signaled that liberalizers had “fi­nally won over many friends who now realize that the pre­sent immigration law of the land is one which is not compatible with the image of the United States.”87 Not taking anything for granted, several organ­izations came together to write a letter to the president to remind him of “the need for modernizing our country’s immigration policies.” Many of the seventy-­four nationality, religious, l­abor, and civic organ­izations that signed the letter had long worked together on immigration reform, such as ACIM, AJC, American Jewish Congress, ACLU, ADL, HIAS, Lutheran Immigration Ser­v ice, National Chinese Welfare Council, and United Steelworkers of Amer­i­ca, but JACL and NCWC, which had broken away from the ­others in 1952, also joined them.88 Another of the signatories, the American Friends Ser­v ice Committee also mailed the president’s office two of the many publications it had sponsored to inform Americans about the need for immigration reform.89 While Johnson relished the new majority, he understood that the win­dow of opportunity for any kind of reform would not last long. As a liberal lobbyist admitted to Tichenor, “A recognition spread like wildfire among liberal and ­labor organ­izations—­that the back of the old conservative-­Dixiecrat co­ali­tion had been broken, but that it might mend again as soon as the next election.” Many liberal reformers believed they had to “get every­thing through in the next 2 years that we need in the next 10.”90 Sharing this sense of urgency, Johnson presented an ambitious reform agenda during his inaugural address on January 4, 1965. Among other ­things, he called for an immigration policy based “on the work a man can do not on where he was born or how he spells his name.”91 A few days ­later, Johnson called for the immediate reform of U.S. immigration policy and reassured critics that the new law would only repair an injustice and not lead to an immigrant invasion or threaten American workers’ jobs. In his speech, the president also made it clear that his administration would endorse any bill that repealed the quota system.92 Following Johnson’s call to action, Celler and Hart introduced the administration bill in the House and the Senate respectively, while Feighan and Senator Sam Ervin (D-­NC), another member of the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and a fervid restrictionist, prepared to exploit the president’s eagerness to pass reform to their advantage. To increase the chances for success, the Johnson Administration again encouraged liberal reformers to muster popu­lar support but also worked to neutralize opposition in the House. During a meeting of voluntary agencies in Washington in January 1965, the administration signaled that the success of immigration reform depended “on the ‘grass roots’ support which the mea­sure

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­ ill receive across the nation.”93 Johnson’s concerns ­were not entirely unw founded since a Harris poll published in the Washington Post ­after the election showed that Americans remained skeptical about allowing more immigrants into the country.94 To increase its prospects for success in the House, the Johnson Administration pushed the newly elected representatives to enact rules to make it more difficult for the conservative House Rules Committee to block liberal legislation.95 According to Abba Schwartz, the administration also pushed for an expansion of the House Subcommittee on Immigration from five to nine members and asked Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach to arrange for the appointment of representatives who would support the administration bill and outvote Feighan if necessary.96 In the meantime, Celler again succeeded in persuading the House Appropriations Committee not to allocate funds to comply with Feighan’s request to revive the Joint Committee on Immigration and Naturalization.97 Several groups heeded the president’s call to action and set in motion a nationwide campaign to rally support for his bill. ACIM encouraged officers to ask local newspapers to take a stand on immigration reform, feature informative articles on the bills ­under consideration, and highlight personal stories about the impact of unjust restrictions. Donanzan also encouraged officers to or­ga­nize rallies, conferences, social gatherings, or fund­-­rais­ing events to show support for the president’s immigration agenda. Fi­nally, overcoming his own reservations and preconceived notions, he embraced co­ali­tion building and recommended that they work with other civic, religious, po­liti­cal, and social organ­izations to rally support for the president. “Employ ­every feasible method and use e­ very opportunity to keep the issue alive,” Donanzan concluded, “we must not permit the ­matter to sink into oblivion as has happened in the past.”98 The ACIM chapter in Los Angeles mobilized even before receiving Donanzan’s letter and joined forces with ten other local ethnic and religious organ­ izations for a one-­day conference on January 18, 1965, in Los Angeles, the first such meeting or­ga­nized ­after Johnson’s inaugural address. The eleven conference organizers welcomed 325 p­ eople from a broad range of ethnic organ­ izations, religious organ­izations, l­ abor ­unions, and professionals dealing with immigration issues, addressed the impact of the pending bills on dif­fer­ent immigrant groups, and distributed an action sheet. The participants criticized the inequity of the national origins quota system and the Asia-­Pacific Triangle, but they also denounced the restrictions placed on immigrants from the Western Hemi­sphere which, they argued, amounted to a quota system in practice.99 Other ACIM chapters followed suit ­after receiving Donanzan’s letter. The ACIM chapter in Chicago co-­organized a conference on immigration with

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seventeen other organ­izations with local representatives from religious organ­ izations, AJC, ADL, Jewish L ­ abor Committee, Chinese American Civic Council, Japa­nese American Ser­v ice Committee, and American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association. Secretary of L ­ abor Wirtz and Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Schwartz both spoke at the event.100 During the events in both Los Angeles and Chicago, liberalizers argued that the bills ­under consideration would eliminate discrimination, improve foreign relations, and bring the type of immigrants that the U.S. economy needed.101 Representatives of several nationality groups flooded the White House with letters supporting the president’s efforts to change the country’s immigration policy. From private citizens of Chinese, Hungarian, Italian, Japa­nese, Jewish, Jamaican, Korean, Romanian, or Ukrainian descent to religious groups, civic organ­izations, and ­labor ­unions, hundreds of ­people wrote the president to encourage him to press on and many of them also or­ga­nized petitions to collect signatures in ­favor of immigration reform. As Miriam Winborne of Baltimore put it, “this bill also brings us a bit nearer the G ­ reat Society.”102 ­Others told the president of the letter-­writing campaigns, stories in the media, and community events they or­ga­nized to support his immigration proposal.103 ACIM repeatedly tried to meet with the president to discuss the importance of immigration reform. Although several staffers recommended the meeting and Valenti praised ACIM as a very influential organ­ization with chapters in e­ very state that ­were “active and well thought of in ­every local Italo-­American community,” the president declined the invitation.104 Forced to act, Feighan and Eastland announced that new hearings would commence at the beginning of February.105 Advocates of liberal immigration reform rejoiced when Senator Eastland, in deference to the president, de­cided not to attend the hearings and let Senator Edward Kennedy act as unofficial chair.106 Feighan, on the other hand, used a speech before the American Co­ ali­tion of Patriotic Socie­ties on February 4, 1965, to outline his views on immigration reform and adopt a new negotiating strategy. For the first time, he endorsed the abolition of the national origins quota system, but he called for a worldwide ceiling on immigration to eliminate all discrimination from U.S. immigration policy, arguing that the administration’s proposal was discriminatory ­because it preserved the nonquota status for immigrants from the Western Hemi­sphere and placed more emphasis on skills than f­ amily reunion.107 As Carl Bon Tempo has noted, Feighan believed that a global cap on immigration and giving priority to f­ amily reunification represented the only way to preserve the existing ethnic and cultural makeup of the United States.108 Feighan’s speech not only set the stage for a new round of negotiations with

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the White House, but it also offered a new agenda for anti-­immigration organ­ izations like the American Co­ali­tion of Patriotic Socie­ties and the American Legion, which immediately endorsed Feighan’s proposal.109 If immigration reform was imminent, Feighan had de­cided to fight to win restrictive ­concessions. As the 1965 hearings began, grassroots immigration reform advocates, hoping to influence the negotiations, mobilized to keep pressure on Congress and keep the public’s attention on immigration. The AICC repeatedly expressed its support for the president’s proposal, while its member organ­ izations sent witnesses to testify for the bill and lobbied legislators. In their public appearances, they stayed on message and echoed the administration’s arguments by emphasizing the discriminatory nature of the Asia-­Pacific Triangle and the national origins system.110 Fi­nally, a group of prominent individuals—­including former Presidents Truman and Eisenhower, intellectuals, religious leaders, ­labor organizers, and professionals—­came together in the National Committee for Immigration Reform to lobby for immigration reform in Washington, D.C. The idea of such an ad hoc organ­ization dated back to the early 1950s, when Senator Leh­man’s office and the AJC had first proposed it as a way to move past the divisions among nationality and religious organ­izations on immigration policy.111 Based on the idea that prominent American leaders should take a stance and voice their opinion on the ongoing immigration debate, the organ­ization eventually grew to include 400 leaders in American public life who endorsed immigration reform.112 A confidential memo reveals that a small repre­sen­ta­tion of the committee met with President Johnson off the rec­ord thanks to Attorney General Katzenbach’s intercession. Katzenbach expressed hope about the possibility of negotiating a compromise bill that included the committee’s main goals, namely the elimination of the national origins quota system and the abolition of the Asia-­Pacific Triangle, but, as the administration had done from the beginning, “emphasized the importance of widespread citizen support and a broad educational campaign to help win this support before the bill” came up for a vote in the House.113 While liberalizers’ vocal support succeeded in keeping the issue of immigration reform alive, the hearings revealed just how influential Feighan was. Immigration reform advocates initially “expressed guarded optimism about making a breakthrough in the obstacle-­ridden field of immigration”114 ­because of the large Demo­cratic majorities in Congress and the president’s call to action, but, as the negotiations got u­ nder way, many felt that “the Administration perhaps paid a needlessly heavy price in getting” Feighan’s support.115

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During the hearings, Feighan scoffed at all the administration officials who insisted that the proposed bill would hardly change U.S. immigration and that its only goal was to abolish the discriminatory national origins system and the Asia-­Pacific Triangle.116 In a heated exchange with Attorney General Katzenbach over immigration from the Western Hemi­sphere, Feighan exclaimed: “Well, I am sure you are not suggesting—­or are you—­that Congress wait u­ ntil nonquota immigration from Latin Amer­ic­ a reaches floodgate proportions before acting?”117 Private negotiations with Feighan faltered as well. Despite repeated meetings and the administration’s commitment to accept a preference system that favored ­family reunification over skills, Feighan remained relentless in his demands about a worldwide ceiling on immigration to limit the number of mi­ grants from the Western Hemi­sphere.118 On June 1, 1965, Feighan surprised every­body by introducing his own bill. Reflecting his agenda, the bill abolished the national origins system and eliminated any form of discrimination based on place of birth, race, or nationality, but it set a yearly worldwide ceiling of 325,000 immigrants that included Western Hemi­sphere immigrants and reversed admission priorities, giving pre­ce­dence to ­family reunification over skills.119 ­Under pressure from the AICC, the Industrial Union Department of the AFL-­CIO, and from his potential opponents in the 1966 primary, Feighan exempted the Western Hemi­sphere from country quotas.120 ­Because of Feighan’s position on the House Subcommittee on Immigration, his bill replaced the administration’s proposal as the pending bill,121 but his vocal support for a ceiling on the Western Hemi­sphere shifted the conversation around immigration reform. By the spring of 1965, liberalizers no longer doubted that, if passed, the final bill would abolish the national origins quota system and the Asia-­Pacific Triangle, but they worried about the unexpected acolytes that Feighan’s insistence on restricting immigration from the Western Hemi­sphere attracted. Not only traditional restrictionists in Congress but also impor­tant advocates of immigration reform such as the AFL-­CIO, the Christian-­Science Monitor, and the New York Times came out in support of the Western Hemi­sphere ceiling on the grounds that its adoption might prevent the enactment of more stringent legislation ­later on.122 More troubling for the White House was the endorsement of longtime immigration reform advocate and member of the House Subcommittee on Immigration Peter Rodino (D-­NJ), which signaled a fracture in the liberal reformers’ co­ali­tion in Congress. According to White House aide Perry Barber, Rodino had come to believe that the administration bill would ­favor the relatives of Western Hemi­sphere immigrants over ­those of Italian Americans. Rodino’s reversal helped Republi-

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can members on the committee and in the House argue for the worldwide ceiling.123 Only intense pressure from the U.S. State Department and the White House helped Celler and his allies narrowly defeat an amendment imposing a ceiling on the Western Hemi­sphere before passing the House bill and sending it to the Senate for consideration.124 Although excluded from the negotiations between the White House and House leaders, grassroots organizers continued to discuss immigration reform in public and put pressure on their allies in Congress to keep their focus on the abolition of the national origins system and the Asia-­Pacific Triangle. ­W hether of Eu­ro­pean or Asian descent, most of them remained s­ ilent on the debate over the ceiling on the Western Hemi­sphere and preferred to compromise rather than risk what they considered to be the opportunity of a lifetime to repeal the decades-­old discriminatory system. Many grew worried when the legislative ­battle moved to the Senate ­because its restrictionist leaders appeared more intransigent than Feighan. The Senate had held hearings from February 10 to August 3, 1965, but had de­cided to delay any action u­ ntil the House voted on its immigration bill. As in 1964, Senator Edward Kennedy acted as chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration, but Senator Samuel Ervin (D-­NC) and Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen (R-­IL), both members of the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and staunch restrictionists, made it clear that the elimination of the national origins quota system depended on placing the Western Hemi­sphere on a quota footing as the rest of the world.125 Like Feighan, Ervin believed that “the recent increase in immigration from Latin Amer­i­ca was not just a trend” but rather “a threatened avalanche,” but, unlike Feighan, he could count on a majority on the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration to vote with him on the ceiling.126 More disconcerting for Italian and Jewish activists, Ervin’s stance invited harsher criticisms of the Hart-­Celler bill during the Senate hearings, endangering the chances for reform. As they had done since the end of the nineteenth ­century, organ­izations like the American Legion, the ­Daughters of the American Revolution, the League of Christian ­Women, and the American Co­ali­ tion of Patriotic Socie­ties testified to criticize immigrants’ ingratitude in sending their money back home and objected that U.S. immigration policy was not as outrageous as the Berlin Wall, the genocide in Tibet, or the prisons in Castro’s Cuba. Many of them warned that the quota system represented the only solution to save the country from the invasion of “hordes of Red Chinese, Indians, Congolese cannibals.” Reflecting the frustration with the recent civil rights legislation, several lamented that the Hart-­Celler bill forced integration with the excuse of serving humanity, robbed white citizens of their rights, and

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denied the superiority of the Anglo-­Saxon majority in the United States.127 Reeling from ­these accusations, an ACIM Chicago officer wrote to Senator Dirksen in protest, “I am ready to give the Anglo-­Saxon Protestant their due credit, but we fought a terrible and costly war to disprove the ‘master race’ theory. Let’s keep it out of our bound­aries.”128 ­These rebukes did ­little to deter Ervin, who made it clear throughout the hearings that he would block any bill that did not include a cap on the Western Hemi­sphere. To prove his point, Ervin introduced his own immigration bill in the Senate, which favored the reunion of families and skilled individuals and placed a ceiling of 120,000 on immigration from the Western Hemi­ sphere.129 Along with the administration, Senators Edward Kennedy, Philip Hart, and Jacob Javits, many of the pro-­immigration groups objected that placing a ceiling on immigration from the Western Hemi­sphere endangered the Good Neighbor Policy, but their protests paled in comparison with their commitment to abolish the national origins quota system. As Ervin gained ground, many liberalizers worried that the chances for reform w ­ ere evaporating and felt frustrated that t­ here was l­ittle they could do to influence the negotiations.130 For its part, the Johnson Administration, although opposed to a ceiling on immigration from the Western Hemi­sphere, “was unwilling to wage a ­battle for this cause” and “believed that, given the general parliamentary situation and the strong support voiced by Senator Dirksen for a curb in Western Hemi­sphere immigration,” a compromise was inevitable to get the bill out of committee.131 Once both the president and the Department of State had relented,132 Attorney General Katzenbach took over the final stages of the negotiations to mediate a reasonable compromise for both sides. During a meeting on August 25, 1965, Dirksen, Ervin, and Katzenbach agreed that the administration would accept Ervin’s 120,000 annual ceiling on the condition that a commission be appointed to examine immigration from the Western Hemi­sphere and report to Congress by January 1968.133 Perhaps reflecting the administration’s uneasiness about how its allies would perceive this concession, the only other condition imposed by the Johnson administration, as Valenti reported in a memo, was that the ceiling proposal “be played as a Committee sponsored ­thing, not as something the Administration has consented to.”134 The day ­after the meeting, the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration included Ervin’s amendment to its bill and, with a vote of 5–3, passed it on to the Judiciary Committee.135 As the negotiations continued, OSIA and ACIM worried that they could fall through at any time and continued to put pressure on the executive. In a letter to Joseph Errigo, chair of the OSIA Immigration and Naturalization

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Committee, Johnson promised that the passage of the bill was imminent. Praising the bill for eliminating the national origins quota system and for admitting immigrants based on their skills and ­family ties rather than national origin, the president recognized that “no group deserves more credit than the Sons of Italy for this victory of a princi­ple so central to our nation’s history and so vital to all Americans.”136 As the Senate debated the bill at the end of August, OSIA held its biennial national convention, during which the organ­ ization’s members resolved to pass another resolution supporting immigration reform and committed to return to their own communities and “start the flood of mail” to Congress.137 For its part, ACIM monitored the debate closely and hoped the negotiations would soon come to an end. When debate on the revised immigration bill reached the Senate floor on September 15, 1965, “amid indications,” according to the New York Times, “that the administration had virtually dropped its opposition to place Western Hemi­sphere countries ­under an annual ceiling of 120,000,” the only serious objection came from Javits.138 His colleagues paid no heed to his appeal. In fact, evidence suggests that immigration reformers accepted the compromise bill b­ ecause the White House presented it as just the first step in an incremental reform pro­cess. “­There was a general agreement on the part of all concerned,” remembered Edward Kennedy, “that ­matters corollary to the basic issue of eliminating the national-­origins quota system should be left for deliberation at a ­future time.”139 With the debacle of 1952 in mind, several of the grassroots groups and individuals agreed to and accepted provisions to which they objected. By 1965, the majority of t­ hose involved in the debates had accepted the mantra that some reform was always better than none regardless of its long-­term consequences. Although many of them worried about the restrictive impact of a recommendation from the AFL-­CIO that required the Secretary of L ­ abor to certify that the aspiring immigrant would only accept a job that no available qualified American could take, “they did not protest vigorously,” remembered the AJC, “preferring to avoid endangering thereby the achievement of their overriding goal: repeal of the national origins system.”140 That the negotiations over the most ambitious immigration reform effort since 1952 and the most liberalizing since 1924 hinged on the debate over the ceiling on the Western Hemi­sphere, a provision that had been absent in both the Kennedy and Johnson bills, demonstrates the influence that Southern Demo­crats and their allies held in the Senate even ­after the 1964 elections. When the Senate voted in f­avor of the bill imposing a limit on immigration from the Western Hemi­sphere on September 22, 1965, the vote was 76 to 18, with opposition largely confined to ­those Southern Demo­crats who still considered

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the bill too generous. As the New York Times pointed out, the passage of the bill in the Senate was “a somewhat qualified victory for President Johnson.” ­After having defeated the Western Hemi­sphere ceiling provision in the House, the administration failed to do the same in the Senate when Dirksen’s and Ervin’s ultimatum left it “with the alternative of accepting the restriction or facing a determined fight in the Judiciary Committee against the bill as a ­whole.”141 Significantly dif­fer­ent from the bill the Johnson Administration had originally proposed, the 1965 Hart-­Celler Act was nonetheless celebrated as a major accomplishment. The act replaced the national origins quotas with a system of hemispheric caps. It set an annual limit of 170,000 visas for immigrants from the Eastern Hemi­sphere, with no country allowed more than 20,000, and, caving to Dirksen, Ervin, and their allies, imposed a 120,000 cap on immigrants from the Western Hemi­sphere. Reversing priorities to appease Feighan, it allocated three-­fourths of admissions to the relatives of U.S. citizens and permanent residents while the remaining slots went to skilled immigrants and refugees. Building on a humanitarian commitment to displaced populations first articulated in the Displaced Persons Act of 1948, the act expanded the definition of refugee to include ­those persecuted on account of race, religion, or po­liti­cal opinion or ­those uprooted by natu­ral calamity. Although many grassroots supporters of immigration reform applauded the passage of the 1965 Immigration Act as a success, many felt ambivalent about some of the provisions of the act. While many, especially Italian Americans, applauded the law’s emphasis on f­ amily reunion, o­ thers, including American Jews, viewed the reversal of priorities favoring ­family reunion and skilled mi­ grants supported by Feighan as a triumph for or­ga­nized l­abor that penalized unskilled immigrants. Several liberalizers applauded the new provisions suspending deportation for fear of “persecution on ground of race, religion or po­liti­cal opinion,” but they continued to object to the lack of a statute of limitations on deportation and the failure of the new law to institute a visa-­review board. They also opposed the provision in the act that required immigrants from the Western Hemi­sphere to leave the country to adjust their status from nonimmigrant to immigrant, but they mostly remained s­ ilent on the imposition of a global ceiling. Fi­nally, several Jewish groups expressed disappointment that the law’s revised system of preferences placed refugees last ­after ­family reunion and skills.142 Despite t­ hese criticisms, the majority of the groups involved in the fight for immigration reform exulted at the passage of the 1965 Immigration Act. On September 30, 1965, sixty-­four of the groups who had collaborated on a fairly regular basis since the end of World War II wrote President Johnson to thank

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him for his role in the passage of the 1965 Immigration Act.143 Acknowledging his decisive role in the negotiations with Feighan, ACIM also thanked Valenti,144 while HIAS wrote the president on behalf of “the refugees, immigrants and their families of ­every faith who ­will benefit from this far-­sighted legislation in years to come.”145 For Sidney Liskofsky of the AJC, “the 1965 Act was . . . ​ the product of a forty-­year-­long educational effort by religious, nationality, and other citizens’ organ­izations,”146 a strategy that remains at the heart of the movement for immigration reform to this day. Several contingent f­ actors like the Cold War, the 1964 election, and the postwar civil rights movements helped too, but so did the realization that, as Mike Masaoka of JACL and Bruce Mohler of NCWC had pointed out in the 1950s, some reform was better than none. Many also recognized that the U.S. government and Congress would have paid ­little attention to their concerns if the voluntary agencies had not played such an integral role in the resettlement of displaced persons a­ fter World War II. It also helped that the individuals involved w ­ ere often moderate representatives of their communities who pragmatically focused on what was best for the ­people they represented. Perhaps the biggest change from the 1880s to 1965 was that liberalizers themselves now accepted that some form of immigration restriction had become necessary.

Conclusion On October 3, 1965, seated ­under the Statue of Liberty and surrounded by high government officials and citizens from all walks of life, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Hart-­Celler bill into law. Addressing a nationwide tele­vi­ sion audience, he stated that the new law repaired “a cruel and enduring wrong in the conduct of the American nation.”147 Italian Americans and American Jews viewed the ceremony as the culmination of forty years of mobilization for liberal immigration reform. For Sidney Liskofsky, the passage of the Hart-­ Celler Act represented the end of a policy “rooted in concepts of racial and ethnic superiority and assimilability, in suspicion of alien ‘radicalism’ and foreign ­labor competition” that had survived de­cades of reform efforts, had failed the victims of Nazism, and had produced l­ imited results a­ fter World War II.148 Upon his return from Johnson’s signing of the bill, F ­ ather Donanzan wrote to all ACIM officers to celebrate “the victory of justice over the archaic and unjust immigration formula of the past 41 years, the victory of a genuine demo­ cratic pro­cess over the totalitarian rule prevailing elsewhere, the victory of rightful, even though belated, recognition of the contribution of all who made Amer­i­ca ­great, the victory of charity over the egotism that permeated the now

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abolished ‘national origins system.’ ”149 For both groups, the passage of the Hart-­Celler Act sealed the end of an era that had marked them as undesirable and sanctioned their ac­cep­tance as full members of American society. Despite the Johnson Administration’s promise that more immigration reform was on the horizon, the framework created in 1965 remains mostly intact ­today. As chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration u­ ntil 1978, Eastland singlehandedly blocked any effort to reform the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act or to address the rise in unauthorized immigration.150 “The Immigration Act of 1965 eliminated the national origins quota system, which was our major objective,” wrote a frustrated Schwartz, “but in so ­doing, the Act established an immigration system whose parochial framework stands in sharp contrast to the more flexible and internationally oriented provisions of the proposal recommended so strongly by President Kennedy.” Schwartz optimistically believed that “eventually, experience in administering the new law ­will prove the wisdom of adopting some of the more flexible provisions of President Kennedy’s proposal.”151 The wait would be much longer than he anticipated. As the 1965 Immigration Act ushered in a more diverse society, it also generated, like many of the other ­Great Society reforms, a backlash that made it difficult to change the immigration system it created.

Conclusion During the spring semester of 2017, a student who was taking my U.S. immigration history class came to my office and broke down in tears. She told me that she could no longer tell w ­ hether we w ­ ere studying the history of U.S. immigration or simply reading about what was g­ oing on in the country at the moment. The arguments, the legislative proposals, and the anti-­immigrant rhe­ toric in the United States felt frighteningly familiar to her.1 The child of immigrants, she worried about what might happen to her parents if history was any indication. As an immigration scholar and an immigrant myself, I worried too.2 Much of what is happening t­ oday has eerie echoes of the 1920s, but t­ here are also significant differences that complicate how successful immigration reform advocates can be in the current environment. Activists pushing for more humane immigration reform t­ oday are deploying remarkably similar tactics to ­those that Italian and Jewish activists used to challenge the draconian immigration system Congress created in 1924. Then like now, activists put pressure on their elected officials, go to court to challenge unfair provisions and harsh enforcement practices, keep the need for immigration reform in the public eye, emphasize the contributions immigrants make to U.S. society and economy, highlight the country’s long history of welcoming immigrants and refugees, and, when all e­ lse fails, take to the streets to protest. At the heart of Italian and Jewish leaders’ mobilization, like for many of their allies, ­were strategic alliances in and out of Congress and a tireless emphasis on education. In the face of continuing rebuke, Italian Americans, Jewish Americans, and all the other immigration reform activists waged one educational campaign a­ fter another in the hope of persuading their fellow Americans to support immigration reform. That support proved elusive, but, along the way, they negotiated their role in U.S. politics and society, created an agenda that was responsive to U.S. domestic and international concerns, and reframed their transnational ties to serve their agenda. The biggest challenge Italian and Jewish reformers faced, one that continues to dog advocates for immigration reform, was to create successful interethnic alliances. While both groups succeeded in recruiting support from outside their communities, including legislators, prominent Americans in business, culture, and religion, and even the White House, coming together with

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advocates representing other immigrant groups remained a perennial chal­ lenge. Italian and Jewish activists clearly saw the advantage of strength in numbers when it came to pushing for immigration reform, but finding com­ mon ground with other immigrant groups remained difficult. Structural rac­ ism, the racial hierarchy that the immigration laws created, and a legislative structure that favored insiders made it difficult for them to conceive of an in­ clusive immigration agenda and build strong alliances with groups with dif­ fer­ent bargaining positions. They often even had a hard time finding shared goals with other immigrants of Eu­ro­pean descent, ­were suspicious of each oth­ er’s motives, and inevitably prioritized their own groups’ interests. Then as now, groups with disparate interests bridged t­ hese differences by focusing on advancing specific, shared immigration policy positions, but, even in ­these cases, unity was only tenuous b­ ecause dif­fer­ent stakes led some reformers to accept any change to the dire status quo, while ­others—­who could afford to—­ preferred to push for a complete overhaul. As a c­ entury ago, the stalemate on reforming immigration has caused long waiting lists, ­family separation, and hardship for ­those who leave and t­ hose who stay ­behind.3 The impact of this ripple effect remains uneven. The U.S. gov­ ernment targets for immigration enforcement citizens from countries that hold ­little international influence or have no bargaining power with the United States. The repeal of temporary protective status (TPS) for Haitians on No­ vember 17, 2017, and for Salvadorans on January 8, 2018,4 the nullification of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) on September 5, 2017, and the first two Muslim bans in January 2017 all targeted countries that, like Italy before them, can do ­little to protect their mi­grants. Much like Italy’s ­earlier in­ ability to mitigate restriction during the early years of the quota era, t­hese countries are finding that even efforts to collaborate with the U.S. government to avoid harsher immigration policies fail to blunt restrictive mea­sures.5 As this book shows, ­these provisions have global ramifications. Many of the immi­ grants targeted by the rigid immigration system that emerged in the 1920s of­ ten took riskier journeys to enter the country illegally. U.S. immigration laws also inspired other countries to pass similar legislation, thus creating a global regime of restriction. The impact of t­ hese ­earlier efforts reverberates to this day as we live in a world resurgent with walls, fences, detention centers, and heightened security that make mobility difficult and, for some, next to impos­ sible. In a vicious cycle, increased border security creates the conditions for riskier journeys and harsher enforcement.6 Then as now, ­family reunion remains at the heart of advocates’ arguments for a more humane policy. By 1965, thanks to the efforts of activists like the

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Italian and Jewish leaders discussed in this book, ­family reunion represented one of the few issues around which restrictionists and antirestrictionists could find some common ground. Scholars in several fields have long acknowledged that Americans consider the ­family unit as the foundation for American civil society. It is no surprise, therefore, that immigration reform activists succeeded in appealing to American f­ amily values to modify immigration restriction over the course of the twentieth c­ entury. ­Under pressure, Congressional leaders of both parties ultimately accepted ­family reunification as a loophole in their restrictionist and quota agendas. The restrictionist immigration acts of 1917, 1924, and 1952 all made exceptions for ­family members and created a preference system that allowed for f­ amily reunion. Despite its shortcomings, the Immigration Act of 1965 passed b­ ecause reformers proposed a bill that replaced the overtly racist national origins quota system with one based on the idea of ­family reunification. In all of t­ hese instances, liberal reformers highlighted the suffering of separated families to reach consensus among themselves and find common ground with restrictionists.7 In a major departure from the past, ­today’s activists can no longer assume that legislators ­will prioritize or even consider ­family reunion in their negotiations. The restrictionist backers of the 1965 Immigration Act believed that the emphasis on ­family reunification in the law would preserve the predominance of Eu­ro­pean immigrants at a time when 85 ­percent of the U.S. population was white. When the primary beneficiaries of ­these f­amily provisions shifted to immigrants from Asia, Central and South Amer­i­ca, the Ca­rib­bean, and, more recently, Africa, nativists made it a priority to weaken any provision favoring ­family reunion and made immigrants with skills and safety a priority. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the Reagan, Bush  Sr., and Clinton administrations passed legislation that ­limited ­family reunion, privileged immigrants with skills, and criminalized certain immigrants, especially t­hose from south of the border. By 9/11, the United States had the infrastructure, the policies, and the laws to target, police, and deport each new immigrant threat du jour. Since 2017, the executive and Congress have further eroded f­amily reunion as a cornerstone of U.S. immigration policy. With an isolationist president who ignores traditional po­liti­cal norms, t­ hese trends have become more pronounced and have empowered nativists in Congress and in government agencies like the U.S. Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security to find new ways to restrict immigration and target immigrants. While ­these new restrictionists contend that their goal is to prioritize immigrants with skills over t­hose with ­family ties in the United States, their mea­sures have led to ­family separations for both skilled and unskilled

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immigrants regardless of their status.8 In rejecting ­family reunion, t­ oday’s restrictionists have deprived supporters of humane immigration reform of one of their most compelling arguments on behalf of immigrants. As a result, con­ temporary immigration activists strug­gle to move Congress and segments of the general public despite the daily heartrending stories and videos of forced separations and the impact that a policy of zero tolerance has on families, and especially on ­children.9 The return of the executive branch with the election of Donald J. Trump in November 2016 to an aggressively restrictionist stance relying on isolationist rhe­toric harks back to the early de­cades of the twentieth c­ entury, something that many immigration reform advocates believed had been left ­behind. Starting in World War II, Italian and Jewish activists found in the executive branch, not the U.S. Congress, their chief ally. While FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson ­were never staunch supporters of liberal immigration, they understood that a blatantly racist immigration policy hurt U.S. interests at home and abroad. This realization helped immigration reform activists make a case for reform that appealed to the country’s Cold War foreign policy priorities and tapped into the growing push for civil rights at home. Italian and Jewish critics of immigration restriction argued that the draconian and discriminatory immigration system in place since 1924 blemished the country’s reputation as a defender of democracy and represented a serious obstacle to its foreign policy goals. The delicate relationship between the executive branch and immigration reformers had remained mostly unaltered—­regardless of the president’s party affiliation—­­until the presidential election of 2016.10 As had happened prior to the passage of the Johnson-­Reed Act in 1924 and the McCarran-­Walter Act in 1952, such divisive and incendiary rhe­toric successfully rallies the base and divides activists. ­Because every­one feels ­under siege, individual groups fail to unite and work together. The main difference ­today is that this division tends to happen more along the lines of immigrants’ status (documented, undocumented, permanent, temporary, or naturalized) rather than country of origin. The rhe­toric has also become more explicit and aggressive. Even the most nativist U.S. presidents of the early twentieth ­century avoided using blatantly racist language against immigrants to bolster their restrictionist agenda ­because they understood that many of them voted and recognized the need to balance dif­fer­ent constituencies. ­After November 2016, restrictionist politicians in the Republican Party, despite past efforts to court minority voters, have doubled down on their base and ignored immigrant voters.

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The recent activism of the executive branch in the current immigration debate goes beyond the rhe­toric, however. As in the case of Italian and Jewish activists, t­oday’s immigration reform advocates have to contend with major changes in immigration policymaking. When Italian and Jewish supporters of liberal immigration first entered the debate on immigration reform at the end of the nineteenth c­ entury, they did so at a time when legislative power was shifting ­toward newly created committees that relied on outside expertise to draft legislation. Originally conceived as a way to wrestle power from the ruling parties, committee members soon emerged as power­ful brokers who exercised enormous influence on any legislation u­ nder consideration and used their positions to exact concessions, consolidate their power, and court votes for reelection. In recent years, Congress’s inaction on immigration has created a vacuum that the executive has sought to fill. In January 2017, the newly installed president signed three immigration-­related executive ­orders in his first week in office alone. While the president has broad authority on certain facets of immigration law, this represented an unpre­ce­dented alteration of the country’s immigration policy without congressional debate and approval.11 In the midst of some of the most urgent refugee crises since World War II, ­these executive ­orders and ­others that followed have created a climate of instability, fear, and uncertainty for refugees and immigrants alike regardless of their status, of how long they have been in the United States, or of their position in the admission pro­cess. Similar to how immigration supporters divided in the early 1950s during the debate over the McCarran-­Walter Act, ­these executive ­orders and the virulent anti-­immigrant rhe­toric that accompanied their signing have successfully fractured activists and sympathetic members of Congress who remain divided over their priorities.12 Despite garnering a lot of popu­lar support, ­today’s activists strug­gle to gain much traction in their efforts for an overhaul of the country’s immigration policy since executive o­ rders bypass the traditional channels of policymaking and key members of Congress have no interest in allowing immigration reform legislation to move forward. ­These obstacles often force supporters of liberal immigration reform to compromise or scale back their expectations. The Italian and Jewish activists in this book faced similar prob­lems. They realized early on that U.S. immigration policy remained pliable and porous enough for certain classes of immigrants to gain admission into the country even during a restrictive era, but they strug­gled to come together ­because of the uneven balance of power and the pervasive re­sis­tance to reform.

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Italian and Jewish leaders a­ dopted two dif­fer­ent, almost antithetical approaches to their mobilization against immigration restriction, but they both faced intense criticism for their brand of activism. Restrictionists criticized Jewish advocates for their efforts to enter the body politic shortly ­after their arrival in the United States. For all its shortcomings, the American Jewish Committee rapidly became a model for other immigration reform groups for its “strong leadership, internal cohesion, well-­funded programs, sophisticated lobbying techniques, well-­chosen non-­Jewish allies, and good timing.”13 Yet, from the beginning of the twentieth ­century to 1965, critics often labeled the push for immigration reform as a “Jewish issue,” forcing Jewish leaders to seek and promote alliances with individuals and organ­izations outside of their communities even when they did all the organ­izing work and financially sponsored immigration reform initiatives, as it happened during the push for the 1948 and 1950 Displaced Persons Acts. The campaign for the Displaced Persons Acts also revealed another key component of Jewish mobilization for immigration reform, namely the need to frame their critique within a broader civil rights context and shy away from saying openly that they wanted to help Jewish mi­grants and refugees. Advocates of immigration restriction attacked Italian activists for prioritizing Italian immigration and for involving Italian authorities in their efforts to challenge restrictive immigration policies in the United States. Their collaboration with the Italian government soon became a liability and raised suspicions of disloyalty. In the end, it took the intervention of the U.S. Catholic hierarchy in the 1950s to spearhead the creation of an advocacy organ­ization ­after struggling for de­cades to get a seat at the negotiating ­table ­because of their transnational identity, their immigrant trajectory, and their inability to set aside their regional and po­liti­cal differences. Similar to the AJC, the American Committee on Italian Migration built the financial and ­human resources, network, and orga­nizational efforts that turned it into a power­ful voice in the immigration reform debate from 1952 to 1965. ACIM, however, faced less criticism than the AJC ­because it emerged during a period of national mobilization for civil rights. By 1965, its leaders could boast that the abolition of the national origins system represented “the crowning of ACIM’s campaign” for immigration reform.14 ­After scorning Italians in the United States for de­cades, at times blaming them for the passage of restrictive immigration laws targeting them, even Italian officials now applauded their accomplishment. As this book demonstrates, t­ here is no one strategy that can guarantee legislative success. Many of the critics of immigration restriction discussed ­here began with defying restrictionist legislation in the courtroom. They went on

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to create national advocacy organ­izations to articulate the inequity of an immigration policy that clearly discriminated against specific immigrant groups. Despite the challenges, they invested much time and energy in co­ali­tion building to have a more forceful voice in Congress and to build leverage with the executive. Throughout this period of trial and error, they never tired of educating the larger public about immigrant contributions to the United States, the devastating impact of many of the restrictionist provisions h­ ere and abroad, and immigrants’ desire to contribute to their new country. They also sought to find allies beyond their communities or other ethnic groups, especially among prominent business o­ wners, intellectuals, social justice advocates, and professionals. Lastly, they looked for win­dows of opportunity that could help them make a stronger case for immigration reform, and they alternatively connected immigration reform to U.S. foreign policy interests, economic power, and the country’s history of welcoming immigrants and refugees. The story of Italian and Jewish immigration reform advocates and the challenges they faced shows that, while activists can keep the debate about immigration reform in the spotlight, they have significantly less influence in shaping the content of immigration legislation even when they are on secure footing in U.S. society. For better or for worse, their story also teaches us that immigration reform advocates are more likely to succeed if they focus on targeted, piecemeal legislation rather than comprehensive reform, especially when their priorities do not align with a domestic policy agenda or foreign policy priorities. Far from being exclusively the product of a co­ali­tion of power­ ful and committed restrictionists in Congress, the normalization of immigration restriction also emerged from the activism, compromises, and collaboration of immigration reform advocates caught up in a po­liti­cal system and a social environment that narrowed their options and made it difficult for them to think of and push for radically dif­fer­ent alternatives to the quota system and its preference categories. More often than not, the incremental changes that Italian and Jewish activists ­were able to accomplish required legislators, bureaucrats, or administrations to take up their cause. When they tried to call for more substantive changes to the immigration regime in place, as Italian and Jewish advocates did in 1952, they faced vicious attacks and accusations, alienated several of their moderate allies, and ended up with legislation that was far dif­fer­ent than that for which they had hoped. Jewish activists never completely escaped accusations of the immigration prob­lem as the “Jewish prob­lem.” The events at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in the fall of 2018 along with the targeting of HIAS and George Soros as the orchestrators of the refugees fleeing

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Central Amer­i­ca in the fall of 2018 together demonstrate the per­sis­tence of ­these ste­reo­types and the terrible damage they can inflict.15 In the 1950s and early 1960s, Italian and Jewish immigration reform activists persisted undeterred ­until Congress abolished the national origins quota system in 1965, but the support of the Johnson Administration and the more representative Congress proved critical to their success, no ­matter how flawed.

Notes

Abbreviations Used in the Notes archives AJA

American Jewish Archives, Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati, Ohio ASAE Archivio Storico, Ministero degli Affari Esteri, Rome, Italy CLA Center for Legislative Archives, Washington, DC CMS Center for Migration Studies, New York Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, New York CUA Catholic University of Amer­i­ca, Washington, DC IHRCA Immigration History Research Center Archives, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis LBJPL Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library LOC Library of Congress NHS Nevada Historical Society, Reno NYPL New York Public Library UNR Special Collections, University of Nevada, Reno YIVO YIVO, Center for Jewish History, New York

publications AJYB NYHT NYT PIA SIM

American Jewish Year Book New York Herald Tribune New York Times Il Progresso Italo-­Americano Sons of Italy Magazine

Introduction 1. Lake and Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line. 2. Quoted in Shanks, Immigration and the Politics of American Sovereignty, 56. 3. Azuma, Between Two Empires: Race, History, and Transnationalism in Japa­nese Amer­ic­ a; Hinnershitz, “ ‘ We Ask not for Mercy, but for Justice,” 132–52; Erika Lee, At Amer­i­ca’s Gates; Lew-­Williams, “Before Restriction Became Exclusion,” 24–56; Salyer, Laws Harsh as Tigers: Chinese Immigrants and the Shaping of Modern Immigration Law. 4. Battisti, Whom We S­ hall Welcome; Garland, ­A fter They Closed the Gates; Guglielmo, “Fighting for Caucasian Rights,” 1212–37; Massey, Durand, and Malone, Beyond Smoke and Mirrors; and Zepeda-­Millán, Latino Mass Mobilization.

184  Notes to Introduction 5. Hester, Deportation; Higham, Strangers in the Land; Hirota, Expelling the Poor; King, The Liberty of Strangers; Moloney, National Insecurities; Ngai, Impossible Subjects; Reimers, Unwelcome Strangers; Schneider, Crossing Borders; Tichenor, Dividing Lines; Zolberg, Nation by Design. 6. Cook-­Martin and FitzGerald, Culling the Masses; Fleegler, Ellis Island Nation; Hong, “Re­ orienting Amer­i­ca”; Hsu, The Good Immigrants; Oh, To Save the C ­ hildren of K ­ orea; Schultz, Tri-­ Faith Amer­i­ca; Wall, Inventing the American Way; and Wu, The Color of Success. 7. Sarna, “The Myth of No Return,” 256–68. 8. See Choate, Emigrant Nation; Gabaccia, Italy’s Many Diasporas. 9. On the broader use of civil rights as a vehicle for integration, see Brilliant, The Color of Amer­i­ca Has Changed; Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights; Fleegler, Ellis Island Nation; Schultz, Tri-­Faith Amer­i­ca; and Wall, Inventing the “American Way.” 10. Marinari, Hsu, and García, A Nation of Immigrants Reconsidered. 11. Hsu, Good Immigrants, and Wu, Color of Success. 12. Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door, 30. 13. Daniels, Coming to Amer­i­ca, 154–55 and 188–89. 14. For more on the discussion about the emergence of global efforts to restrict immigration, see Lake and Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line; Lee, At Amer­i­ca’s Gates; Lee, “The ‘Yellow Peril’ and Asian Exclusion in the Amer­i­cas,” 537–62; and Zolberg, Nation by Design. 15. For efforts to control immigration prior to 1882, see Hidetaka Hirota, “The Moment of Transition,” 1092–108; Hirota, “ ‘The ­Great Entrepôt for Mendicants,’ ” 5–32. On the global significance of the Chinese Restriction Acts of 1882, see Atkinson, The Burden of White Supremacy; Lee, The Making of Asian Amer­i­ca; Lew-­Williams, “Before Restriction Became Exclusion”; and McKeown, Melancholy Order. 16. Ross, The Old World in the New, 287, 119, and 154. 17. Walker, as quoted in Tichenor, Dividing Lines, 78. 18. Ripley, as quoted in Tichenor, Dividing Lines, 130. For a detailed discussion of the intellectuals that helped construct a restrictionist rationale, see Higham, Strangers in the Land, chap. 7; Tichenor, Dividing Lines, chap. 5; and Zolberg, Nation by Design, 205–16. 19. Mayo-­Smith, Emigration and Immigration. 20. Warne, The Immigrant Invasion, 267. 21. Grant, The Passing of the ­Great Race, 18. 22. Referring to Italians, Wilson wrote that they came from “the lowest class from the South of Italy,” had neither skills, nor energy, nor initiative, nor quick intelligence, and, ultimately, “the Chinese ­were more to be desired.” Wilson as quoted in DeConde, Half ­Bitter, Half Sweet, 101. As Donna Gabaccia has demonstrated, Italians w ­ ere often called “the Chinese of Eu­rope” b­ ecause they “occupied an ambiguous, overlapping and intermediary position in the binary racial schema,” neither black nor white but “yellow,” “olive,” or “swarthy.” Gabaccia, “The ‘Yellow Peril’ and the ‘Chinese of Eu­rope,’ ” 177–97. 23. Bishop Charles Henry Brent, quoted in Pomeroy, The Italians, 10. 24. For more on this, see Higham, Strangers in the Land, and Kinzer, An Episode in Anti-­ Catholicism. 25. For a classic on nativism in American history, see Higham, Strangers in the Land. 26. Numbers tabulated from t­ able in Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door, 5.

Notes to Introduction 185 27. Although the foundation of the American Protective Association (APA) preceded the creation of the Immigration Restriction League, the IRL had a more lasting impact on the passage of restrictive immigration policy in the United States. The APA, building on an idiosyncratic alliance of nativist Protestant businessmen and disillusioned workers, was a formidable grassroots organ­ization in the Midwest and the Northeast that advocated for stricter naturalization requirements and language and citizenship tests to disenfranchise new immigrants. While the Demo­cratic Party dismissed the organ­ization b­ ecause it strongly relied on the Catholic and immigrant vote, the Republican Party cautiously opened to its agenda. A ­ fter two disastrous electoral defeats in 1890 and 1892—­in which the Republican Party lost ground among new immigrants, Irish and German Catholics, and among Protestant German voters—­the party distanced itself from the APA. Shortly a­ fter the Republican Party’s rebuke, the organ­ization faded into anonymity. For more on the APA and its relation to other organ­izations with similar agendas, see Kinzer, Episode in Anti-­Catholicism. See also Higham, Strangers in the Land. 28. For a detailed discussion of Bemis’s prize-­winning article on the literacy test, see Zolberg, Nation by Design, 209–12. 29. Noble as quoted in Zolberg, Nation by Design, 211. 30. Lake and Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line, introduction. 31. Tichenor argues that the early setbacks that Progressive restrictionists suffered ­were the product of the “party period” in U.S. po­liti­cal history, especially the power of the partisan speakership; Tichenor, Dividing Lines, chap. 5. ­These developments w ­ ere particularly impor­tant for the supporters of immigration restriction as committee members wielded substantial legislative power, favored policy activism, and welcomed in­de­pen­dent expertise. In the long run, ­these developments institutionalized a pro­cess that relied on feedback from immigration experts and activists and normalized the drafting and proposal of reform legislation. 32. “Must Guard Our Gates,” NYT, March 17, 1896. 33. Leonard, The Open Gates, 14–20. 34. “Lodge Bill Denounced,” NYT, February 6, 1897. 35. The most recent account on this strug­gle is in Moloney, National Insecurities, chap. 4. As Libby Garland explains, American Jews had a complicated relationship with the notion of race and debated passionately about who Jews w ­ ere racially, ethnically, and nationally. The debate had particularly impor­tant implications ­after the rise of nation states and the emergence of Zionism in the nineteenth c­ entury. For more on this debate, see Garland, ­After They Closed the Gates, chap. 1. 36. Tichenor, Dividing Lines, chap. 3. 37. Leonard, Open Gates, 14–20. 38. Tageblatt as quoted in “The Yiddish Press,” 273. 39. L. Th. Grun to Tommaso Tittoni, February 15, 1908, Ambasciata d’Italia a Washington (1901–9) Collection, box 136, file 3068, ASAE. 40. For more on the work the IRL did to pursue a broader co­ali­tion, see Tichenor, Dividing Lines, chap. 5. 41. Tele­gram, Wilbur F. Crafts to Senator H.C. Dodge, January 5, 1903, RG 46, box 214 (57th Congress), folder SEN57A-­K7 ( January 1, 1903, to January 8, 1903), CLA.

186  Notes to Chapter One

Chapter One 1. For a sample of t­ hese letters, see J. S. Patten, March 2, 1908; Prescott F. Hall, April 18, 1910; Prescott Hall, May 30, 1911; and Prescott Hall et al., June 15, 1911, Immigration Restriction League Rec­ords, Series I: Correspondence to and from the IRL, box “Circular Letters, 1908–1914,” folder 1047, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. Accessed online on March 13, 2015, https:​/­​/­hollisarchives​.­lib​.­harvard​.­edu​/­repositories​/­24​/­resources​ /­1408​/­digital​_­only. 2. As Lew-­Williams and Molina have demonstrated about the cases of Chinese and Mexicans respectively, the scripts and debates about the restriction of immigrants considered undesirable are just as impor­tant as the passage of more restrictive laws themselves. Lew-­Williams, “Before Restriction Became Exclusion”; Molina, How Race Is Made in Amer­i­ca. 3. Louis Hammering to James Donnaruma, December 15, 1913, box 2, folder 13, James Donnaruma Papers, IHRCA. 4. Scholars have only recently begun to study how exclusion and inclusion intersected and conflicted. Much of this scholarship focuses on this tension during the Chinese exclusion era. For the best analy­sis to date, see Lew-­Williams, “ ‘Chinamen’ and ‘Delinquent Girls.’ ” 5. Leonard, Open Gates, 42. 6. Leonard, 36–39. 7. “To F ­ avor Immigration,” NYT, January 7, 1898. 8. As quoted in Leonard, Open Gates, 43. 9. “The Lodge Bill Denounced,” NYT, March 3, 1898. 10. “The Lodge Bill Denounced,” NYT, March 3, 1898. 11. O. P. Austin, “Is the New Immigration Dangerous to the Country?,” 570. 12. U.S. Congress, House, Industrial Commission, “Reports of the Industrial Commission on Immigration and Education,” xi and xv. 13. U.S. Congress, House, Industrial Commission, xi and 430. 14. Theodore Roo­se­velt to Prescott F. Hall, March 26, 1896, Theodore Roo­se­velt Digital Library, Dickinson State University, http:​/­​/­www​.­theodorerooseveltcenter​.­org​/­Research​ /­Digital​-­Library​/­Record​?­libID​=o­ 283261. 15. The Printing Pressmen Union of Westerly, RI, to Senator George Wetmore, March 1902, RG 46, box 141, folder SEN57A-­J27 (February 6, 1902, to March 21, 1902), CLA. Boxes 142, 143, 144, 145, 212, 213, and 214 all contain additional folders with similar petitions supporting Chinese and Eu­ro­pean restriction. 16. Charles Edgerton to Senator Julius Burrows, March 26, 1902, RG 46, box 141, folder SEN57A-­J27 (March 25, 1902, to April 3, 1902), CLA. See also Charles Edgerton to Senator John Mitchell, March 26, 1902, RG 46, box 213 (57th Congress), folder SEN57A-­J27 (March 31, 1902) #2, CLA. 17. For a sample of the petitions, see RG 46, boxes 109, 110, 213, and 214 of the 57th Congress, CLA. 18. The League of German American Socie­ties of Dayton, OH, to Senator M. A. Hannah, February 20, 1902, RG 46, box 141 (57th Congress), folder SEN57A-­J27 (February 6, 1902, to March 21, 1902), CLA. The box contains a few additional petitions protesting the restriction of Eu­ro­pean immigration.

Notes to Chapter One 187 19. The German-­American Central Verein to Members of Congress, April 14, 1902, box 142 (57th Congress), folder SEN57A-­J27 (April 19, 1902, to April 22, 1902), CLA. 20. The German Central Bund of Ohio to Senator Marcus Hanna, March 19, 1902, RG 46, box 141 (57th Congress), folder SEN57A-­J27 (March 25, 1902, to April 3, 1902), CLA. 21. Resolution, Ju­nior Order United American Mechanics, Cincinnati, OH, March 3, 1905, RG 46, box 157 (59th Congress), folder SEN59A-­J47 (December 11, 1905) #4, CLA. Boxes 156, 157, and 158 of the 59th Congress all contain similar resolutions. 22. Tichenor, Dividing Lines, 121–24. 23. Zolberg, Nation by Design, 209. 24. “Restriction of Immigration,” November 16, 1905, RG 46, box 160 (59th Congress), folder SEN59A-­J47 (March 19, 1906) #1, CLA. The folder contained several petitions with the same wording. For similar petitions, see also boxes 159, 161, and 162 of the 59th Congress. 25. Joseph Lee, 1907, as quoted in Tichenor, Dividing Lines, 120. 26. Anonymous to the ­people of V ­ irginia, December 23, 1907, box 136, folder 3068, Ambasciata Italiana a Washington (1901–9) Collection, ASAE. 27. Resolution, Council of the Ju­nior Order United American Mechanics (IN) to Congressmen, October 19, 1910, RG 46, box 132 (61st Congress), folder SEN61A-­J39 (April 21, 1909, to October 1, 1911), CLA. 28. See Tichenor, Dividing Lines, 134–35. See also Higham, Strangers in the Land, 127–28. 29. Ironically, the passage of more restrictive immigration laws led to Italian migration’s becoming more permanent as immigrants calculated that reentering the country might prove increasingly difficult as the laws became stricter. This shift did not go unnoticed by American authorities. Immigration commissioners noted this change in their annual reports to the Department of L ­ abor. 30. Although Italian immigrants had the highest return rate of any of the groups from southern and eastern Eu­rope, eastern Eu­ro­pean Jews returned to Eu­ro­pean too, although in smaller numbers. The first scholar to study return migration among eastern Eu­ro­pean Jews was Sarna, “The Myth of No Return.” 31. The most notable exception was its intervention ­after the lynching of a group of Italian immigrants in New Orleans in 1891. 32. Abele Diamani to Italian del­e­ga­tions and consulates in the United States, June 16, 1890, Rappresentanze Diplomatiche USA Collection, box 89, file 1485 and Abele Diamani to Italian del­e­ga­tions and consulates in the United States, August 29, 1888, box 90, file 1493, Rappresentanze Diplomatiche USA Collection, ASAE. 33. Count Gallina to Cusani-­Confalonieri, June 19, 1913, box 22, file 78, Commissariato Generale per l’Emigrazione Collection, ASAE. 34. “Una grave minaccia all’emigrazione italiana,” La Tribuna, November 20, 1902, and Ministro degli Affari Esteri to Regia Ambasciata di Washington, August 4, 1902, box 143, file 3158, Ambasciata d’Italia a Washington (1901–9) Collection, ASAE. See also “Contro l’emigrazione,” Il Secolo, no date, box 143, folder 3155, Ambasciata d’Italia a Washington (1901–9) Collection, ASAE. 35. Count Gallina to Pio Carbonelli, March 19, 1912, and Gino Speranza, “Per l’assistenza legale degli italiani negli Stati Uniti,” box 17, file 59, Commissariato Generale per l’Emigrazione Collection, ASAE. See also Serrati to Cusani Confalonieri, June 19, 1913, box 22, file 78, Commissariato Generale per l’Emigrazione Collection, ASAE.

188  Notes to Chapter One 36. As Donna Gabaccia has suggested, weak sending nations like Italy and China ­were at a disadvantage during the debates over immigration restriction b­ ecause they had no leverage to use in their negotiations with the United States. ­Because of its international prestige, Japan fared differently, at least u­ ntil 1924. Theodore Roo­se­velt willingly negotiated about how to regulate Japa­nese immigration with the Japa­nese government and signed the Gentlemen’s Agreement. Gabaccia, Foreign Relations. 37. Mayor des Planches to Commissariato per l’Emigrazione, June 19, 1905, box 144, file 3167, Ambasciata d’Italia a Washington (1901–9) Collection, ASAE. The lynching of Italian mi­grants in New Orleans was still a fresh memory in many Italian communities across the United States. 38. Gino Speranza, “Per l’assistenza legale degli italiani negli Stati Uniti,” box 17, folder 59, Commissariato Generale per l’Emigrazione Collection, ASAE. For a critical evaluation of Speranza’s ideological transformation, see Guglielmo, “­Toward Essentialism, ­Toward Difference,” 169–213. 39. This example clearly shows how the citizenship status of the restricted groups in the United States provided them with dif­fer­ent opportunities to mobilize against restriction. While Italian immigrants could opt out of g­ oing to court b­ ecause they had a panoply of other options through their ability to naturalize, the majority of Asian immigrants could not ­because they could not naturalize. Nor could Latinos, whom many Americans viewed and treated as second-­class citizens in most of the country. 40. Vincenzo Sellaro, Inaugural Address, June 22, 1905, http:​/­​/­www​.­osia​.­org​/­w p​-­content​ /­uploads​/­2017​/­05​/­Sellaro​-­Inaugural​.­pdf. 41. See Andreozzi, Guide to the Rec­ords of the Order Sons of Italy in Amer­ic­ a. 42. See Lissak, “Liberal Progressives and Immigration Restriction”; and Leonard, “Louis Marshall and Immigration Restriction,” 6–26. For more details on the activities of the National Liberal Immigration League and the Alliance Israélite Universelle, see the first nine volumes of the AJYB. 43. Goldstein, The Politics of Ethnic Pressure; Leonard, “Louis Marshall and Immigration Restriction.” 44. Leonard, “Louis Marshall and Immigration Restriction,” 11. 45. Ironically, once the NLIL’s influence declined, many observers accused the committee of the same ­thing, attacked its members for being the driving force ­behind the antirestrictionist campaign, and increasingly identified the fight against immigration restriction as “a Jewish prob­lem.” This in turn forced the AJC to be even more cautious and to operate even more discreetly. See AJYB, vols. 4–9. 46. Marshall, as quoted in Leonard, “Louis Marshall and Immigration Restriction,” 13. 47. Chinese, Filipinos, Japa­nese, Indians, and Koreans did the same. See, for example, the Chinese American Citizens Alliance, Filipino Federation of Amer­ic­ a, India League of Amer­ i­ca, Japa­nese American Citizens League, and Sino-­Korean P ­ eople’s League. For more on ­these organ­izations, see Azuma, Hong, Hsu, and Erika Lee. As Natalia Molina notes, politicians often excluded Mexican Americans from the debates over immigration during the long immigration era. Yet, Mexican Americans too created the League of United Latin American Citizens, an organ­ization with a po­liti­cal mission, to assist naturalized Mexicans and Mexican Americans to claim their rights as citizens. Molina, How Race Is Made in Amer­i­ca, 40.

Notes to Chapter One 189 48. The founding members of the AJC received strong opposition from B’nai B’rith. While B’nai B’rith leaders had originally participated in the creation of the new organ­ization, they left when AJC did not adequately address their concerns about the potential overlap between the two organ­izations. Despite this disagreement, the two organ­izations continued to collaborate on their fight against immigration restriction. The disagreements between the two organ­izations are detailed in the AJYB, vols. 9–11. 49. Resolution of Restriction of Immigration, Local Union of Carpenters and Joiners of Amer­i­ca, November 16, 1905, RG 46, box 156 (59th Congress), folder SEN59A-­J47 (October, November, December 1905), CLA. The entire box contains several of similar petitions from ­unions from across the country. 50. The conversion of Southern Demo­crats to the restrictionist cause remains largely unexplored in the lit­er­a­ture. Among the few scholars who are investigating it is Ruth Wasem, who notes that the establishment of a restrictive immigration regime at the beginning of the twentieth ­century was driven in part by “the desire of the Southern and rural regions of the country to retain control over the Congress”; Wasem, “The Undertow of Reforming Immigration.” 51. National Liberal Immigration League, “Race Discrimination: Resolutions and Laws Passed by the Legislatures of V ­ irginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, in Opposition to Immigration from Southern Eu­rope,” no date, box 2, folder 14, James Donnaruma Papers, IHRCA. 52. Immigration Restriction League, January 31, 1907, box 203 (59th Congress), folder SEN59A-­K11 (February 13, 1907, to February 19, 1907), CLA. 53. Lissak, “Liberal Progressives and Immigration Restriction,” 223. 54. Rabbi George Solomon, January 20, 1906, RG 46, box 162 (59th Congress), folder SEN59A-­J47 ( January 21, 1907, to January 25, 1907), CLA. For petitions from local chapters of the Council of Jewish W ­ omen, see boxes 162 and 203. For a sample of the letters American Jews wrote to legislators, see RG 46, boxes 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, and 203 of the 59th Congress, CLA. 55. “The Immigration Bill,” 98–100 and 234–68. 56. Joe Cook (president of the Board of Trade), Minutes of a meeting, December 18, 1905, RG 46, box 158 (59th Congress), folder SEN59A-­J47 ( January 22, 1906) #2, CLA. 57. Marshall as cited in Leonard, “Louis Marshall and Immigration Restriction,” 13. 58. “The Immigration Bill,” 98–100 and 234–68. See also Leonard, “Louis Marshall and Immigration Restriction,” 14–15. 59. “Resolution from Citizens of Platte County, NB,” no date, RG 46, box 162 (59th Congress), folder SEN59A-­J47 ( January 16, 1907), CLA. 60. “The Immigration Bill,” 536–37. See also Higham, Strangers in the Land, 128. 61. The Liberal Immigration League to Members of Congress, January 1907, RG 46, box 162 (59th Congress), folder SEN59A ( January 25, 1907, to January 28, 1907), CLA. 62. “Resolution, the National German American Alliance,” January 21, 1907, RG 46, box 162 (59th Congress), folder SEN59A-­J47 ( January 25, 1907, to January 28, 1907); German American Alliance of Ohio to Senator Dick, January 10, 1907, box 203 (59th Congress), folder SEN59A-­K11 (February 13, 1907, to February 19, 1907), CLA. See also Ibn Gabriol Lodge No. 114 (B’nai B’rith), no date, RG 46, box 162 (59th Congress), folder SEN59A-­J47 (February 6, 1907, to February 13, 1907). The box contains several other petitions from German American Associations opposing restriction.

190  Notes to Chapter One 63. Resolution, Presidents and secretaries of vari­ous Jewish organ­izations, February 1907, RG 46, box 162 (59th Congress), folder SEN59A-­J47 ( January 30, 1907, to February 6, 1907), CLA. For more on the role of disabilities in U.S. immigration policy, see Baynton, Defectives in the Land. 64. Max Kohler to Simon Wolf, September  27, 1910, as quoted in Tichenor, Dividing Lines, 129. 65. For more on the commission, see Zeidel, Immigrants, Progressives, and Exclusion Politics, and Benton-­Cohen, Inventing the Immigration Prob­lem. 66. Italian Chamber of Commerce to James Sherman, January 20, 1910, RG 46, box 135 (61st Congress), folder SEN61A-­J40 ( January 19, 1910, to March 1, 1910), CLA. The box contains several petitions with almost identical language sent by Jewish and Italian organ­ izations. 67. “Immigration, Legislation, Etc.,” 245. For more details on the AJC’s contact with the Dillingham Commission, see also AJYB 12 (1910–11). About the actions of the Order of B’nai Brith, see RG 46, box 135 (61st Congress), CLA. 68. “In Defense of the Immigrant,” 19–20. 69. AJYB 13 (1911–12). 70. As quoted in AJYB 12 (1910–11): 206. See also King, Making Americans, chap. 3. 71. For more on the revolt against the bipartisan speakership, see Tichenor, Dividing Lines, esp. 132–38. 72. For a sample of the letters and resolutions the AFL and its chapters sent Congress, see RG 46, boxes 132 and 134 (61st Congress), CLA. 73. Patriotic Order of Sons of Amer­i­ca to Bois Penrose, April 13, 1912, RG 46, box 199 (62nd Congress), folder SEN62A-­K17 (April 16, 1912) #3, CLA. 74. Lissak, “Liberal Progressives and Immigration Restriction,” 224. 75. For a sample of the letters that both sides sent Congress, see RG 46, boxes 141 and 142 (61st Congress), and box 199 (62nd Congress), CLA. 76. “Immigration Bill Stormily Attacked,” NYT, May 7, 1912. 77. Nissim Behar to James Donnaruma, January 14, 1913, box 2, folder 13, James Donnaruma Papers, IHRCA. 78. Lissak, “Liberal Progressives and Immigration Restriction,” 225–27. 79. Marshall as quoted in Leonard, “Louis Marshall and Immigration Restriction,” 16. 80. Lissak, “Liberal Progressives and Immigration Restriction, 1896–1917,” 227–28. 81. Marshall as quoted in Leonard, “Louis Marshall and Immigration Restriction,” 17. 82. Morgen Journal as quoted in “The Yiddish Press,” 271–72. 83. Leonard, “Louis Marshall and Immigration Restriction,” 13 and 17–18. 84. “L’Ordine dei Figli d’Italia in Amer­ic­ a per la libera immigrazione,” Bollettino della Sera, January  6, 1913, box 22, file 78, Commissariato Generale per l’Emigrazione Collection, ASAE. 85. Serrati to Gallina, January  24, 1913, box 22, file 78, Commissariato Generale per l’Emigrazione Collection, ASAE. 86. Tichenor, Dividing Lines, 136–37. 87. Lissak, “Liberal Progressives and Immigration Restriction,” 228–30; Leonard, “Louis Marshall and Immigration Restriction,” 18. 88. Woodrow Wilson, as quoted in Higham, Strangers in the Land, 190.

Notes to Chapter One 191 89. As quoted in House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, “Immigration of Aliens into the United States,” 63rd Congress, 2nd Session (1913), 12, box 2, file 13, James Donnaruma Papers, IRHCA. 90. Louis Hammering to James Donnaruma, December 15, 1913. See also Louis Hammering to James Donnaruma, January 10, 1914, box 2, file 13, James Donnaruma Papers, IRHCA. 91. Lissak, “Liberal Progressives and Immigration Restriction,” 233. 92. Leonard, “Louis Marshall and Immigration Restriction,” 21. 93. For an example of t­ hese dynamics, see Moses, An Unlikely Union. 94. Daniels, Coming to Amer­i­ca, 188. 95. Ross, Old World in the New, 112. 96. “Netherlands Report to the Department of State,” quoted in Senate Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, “Emergency Immigration Legislation,” Hearings on H.R. 14461, 66th Congress, 3rd Session (1921), 21. For return rates, see Zolberg, Nation by Design, 205 and 207. 97. Frances Kellor as quoted in Higham, Strangers in the Land, 234. 98. Before turning against southern and eastern Eu­ro­pean immigrants, Speranza had written a power­ful essay, “How it Feels to Be a Prob­lem,” in defense of their efforts to integrate in a society that marked them as undesirable; Speranza, “How It Feels to Be a Prob­lem,” 457–63. 99. Clark, Our Italian Fellow Citizens in Their Old Homes and Their New, vi–­vii. 100. Fleegler, Ellis Island Nation. 101. Louis Marshall, “The Jewish Mind in ­These States: An Answer,” no date, box 19, file 3, Louis Marshall Papers, AJA. 102. Fiorello La Guardia as quoted in Kessner, Fiorello H. La Guardia and the Making of Modern New York, 44. For a complete analy­sis of Jewish and Italian participation in World War I, see Sterba, Good Americans. 103. Lissak, “Liberal Progressives and Immigration Restriction,” 230–31. 104. James Donnaruma to Andrew Peters, January 12, 1914, box 2, folder 13, James Donnaruma Papers, IHRCA. 105. Leonard, “Louis Marshall and Immigration Restriction,” 11–13. 106. Lissak, “Liberal Progressives and Immigration Restriction,” 232. 107. Lissak, 234. 108. Leonard, “Louis Marshall and Immigration Restriction,” 21. 109. Tichenor, Dividing Lines, 137–38. 110. As quoted in Tichenor, Dividing Lines, 141. 111. For more on this episode, see N. Cohen, Not ­Free to Desist; Goldstein, “Ethnic Politics,” 36–58; Leonard, “Louis Marshall and Immigration Restriction”; and Sorin, A Time for Building. 112. See Cohen, Not ­Free to Desist; Goldstein, “Ethnic Politics”; and Sorin, Time for Building. 113. Ferber, A New American. 114. Ferber, New American, 93; Kessner, Fiorello H. La Guardia, 46; Sterba, Good Americans, chap. 6. 115. See Cohen, Not ­Free to Desist; Goldstein, “Ethnic Politics”; and Sorin, Time for Building. 116. Although Italian and Jewish activists did not advocate for Mexican mi­grants, the bill’s sponsors included a provision for temporary ­labor to allow the recruitment of Mexican workers to continue to secure the support of politicians from the Southwest.

192  Notes to Chapter Two

Chapter Two 1. “Annual Report of the American Jewish Committee,” 647. 2. “Annual Report of the American Jewish Committee,” 344. For more on the intersection of immigration restriction and foreign relations, see Gabaccia, Foreign Relations, chap. 3. 3. “Annual Report of the Commissioner General of Immigration to the Secretary of L ­ abor,” 3–4. 4. Garis, Immigration Restriction, 131. 5. Zolberg, Nation by Design, 251–52. 6. Gabaccia, Foreign Relations, 140. 7. For more on the deportation of the early 1920s, see Moloney, National Insecurities, chap. 6. 8. See Zolberg, Nation by Design, 248; Hernández, Muhammad, and Thompson, eds., “Historians and the Carceral State,” 18–184. 9. Ngai, Impossible Subjects, 23. 10. “Memorandum on Immigration Legislation Pending in the United States Congress, January 25, 1919,” 428, https:​/­​/­archive​.­org​/­stream​/­americanjewishy06amergoog​/­american​ jewishy06amergoog​_­djvu​.­txt. 11. “Memorandum on Immigration Legislation Pending in the United States Congress, January 25, 1919,” 426–32. 12. “Annual report of the American Jewish Committee,” 355–56. 13. “Rec­ord of Events in 5679,” 178 and 185. 14. Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door, chap. 2. 15. Booklet about the Inter-­R acial Council, 1919, box 2, folder 13, James Donnaruma Papers, IHRCA. 16. As quoted in “Annual Report of the American Jewish Committee,” 354. 17. National Conference on Immigration, “Memorial and Resolutions,” April 7, 1920, box 2, folder 13, James Donnaruma Papers, IHRCA. 18. “Annual Report of the American Jewish Committee,” 354–55. See also “Annual Report of the American Jewish Committee,” 348. 19. The National Committee for Constructive Immigration Legislation, 11, https:​/­​/­catalog​ .­hathitrust​.­org​/­Record​/­012477551. In addition to worrying about limiting the number of immigrants from certain parts of Eu­rope, the report also reveals a concern with maintaining good relations with China and Japan, and respecting the treaties the United States had with both countries. In the proposal, quotas would have been applied to Asian countries too. 20. Zolberg, Nation by Design, 252–53. 21. The National Committee for Constructive Immigration Legislation, “Scientific Regulation of Immigration,” 2, https:​/­​/­catalog​.­hathitrust​.­org​/­Record​/­012477551. 22. As Natalia Molina points out, proponents of Mexican immigration, who w ­ ere mostly members of agribusinesses and railroad companies, “argued that Mexicans did not represent a threat to U.S. society ­because they w ­ ere ‘birds of passage’ who returned to Mexico when their l­abor was done. B ­ ecause of this and b­ ecause Mexican naturalization rates w ­ ere low in the 1910s, employers did not belabor Mexicans’ racial status.” Molina, How Race Is Made in Amer­i­ca, 46. 23. Louis Marshall as quoted in Morton Rosenstock, Louis Marshall, Defender of Jewish Rights, 232.

Notes to Chapter Two 193 24. “Annual Report of the American Jewish Committee,” 345. 25. Tichenor, Dividing Lines, 143. 26. For an example of t­ hese attacks, see Ross, Old World in the New, 44. 27. Leon Sanders in U.S. Senate Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, “Emergency Immigration Legislation,” Hearings on H.R. 14461, 66th Congress, 3rd session (1921). 28. Louis Marshall, “Hearings before the Committee on Immigration United States Senate,” 1921, box 19, file 3, Louis Marshall Papers, AJA. 29. Statement of Louis Scaramelli in U.S. Senate Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, “Emergency Immigration Legislation,” Hearings on H.R. 14461, 66th Congress, 3rd session (1921), 81. 30. Statement of Louis Scaramelli in U.S. Senate Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, “Emergency Immigration Legislation,” Hearings on H.R. 14461, 66th Congress, 3rd session (1921), 83. 31. U.S. Senate Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, “Emergency Immigration Legislation,” Hearings on H.R. 14461, 66th Congress, 3rd session (1921). 32. Adolfo Vinci to Giuseppe De Michelis, November 20, 1920, box 55, folder 351, Commissariato Generale dell’Emigrazione Collection, ASAE. 33. Adolfo Vinci to Giuseppe De Michelis, December 16, 1920, box 55, folder 351, Commissariato Generale dell’Emigrazione Collection, ASAE. 34. Adolfo Vinci to Norman Davis, December 17, 1920 in Senate Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, “Emergency Immigration Legislation,” Hearings on H.R. 14461, 66th Congress, 3rd session (1921), 57. 35. Colt in Senate Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, “Emergency Immigration Legislation,” Hearings on H.R. 14461, 66th Congress, 3rd session (1921), 7–8. 36. Johnson in Senate Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, “Emergency Immigration Legislation,” Hearings on H.R. 14461, 66th Congress, 3rd session (1921), 8. 37. Johnson in Senate Committee on Immigration and Naturalization (1921), 10–11. 38. Anthony Caminetti’s testimony in Senate Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, “Emergency Immigration Legislation,” Hearings on H.R. 14461, 66th Congress, 3rd session (1921), 569–95. 39. In their arguments against Eu­ro­pean restriction at the beginning of the twentieth ­century, its critics never considered Asian exclusion as a precursor to what they considered the country’s long-­established tradition of welcoming immigrants. 40. “Annual Report of the American Jewish Committee.” 41. “Annual Report of the American Jewish Committee,” 355. 42. “Annual Report of the American Jewish Committee,” 353. 43. Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door, chap. 2. 44. Parker, “The Quota Provisions of the Immigration Act of 1924,” 737. 45. Speranza, “The Immigration Peril,” 57–65. The title of the article echoed ­earlier discussions of “yellow peril,” thus evoking images of threat and danger long established in the American imagination. Speranza also wrote Race or Nation where he tied eastern and southern Eu­ro­pe­ans’ inability to appreciate the American po­liti­cal pro­cess to their “abysmal ethnic, cultural and historic differences,” and to racial characteristics that never died out but passed on from generation to generation virtually unchanged. Stoking fears of internationalism at a time when many Americans would have preferred to be isolationist, Speranza

194  Notes to Chapter Two lamented that “the easy and rapid means of international communication to-­day powerfully tend to keep the alien u­ nder the influences of the original civilization; and the conclusion seems unavoidable that the possibility of even an approximation to real national absorption is practically nullified.” 46. Panunzio, Immigration Crossroads, 101–2. 47. Fairchild, “The Immigration Law of 1924,” 659. 48. U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, “Admission of Aliens in Excess of Percentage Quotas for June,” Hearings, June 10, 1921, 67th Congress, 1st session (1921), 82–114. 49. Vinci to De Michelis, September 24, 1921, box 55, folder 351, Commissariato Generale dell’Emigrazione Collection, ASAE. 50. De Michelis to Vinci, July  18, 1921, box 55, folder 351, Commissariato Generale dell’Emigrazione Collection, ASAE. 51. Vinci to De Michelis, September  24, 1921, box 55, folder 351, Commissariato Generale dell’Emigrazione Collection, ASAE, Rome, Italy. In a letter he wrote to De Michelis in October 1921, Vinci reiterated this idea of waiting for a more opportune moment to push for the admission of a higher number of Italians, saying that, given the state of American economy, the money that Italian emigrants would spend to go to Amer­i­ca and support themselves u­ ntil they found a good job would be money taken away from the Italian economy, if they then de­cided to return to Italy. Vinci to De Michelis, October 1, 1924. 52. Vinci to De Michelis, October 1, 1921, box 55, folder 351, Commissariato Generale dell’Emigrazione Collection, ASAE. 53. Vinci to De Michelis, November 23, 1921, box 55, folder 351, Commissariato Generale dell’Emigrazione Collection, ASAE. 54. “Annual Report of the American Jewish Committee,” 376–77. 55. Annual Report of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (1925): 9688. 56. Annual Report of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (1924): 9472. 57. “To the Members of the American Jewish Committee.” 58. Ralph Shulman to Louis Marshall, May 22, 1923; Louis Marshall to Ralph Shulman, April 22, 1924, box 17, file 3, Louis Marshall Papers, AJA. 59. Louis Marshall to Ralph Shulman, June  26, 1924; Shulman to Marshall, June  30, 1924; and Louis Marshall to Ralph Shulman, September 4, 1924, box 17, file 3, Louis Marshall Papers, AJA. 60. Louis Marshall to A.  S. Gilbert, January  18, 1924, box 17, file 5, Louis Marshall ­Papers, AJA. 61. “­Can’t F ­ ree on Bail an Imbecile Alien,” NYT, May 12, 1924. 62. NYSTLC, Report . . . ​on the Exploitation of Immigrants, 107. 63. “Annual Report of the Commissioner General of Immigration to the Secretary of ­Labor,” as quoted in NYSTLC, Report . . . ​on the Exploitation of Immigrants, 107. 64. Garland, ­After They Closed the Gates. See also Sadowski-­Smith, “Unskilled ­Labor Migration and the Illegality Spiral,” 779–804. 65. “Annual Report of the Commissioner General of Immigration to the Secretary of ­Labor,” in New NYSTLC, Report . . . ​on the Exploitation of Immigrants, 107–9.

Notes to Chapter Two 195 66. See the correspondence between De Michelis and the border station authorities at Ventimiglia in box 82, folder 730, Archivistico Commissariato Generale dell’Emigrazione (1901–27) Collection, ASAE. 67. Box 82, folders 734 and 735, Commissariato Generale dell’Emigrazione Collection, ASAE. 68. Albert Johnson in Garis, Immigration Restriction, vii–­viii. 69. For more on Laughlin and the origins of eugenics fieldwork in the United States, see Chavez-­Garcia, “Youth of Color and California’s Carceral State,” 47–60. 70. Ngai, Impossible Subjects, 24. See also, Moloney, National Insecurities, 109. 71. United States Congress, House, Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, “Restriction of Immigration,” Hearings, Part 1, 68th Congress, 1st session (1924), 1–3. 72. While critics of restriction like Cotillo often pointed to international repercussions that a restrictive immigration policy would have for the United States as an argument against restriction, the U.S. hardly ever faced any retaliation for its restrictive immigration policy. As Madeline Hsu points out, the G ­ reat Depression, World War II, and the Cold War drastically minimized the international pushback; Hsu, Good Immigrants, chap. 1. 73. United States Congress, House, Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, “Restriction of Immigration,” Hearings, Part 1, 68th Congress, 1st session (1924), 416–43. 74. Nathan Strong to Di Silvestro, February 8, 1924, box 3, folder 5, Giovanni Di Silvestro Papers, IHRCA. 75. OSIA to Albert Johnson, no date, box 3, folder 5, Giovanni Di Silvestro Papers, IHRCA. 76. Caetani to Di Silvestro, February 26, 1924, box 3, folder 5, Giovanni Di Silvestro Papers, IHRCA. 77. Choate, “Sending States’ Transnational Interventions in Politics, Culture, and Economics,” 728–68. 78. Stephen Wise to Samuel Dickstein, January 30, 1924; Dickstein to Bernard Richards, February 25, 1924; and Dickstein to Richards, February 29, 1924, box 1, file “American Jewish Congress,” Samuel Dickstein Papers, AJA. 79. Richards to Dickstein, February 29, 1924, box 3, file “American Jewish Congress,” Samuel Dickstein Papers, AJA. 80. Max J. Kohler, “Aspects of Pending Immigration Legislation,” NYT, January 5, 7, 9, 14, and 25, 1924. 81. Kohler, “Aspects of Pending Immigration Legislation: An Analy­sis of the Johnson Bill,” NYT, January 5, 1924. 82. In “Aspects of Pending Immigration Legislation: An Analy­sis of the Johnson Bill,” Kohler was not alone in his objection to fingerprinting immigrants. The Union of American Hebrew Congregations saw the proposed alien registration as religious discrimination and an attempt on the part of the government to intimidate prospective immigrants. The Chicago Immigrants’ Protective League, which counted among its members Jane Addams, wrote Congress to remind its members that, if passed, registration would extend “to the En­ glish, Irish, Scotch, Scandinavian, German, and all other immigrants the system heretofore used only for the Chinese, and we fear that the principal advocates of this mea­sure in Congress are trying to carry over to the Eu­ro­pean immigrant, their attitude ­towards the Oriental immigrant.” See Annual Report of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (1925), and

196  Notes to Chapter Two “Statement Issued by the Chicago Immigrants’ Protective League Regarding the Proposed Bill for the Registration of Alien” in “Annual Report of American Immigration Committee,” 438. 83. Kohler, “Aspects of Pending Immigration Legislation: Treaty Provisions,” NYT, January  7, 1924; and Kohler, “Aspects of Pending Immigration Legislation: The ‘Gentlemen’s Agreement’,” NYT, January 9, 1924. 84. Kohler, “Aspects of Pending Immigration Legislation: ‘Gentlemen’s Agreement.’ ” As Kohler predicted, the authority the bill vested in medical inspectors and consular officers created outrage both at home and abroad. The Italian government, in par­tic­ul­ ar, vehemently opposed such a provision and requested that the issue be regulated through a treaty regulating examinations on its territory. As Italian consular Vinci wrote to De Michelis, the pressure to allow foreign medical inspectors on their territory only proved that the United States thought of Italy as a country of straccioni (good-­for-­nothings), damaging Italy’s moral and po­liti­cal standing in the international sphere. Vinci to De Michelis, December 22, 1921, box 55, folder 351, Commissariato Generale dell’Emigrazione Collection, ASAE. 85. Vinci to De Michelis, December 22, 1921, box 55, folder 351, Commissariato Generale dell’Emigrazione Collection, ASAE. 86. Throughout the 1920s, the AJYB continued to publish studies on ­mental health institutions, prisons, and shelters to pre­sent a more nuanced image of the composition of the populations at ­these institutions and to question the assumption that immigrants represented the majority among ­those residing at ­these places. 87. Hoffman, “Need to Select Immigrants,” NYT, January 27, 1924. 88. Hoffman. 89. Reed, “Amer­i­ca of the Melting Pot Comes to End,” NYT Sunday, April 27, 1924, box 3, folder 5, Giovanni Di Silvestro Papers, IHRC. 90. “Annual Report of the American Jewish Committee,” 645. 91. Zolberg, Nation by Design, 260. 92. Saverio Romano to James Donnaruma, January 23, 1924, box 2, folder 13, James Donnaruma Papers, IHRCA. 93. Report of the Boston Committee against Unfair Restricted Immigration, February 8, 1924, box 2, folder 14, James Donnaruma Papers, IHRCA. 94. Saverio Romano to James Donnaruma, January 23, 1924. 95. “A Survey of the Year,” 66. 96. “Annual Report of the American Jewish Committee,” 427–28. 97. “Annual Report of the American Jewish Committee,” 646–47. 98. “Annual Report of the American Jewish Committee,” 427–28. 99. Zolberg, Nation by Design, 258–59. 100. “A Survey of the Year 5684,” 56–57. 101. Ngai, Impossible Subjects, 22. 102. Zolberg, Nation by Design, 259. 103. John Higham, in his Strangers in the Land, spoke of religion as a key f­ actor in the history of U.S. nativism, but l­ater scholars have mostly focused on race, nationality, and class as criteria for exclusion for Eu­ro­pean immigrants. 104. “Annual Report of the American Jewish Committee,” 431. 105. “Annual Report of the American Jewish Committee.”

Notes to Chapter Three 197 106. “Annual Report of the American Jewish Committee.” 107. Thomas Guglielmo has explored how Italians learned about U.S. racial hierarchy and used it to their advantage to become accepted in U.S. society. See Guglielmo, White on Arrival. 108. Molina, How Race Is Made in Amer­ic­ a, 48. For the complicated implications that ­these naturalization categorizations had for Mexican immigrants, who fit more than one category, see Molina, chap. 2. 109. As Torrie Hester notes, “The new immigration requirements did not interrupt the total l­abor flow from Mexico, but it did reduce the numbers of Mexicans who migrated to the United States legally. Many Mexicans, fleeing economic and po­liti­cal instability, immigrated to the United States without paying the fees to obtain the required documents. They helped meet the demand for low-­wage ­labor in the West but w ­ ere also in the United States in violation of immigration law—­and so ­were deportable.” Hester, “Deportability and the Carceral State,” 143. 110. For more details on the law, see Daniels, Closing the Golden Door; Ngai, Impossible Subjects; Tichenor, Dividing Lines; and Zolberg, Nation by Design. On the pre­ce­dent set by Chinese exclusion, see McKeown, Melancholy Order, and Young, Alien Nation. 111. For a detailed and in-­depth discussion of the definition of national origin and the calculation the committee used for its computation, see Ngai, Impossible Subjects, chap. 1. 112. “Domestic Activities: Immigration and Naturalization,” and Marshall to Davis, October 11, 1924, box 16, file 6, Louis Marshall Papers, AJA. 113. The provision continued a tradition of the U.S. Congress of using class, in addition to race and nationality, to differentiate among immigrants. The most notable pre­ce­dent to the ministers and university professors provision of the 1924 Immigration Act was the exemption of diplomats, merchants, ministers, and students from the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Acts. 114. Fairchild, “The Immigration Act of 1924,” 660. 115. Gabaccia, Foreign Relations, 142. 116. “Rabbi Wise Calls Restricting Jews by Immigration Laws, Nation’s ‘Unpardonable Sin,’ ” no publication title, March 5, 1926, Manuscript Collection 49, box 5, file 3 “Newspaper Clippings (1902–1953),” Stephen Wise Papers, AJA. 117. “Annual Report of the American Jewish Committee,” 436.

Chapter Three 1. Louis Marshall to David Reed, April 12, 1926, “Annual Report of the American Jewish Committee,” 400. The chapter’s title comes from the same letter. 2. “Parla il magistrato Francis X. Giaccone,” no publication title, no date, box 5, Francis Giaccone Papers, IHRCA. 3. David Brody, “American Jewry, the Refugees, and Immigration Restriction American Jewry,” typescript, 1954 [draft], Dorot Jewish Division, NYPL. See also Pisani, The Italian in Amer­i­ca. 4. Tichenor, Dividing Lines, 149. 5. Daniels, Guarding the Gold Door, 56. 6. As quoted in “Annual Report of the American Jewish Committee,” 407–8. 7. Ngai, Impossible Subjects, 31–35.

198  Notes to Chapter Three 8. “Speech of Senator Shipstead, of Minnesota,” February 19, 1927, box 3, folder 5, Giovanni Di Silvestro Papers, IHRCA. 9. Constantine E. McGuire to Giovanni Di Silvestro, April 4, 1927, box 3, folder 5, Giovanni Di Silvestro Papers, IHRCA. 10. As quoted in “Review of the Year 5687,” 70. 11. “Annual Report of the American Jewish Committee,” 340. 12. “Annual Report of the American Jewish Committee,” 300. 13. “Review of the Year 5689,” 29. 14. Hill as quoted in Ngai, Impossible Subjects, 35. 15. Ngai, Impossible Subjects, 35. 16. Riding on the new system for admissions, the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization sought to racialize the naturalization pro­cess as well. On the same day on which the new quota system went into effect, it issued a new application form requiring persons seeking naturalization to state their “race” as well as their “nationality.” The AJC objected to “the classification as illegal and likely to cause confusion and oppression.” In protest, it filed a brief with the Secretary of L ­ abor, who, advised by the Solicitor of the Department that the law did not prescribe such classification, ordered it discontinued. “Review of the Year 5691,” 56–57. 17. “Annual Report of the American Jewish Committee,” 340. 18. Zolberg, Nation by Design, 261. 19. Thomas M. Henderson, “Immigrant Politician,” 100. 20. Anonymous note to Di Silvestro, 1925, box 2, folder 2, Giovanni Di Silvestro Papers, IHRCA. 21. For an example, see Garis, Immigration Restriction. 22. For a detailed history on the subject, consult Torpey, The Invention of the Passport. See also Tichenor, Dividing Lines, chap. 6, and Gabaccia, Foreign Relations, 143. 23. Tichenor, Dividing Lines, 154–55. 24. “Review of the Year 5690,” 82–83. 25. Foreign Language Information Ser­v ice, “More Sacred than the F ­ amily?,” The Interpreter, October 1927. 26. “Annual Report of American Jewish Committee,” 273–74. 27. Hull, quoted in “Domestic ­Matters: Immigration.” 28. David F. Letshaw to La Guardia, January 11, 1926, box 9, folder “Congressional Correspondence (1924–1929),” Fiorello La Guardia Papers, microform, Scholarly Resources, roll 7. For similar objections La Guardia received, see also Bedford Council of Connecticut of the Ju­nior Order of United American Mechanics to La Guardia, January 20, 1926. 29. “Annual Report of the American Jewish Committee”; Gaspare Cusumano to Fiorello La Guardia, December 11, 1924; American Citizens of Polish Descent to La Guardia, February 3, 1926; New Citizens Club to La Guardia, February 6, 1925; Roberto Branizza to La Guardia, February 6, 1926; and Foreign Language Information Ser­vice to La Guardia, February 27, 1928, box 9, folder “Congressional Correspondence (1924–1929),” Fiorello La Guardia Papers, microform, Scholarly Resources, roll 7. 30. “Annual Report of the American Jewish Committee,” 398. 31. “Review of the Year 5688,” 25–26, and “Annual Report of the American Jewish Committee,” 339. 32. “Domestic Activities: Immigration and Naturalization.”

Notes to Chapter Three 199 33. “Twenty-­First Annual Report of the American Jewish Committee, 1927.” 34. “Annual Report of American Jewish Committee,” 273–74. 35. Husband to Marshall, June 23, 1925, “Domestic Activities: Immigration and Naturalization,” 457–58. 36. Marshall to Husband, June 26, 1925, “Domestic Activities: Immigration and Naturalization,” 464. 37. White to Marshall, June 30, 1925, “Domestic Activities: Immigration and Naturalization,” 465. 38. “Domestic Activities: Immigration and Naturalization,” 439–68. 39. Marshall to Davis, October 11, 1924, series B, box 16, file 6, Louis Marshall Papers, AJA. 40. “Domestic Activities: Immigration and Naturalization,” 1. 41. For more on the expedient use of the LPC clause, especially against Latin American mi­grants who ­were exempted from the 1924 act, see Molina, How Race Is Made in Amer­i­ca; Moloney, National Insecurities; and Ngai, Impossible Subjects. 42. For an example of the continued practice ­today, see Wang, “The U.S. Lost Track of 1,475 Immigrant ­Children Last Year,” Washington Post, May 29, 2018. The forcible separation of immigrant families has a long history in the United States, one that goes back at least to the antebellum era with the separation of Irish families. The practice echoed the separation of enslaved families. See Hirota, Expelling the Poor. 43. Duner v. Curran, 1924–26, series B, box 16, file 6, Louis Marshall Papers, AJA. 44. Duner v. Curran. 45. “Atti e deliberazioni della Suprema Loggia dell’OFDI in Amer­i­ca,” January–­ February 1926, box 1, folder 11, Giovanni Di Silvestro Papers, IHRCA. See also La Guardia to Michael DeFurna, November 18, 1924 and La Guardia to DeFurna, January 19, 1926, box 9, folder “Congressional Correspondence (1924–1929),” Fiorello La Guardia Papers, microform, Scholarly Resources, roll 7. 46. Silbur J. Carr to La Guardia, November 22, 1929, box 10, folder “Congressional Correspondence (1924–1929),” Fiorello La Guardia Papers, microform, Scholarly Resources, roll 7. 47. Di Silvestro to Berardelli, August 15, 1929, and Berardelli to Di Silvestro, August 20, 1929, box 3, folder 7, Giovanni Di Silvestro Papers, IHRCA. 48. Ngai, Impossible Subjects, 68. 49. “Review of the Year 5691,” 56–57. 50. The phrase in the heading comes from the title of an article that the Foreign Language Information Ser­vice published in The Interpreter in October 1927 (see note 27). 51. Raymond Clapper quoted in “Hyphen in Politics,” Vigo Review, November 1938. 52. Zolberg, Nation by Design, 268–69. 53. For a detailed analy­sis of the impact of the new interpretation of the LPC clause, see Moloney, National Insecurities. As Margot Canaday has demonstrated, immigration authorities also used the LPC clause to exclude t­ hose who engaged in sexual acts or occupied bodies who ­were deemed perverse; Canaday, The Straight State, chap. 1. 54. “Annual Report of the American Jewish Committee,” 283. 55. “Annual Report of the American Jewish Committee,” 282–84. 56. “Annual Report of the American Jewish Committee,” 282–84. 57. “Annual Report of the American Jewish Committee,” 347.

200  Notes to Chapter Three 58. As quoted in Brody, “American Jewry, the Refugees, and Immigration Restriction,” 3. 59. For more on Mussolini’s emigration policies to Africa, see Pergher, Mussolini’s Nation-­ Empire. 60. Parini to Di Silvestro, December 15, 1933, and Parini to Di Silvestri, March 30, 1934, box 10, folder 1, Giovanni Di Silvestro Papers, IHRCA. For another example of the importance of letters of introduction see also Di Silvestro to Armando Salati, December 1, 1930; and Gioacchino Catone to Di Silvestro, September 3, 1930, box 9, folder 17, Giovanni Di Silvestro Papers, IHRCA. 61. Giovanni Di Silvestro to Rose Molinari, July 31, 1930 and Parini to Di Silvestro, June 24, 1931, box 9, folder 17, Giovanni Di Silvestro Papers, IHRCA. See also “Promemoria per caso Chiodo,” January 22, 1932, and the material about the Sirianni case in folder 17. 62. Fiorello La Guardia to Luigi Barsini, October 27, 1928, box 9, folder “Congressional Correspondence (1924–1929),” Fiorello La Guardia Papers, microform, Scholarly Resources, roll 7. See also La Guardia to Renato Gianelli, December 20, 1926; La Guardia to Salvatore Patriarca, December 8, 1927; La Guardia to Mariangela Grande, April 18, 1928; Concettina Strippoli to La Guardia, no date; La Guardia to Strippoli, December 28, 1928; La Guardia to Raffaele Lapolla, January 21, 1929; and G. C. Gagliani to La Guardia, March 4, 1929. 63. Giovanni Di Silvestro to Francini, no date, box 2, folder 9, Giovanni Di Silvestro Papers, IHRCA. 64. “Sirianni” and “Mazzone,” box 9, folder 17, Giovanni Di Silvestro Papers, IHRCA. 65. Showing a blind spot that many critics of immigration restriction of Eu­ro­pean descent had, Dickstein concerned himself with helping immigrants only from Eu­rope while looking “for ways to get unemployed Filipinos sent back home” as a solution to the country’s high unemployment. Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door, 71. 66. H.R. 8174 and H.R. 12354, box 9, folder “Congressional Correspondence (1924–1929),” Fiorello La Guardia Papers, microform, Scholarly Resources, roll 7. 67. Zolberg, Nation by Design, 269. 68. Zolberg, 274. 69. Gabaccia, Foreign Relations, 144–45, and Tichenor, Dividing Lines, 159–60. 70. Tichenor, Dividing Lines, 156. 71. “Review of the Year 5693,” 39. 72. Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door, 73. 73. “A List of Events in 5694,” 122. 74. “Annual Report of the American Jewish Committee,” 430. 75. “A List of Events in 5694,” 129–31. 76. Zolberg, Nation by Design, 275. 77. Tichenor, Dividing Lines, 158. 78. Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door, 73. 79. Daniels, 76–77. 80. Daniels, 75, and Tichenor, Dividing Lines, 156–57. 81. Bern­stein, “The Migration of Jews in Recent Years,” 123–25. 82. “Annual Report of the American Jewish Committee,” 437–38. 83. “The Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees,” October 31, 1945, American Jewish Committee Collection, RG 247, series general 10, box 128, folder “Immigration, 1940– 1945,” YIVO.

Notes to Chapter Three 201 84. “Pleas for Aid Rise,” NYT, November 20, 1938. 85. Spear, “The United States and the Persecution of the Jews in Germany, 1933–1939,” 71–98. 86. Zolberg, Nation by Design, 272. 87. Liskofsky, “Immigration Policy of the United States,” RG 247, Series general 10, box 128, folder “Immigration 1940–1945,” American Jewish Committee Collection, YIVO. 88. “Immigration Seen in New Phase,” NYT, August 6, 1933. As Daniels writes, however, despite four consecutive years—­1932–1935—­in which the number of recorded emigrants did exceed the number of immigrants, the balance for the de­cade remained positive. The average annual immigration for the 1930s was 6,900. Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door, 59. 89. “Domestic Activities: Immigration and Naturalization.” 90. Garland, ­After They Closed the Gates. 91. “Italia, i tuoi figli legittimi ti onorano,” L’Adunata dei Refrattari, October 25, 1924, Newspaper Collection, IHRCA. 92. In 1927, the exchange rate was 19 liras per U.S. dollar, bringing the sum that Pollice requested to purchase a permit to migrate to North Amer­i­ca to approximately 1,684 U.S. dollars. 93. Vicenza Provincial Delegate to Commissariato, February 2, 1927, box 82, folder 732, Commissariato Generale dell’Emigrazione Collection, ASAE. 94. Poletti to Pompei, April 28, 1926, and Consigliere generale dell’emigrazione to segretario generale dell’emigrazione, May 5, 1927, box 82, folder 734, Commissariato Generale dell’Emigrazione Collection, and Donegani to Commissariato, June 26, 1926, box 82, folder 735. Commissariato Generale dell’Emigrazione Collection, ASAE. Both folders contain more details about several of the investigations the commission conducted. 95. U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, “Deportation of Alien Seamen,” Hearings on S. 202, 71st Congress, 3rd session (1931), 43. ­After the passage of the Alien Seaman Act of 1926, in compliance with the 1924 Immigration Act, foreign seamen still retained the right to stay in the United States for sixty days before reshipping on a foreign ship, but they could no longer remain in the United States by merely presenting themselves for examination before an immigration officer. Even though they might have been admissible u­ nder the immigration laws, the fact that the new law required an immigrant to be in possession of an unexpired immigration visa that only an American consul in a foreign country could grant made it impossible for seamen to seek a lawful permanent entry. 96. U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, “Deportation of Alien Seamen,” Hearings on S. 202, 71st Congress, 3rd session (1931), 3. 97. U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, “Smuggling Immigrants and Narcotics through the Unguarded Side Door–­Statement Prepared by Furuseth,” December 1, 1925, and “Deportation of Alien Seamen,” Hearings on S. 202, 71st Congress, 3rd session (1931), 29. 98. U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, “Smuggling Immigrants and Narcotics through the Unguarded Side Door–­Statement Prepared by Furuseth,” December 1, 1925, and “Deportation of Alien Seamen,” Hearings on S. 202, 71st Congress, 3rd session (1931), 27. 99. U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, “Deportation of Alien Seamen,” Hearings on S. 202, 71st Congress, 3rd session (1931), 87, 90.

202  Notes to Chapter Three 100. For more on the arguments that social welfare advocates and ­legal reformers advanced, see Ngai, Impossible Subjects, 76–80. 101. “Annual Report of the American Jewish Committee,” 300. 102. For more on the history of deportation policy in the United States, see Hester, Deportation. 103. “Atti e deliberazioni della Suprema Loggia,” January–­February 1926, box 1, folder 11, Giovanni Di Silvestro Papers, IHRCA. 104. J. W. Wadswort to Umberto Billi, March 20, 1926, box 2, folder 4, Giovanni Di Silvestro Papers, IHRCA. 105. J. W. Wadswort to Umberto Billi, March 20, 1926, box 2, folder 4, Giovanni Di Silvestro Papers, IHRCA. 106. “Domestic M ­ atters: Immigration.” 107. Kohler, quoted in “Domestic ­Matters: Immigration.” 108. “Annual Report of the American Jewish Committee,” 343–44. 109 “Annual Report of the American Jewish Committee,” 345–46. 110. “Domestic ­Matters: Immigration.” 111. “Humanized Laws for Aliens Urged,” NYT, March 2, 1936. 112. “Stay Deportations,” NYT, June 20, 1936. 113. For more on the evolution of U.S. deportation procedures, see Hester, Deportation. 114. “Change Opposed in Alien Quotas,” NYT, March 4, 1935. For critics of MacCormack’s stance on immigration as well as of Secretary of ­Labor Frances Perkins, see Griffith, “Alien Prob­lem,” NYT, August 2, 1936, and Breitman and Kraut, American Refugee Policy and Eu­ro­ pean Jewry, 1933–1945, chap. 1. 115. “Deporting Aliens Called Inhuman,” NYT, April 23, 1936. 116. “Alien Prob­lem,” NYT, August 2, 1936. 117. “Review of the Year 5697,” 268–69. 118. The chances to become a l­egal resident did not improve if the undocumented immigrant accepted deportation and subsequently tried to enter the country again. Although immigrants could apply for a reentry permit to the Secretary of ­Labor right ­after their deportation, they could not return to the United States for a year, and, even then, they could do so only if their case was considered favorably. “I limiti dei casi di deportazione” and “La riammissione di uno straniero deportato,” Il Commerciante Italiano, February 15, 1936. 119. “The Dies Bill,” NYT, August 9, 1937. 120. “La Comunità Accoglie con Entusiasmo la Campagna del Gr. Uff. Pope per Umanizzare le Leggi d’Immigrazione,” Corriere d’Amer­i­ca, March 16, 1937. 121. “La Comunità,” Corriere d’Amer­i­ca, March 16, 1937. 122. Pisani, Italian in Amer­i­ca, 138. 123. “Parla il magistrato Francis X. Giaccone,” no publication title, no date, box 5, Francis Giaccone Papers, IHRCA. 124. “Hyphenated Americans,” Vigo Review, November 1938. 125. On the relationship between Fascists and anti-­Fascists in the United States, see Cannistraro, Blackshirts in ­Little Italy. 126. Salvemini, Italian Fascist Activities in the United States, xix. 127. Lothrop, “Unwelcome in Freedom’s Land,” 163–65. 128. Pisani, Italian in Amer­i­ca, 199.

Notes to Chapter Four 203 129. Cited in Brody, “American Jewry, the Refugees, and Immigration Restriction,” 23. 130. Miller, Not the Work of a Day 5, no. 14, MS 365, box 2, Anti-­Defamation League of B’nai B’rith Collection, YIVO. For more on the rise of young Jewish intellectuals in Amer­ic­ a, see Wenger, New York Jews and the ­Great Depression. 131. Breitman and Kraut, American Refugee Policy and Eu­ro­pean Jewry, 87–88. 132. Brody, “American Jewry, the Refugees, and Immigration Restriction,” 21–26. 133. “Not the Work of a Day,” 6, 176–77, box 2, Anti-­Defamation League of B’nai B’rith Collection, YIVO. 134. For a broader discussion of the creation of a po­liti­cal climate more conducive to civil rights reform ­later in the ­century, see Fleegler, Ellis Island Nation, and Wall, Inventing the “American Way.” 135. Karpf, “Jewish Community Organ­ization in the United States,” 66–68.

Chapter Four 1. For a discussion of the impact of the Cold War on American immigration policy, see Battisti, “The American Committee for Italian Migration, Anti-­Communism, and Immigration Reform,” 11–40; Tempo, Americans at the Gate; Wu, ed., “Ethnic History and the Cold War.” 2. Ngai, Impossible Subjects, 245. 3. In the fall of 1947, William Bernard, member of the Citizens Committee on Displaced Persons, began to refer to displaced persons as “delayed pilgrims” to evoke a more positive image of the refugees and attract more support for special legislation on their behalf. Dinnerstein, Amer­ic­ a and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 152. 4. “The Refugee Invasion of Amer­i­ca through Immigration,” March 27, 1945, box 132, folder “Displaced Persons Hate Lit­er­a­ture,” American Jewish Committee Collection, YIVO. 5. For more on the internment of Italian Americans, see DiStasi, Una Storia Segreta; Fox, The Unknown Internment; and Pozzetta, “Alien Enemies or Loyal Americans?,” 80–92. 6. Scherini, “When Italian Americans ­were ‘­Enemy Aliens,’ ” 10. 7. Pozzetta, “Alien Enemies or Loyal Americans?,” 86–87. See also essays in DiStasi, ed., Una Storia Segreta; and Fox, The Unknown Internment. 8. “Our G ­ rand Venerable exposes plot to discriminate,” 206–7. 9. “Prob­lems of Jewish Emigration and Immigration,” August 2, 1940, box 128, folder “Immigration, 1940–1945,” American Jewish Committee Collection, YIVO. 10. “Memorandum on Immigration,” no date, box 128, folder “Immigration, 1940–1945,” American Jewish Committee Collection, YIVO. 11. “Prob­lems of Jewish Emigration and Immigration,” August 2, 1940, box 128, folder “Immigration, 1940–1945,” American Jewish Committee Collection, YIVO. 12. While the American Jewish Committee supported immigration into Palestine, it believed that the U.S. played a critical role in the relocation of Eu­ro­pean Jews ­after the war. Joseph Proskauer to Member of the American Jewish Committee, October 7, 1946, box 15, folder “Immigration Correspondence, 1959–1949,” Emanuel Celler Papers, LOC. See also “Memorandum on Immigration,” no date, box 128, folder “Immigration, 1940–1945,” American Jewish Committee Collection, YIVO. 13. Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door, 84–85.

204  Notes to Chapter Four 14. Tempo, Americans at the Gate, 19–20. 15. Hong, “The Repeal of Asian Exclusion.” 16. Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door, 98. 17. As cited in Dinnerstein, Amer­i­ca and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 114. 18. Hamilton Fish to Adolph Sabath, April 1, 1945, box 5, folder 9, Adolph Sabath Papers, AJA. 19. “Analy­sis of Implementation of President Truman’s Immigration Directive of December 22, 1945,” October 25, 1945, box 128, folder “Immigration, 1940–1945,” American Jewish Committee Collection, YIVO. 20. “Memorandum on Immigration,” no date, box 128, folder “Immigration, 1940–1945,” American Jewish Committee Collection, YIVO. 21. “Memorandum to the Anglo-­American Committee of Inquiry from the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society,” 1946?, folder IV-41a, HIAS Collection, YIVO. 22. Schäfer, “Religious Non-­Profit Organisations, the Cold War, the State and Resurgent Evangelicalism,” 181. 23. Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door, 103–4. See also Graubard, “Not the Work of a Day,” Anti-­Defamation League of B’nai B’rith Collection, MS 365, box 1, AJA. 24. “Memorandum on Immigration,” no date, box 128, folder “Immigration, 1940–1945,” American Jewish Committee Collection, YIVO. 25. “Memorandum on Immigration.” 26. “Suggestions on AJC Policy with Regard to Immigration,” December 5, 1945, box 128, folder “Immigration, 1940–1945,” American Jewish Committee Collection, YIVO. 27. “Suggestions on AJC Policy with Regard to Immigration.” 28. Dinnerstein, Amer­i­ca and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 124. 29. Ten months ­after Truman’s directive, only 2,400 Jews had benefitted from the order. As mentioned in chapter 3, uncooperative bureaucrats and the small quotas for the eastern Eu­ro­pean countries from which most of the Jewish and non-­Jewish DPs arrived l­ imited the number of admissible refugees. It is difficult to quantify how many of the DPs w ­ ere Jewish. The United States Army calculated that t­ here ­were approximately 207,000 Jewish DPs in the camps in Austria, Germany, and Italy at the end of 1945. The United Nations estimated that in the Western-­controlled territory ­there ­were 1,171,000 DPs at the end of 1946 and 963,000 in November 1947. Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door, 102; Dinnerstein, Amer­i­ca and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 117–19. See also “President Truman’s Directive”; and “Refugee Aid.” 30. As cited in Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door, 104. 31. JDC Review, September 12, 1947, folder X A-8, HIAS Collection, YIVO. 32. “The Call of the Hour,” 687; “The Stratton Bill,” 220. 33. Earl G. Harrison to Emanuel Celler, May 28, 1947, box 15, folder “Immigration Correspondence, 1945–1949,” Emanuel Celler Papers, LOC. 34. Haim Genizi, “Interfaith Cooperation in Amer­i­ca on Behalf of the DP Acts, 1948–1950,” 76. Among t­ hose who agreed to attend the first CCDP meeting w ­ ere former Supreme Court Justice Owen Roberts; Charles P. Taft, president of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in Amer­i­ca; Archbishop James Francis McIntyre; and a few prominent Jewish community leaders. “The Stratton Bill,” 220. 35. As a CCDP Washington attorney reported e­ arlier in the campaign, “the general sentiment in Congress at the pre­sent . . . [is] still too hostile, particularly ­because of the feeling

Notes to Chapter Four 205 that too many Jews would come into the country if immigration regulations w ­ ere relaxed”; as quoted in Dinnerstein, Amer­i­ca and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 137. 36. Dinnerstein, Amer­i­ca and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 125–26. Significantly, two prominent members of the AJC w ­ ere at the heart of the entire committee’s activities: Irving Engel was in charge of the operation and Lessing Rosenwald and his f­amily financed it throughout most of its existence. 37. “Memorandum on Immigration,” no date, box 128, folder “Immigration, 1940–1945,” American Jewish Committee Collection, YIVO. 38. “Legislative Activities,” 219–20. 39. Dinnerstein, Amer­i­ca and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 131–32. 40. “The Stratton Bill.” 41. Emanuel Celler to Robert Patterson, May 29, 1947; Celler to William Green, May 29, 1947; Celler to Philip Murray, May 29, 1947; Celler to George Marshall, May 29 1947; Celler to Tom Clark, May 29, 1927; Francis Stapleton to Celler, May 29, 1947; box 15, folder “Immigration Correspondence, 1945–1949,” Emanuel Celler Papers, LOC. 42. Bon Tempo, Americans at the Gate, 18. See Hong, “Re­orienting Amer­i­ca.” On “new” immigrant groups’ fight for inclusion, see Azuma, Between Two Empires; Battisti, “American Committee for Italian Migration”; Hsu, Good Immigrants; Lee, At Amer­i­ca’s Gates; and Salyer, Laws Harsh as Tigers. On the broader push for civil rights, see Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights; Fleegler, Ellis Island Nation; Schultz, Tri-­Faith Amer­i­ca; and Wall, Inventing the “American Way.” 43. Dinnerstein, Amer­i­ca and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 143–46. 44. At the government level, the endorsements included the governors of Illinois, Maine, New York, Arizona, and Wyoming, and the mayors of major cities like Atlantic City, Baltimore, Minneapolis, and New Orleans. Ninety-­four national organ­izations supported the bill, including, among ­others, the General Federation of W ­ omen’s Clubs, American Library Association, AFL, CIO, Catholic War Veterans, Home Missions Council of North Amer­i­ca, Methodist Federation for Social Action, YMCA, American Association of University ­Women, American Association of Social Workers, American Lithuanian Council, National Peace Conference, OSIA, Marine Corps League, National Council of Negro ­Women, Girl Scouts, Seventh-­Day Baptists, Syrian Antiochian Orthodox Church, and the Western Slavonic Association. Among the newspapers that called for refugee legislation w ­ ere the Washington Star, Minneapolis Tribune, Washington Post, Baltimore Sun, Chicago Sun, Denver Post, and New York Times. Periodicals like Life, Reader’s Digest, The Saturday Eve­ning Post, Survey Graphic, and Yale Review echoed the call. Dinnerstein, Amer­i­ca and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 145–49. 45. Genizi, “Interfaith Cooperation in Amer­i­ca on Behalf of the DP Acts,” 78. 46. “Legislative Activity,” 232–36. 47. Dinnerstein, Amer­i­ca and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 173–75. 48. “Legislative Activity,” 235. 49. Genizi, “Interfaith Cooperation in Amer­i­ca on Behalf of the DP Acts,” 79–80; Dinnerstein, Amer­ic­ a and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 179. 50. “Washington respinge le accuse di Togliatti, darà altri aiuti all’Italia,” PIA, September 16, 1947; “La frode comunista al popolo italiano,” PIA, September 18, 1947; “L’ondata di furore rosso in Italia,” PIA, November 13, 1947; “Fuori lo straniero,” PIA, February 7, 1949; “Chi vuol distruggere la chiesa sarà distrutto,” PIA, February 14, 1949; “Nessun compromesso con l’anti-­Cristo,” February 22, 1949, Newspaper Collection, IHRCA.

206  Notes to Chapter Four 51. “Togliamo la macchia dall’Amer­i­ca,” PIA, June 25, 1947, Newspaper Collection, IHRCA. 52. Leonard  H. Pasqualicchio, Report to the Supreme Lodge Convention of 1951, ­August 27, 1951, box 3, folder 19, George Spatuzza Papers, IHRCA. 53. George Spatuzza, Report of the Supreme Venerable at the XXIII Supreme Convention, November 1953, box 1, folder 13, George Spatuzza Papers, IHRCA. 54. Dinnerstein, Amer­i­ca and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 182. 55. Nine of the nineteen agencies accredited by the Displaced Persons Commission received funding. Almost two-­thirds of the total went to the National Catholic Welfare Conference. ­Under the conditions of the Cold War, state and religious nonprofit organ­i­ zations became increasingly intertwined and dependent on one another. The provisions of the 1948 Displaced Persons Act represented only one way in which a Cold War administration sought to create ­these ties. Schäfer, “Religious Non-­Profit Organisations,” 175. 56. Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door, 107, and “Activity Report,” November 14, 1947, series 1, folder X A-8, HIAS Collection, YIVO. 57. “Address by Industrial Commissioner Edward Corsi to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society,” October 26, 1952, RG 245.8, series 10, folder 289, HIAS Collection, YIVO. 58. “HIAS reports 5,000 Jews w ­ ill Remain in Germany’s British Zone for Several Years,” HIAS News Release, August 5, 1949; “Special to JTA,” HIAS News Release, no date; “HIAS Delegates to Geneva Conference to Condemn Practice of Governments in Breaking Up Families by Admitting only Employables,” HIAS News Release, no date, series 10, folder 286, HIAS Collection, YIVO. 59. “Governor Dewey, Congressman Celler Call for Liberal DP Legislation at 65th HIAS Annual Meeting,” HIAS News Release, no date, series 10, folder 287, HIAS Collection, YIVO. 60. No title, HIAS News Release, April 4, 1949, series 10, folder 286, HIAS Collection, YIVO; “Immigration and Naturalization,” 129–30. 61. “L’immigrazione è problema di tutti,” PIA, May  10, 1949, Newspaper Collection, IHRCA. 62. For a sample of the cases, see “La Cassetta Postale dell’Immigrato,” PIA, May, 22, 1949; June 5, 1949; June 12, 1949; June 19, 1949; June 26, 1949; July 3, 1949; July 17, 1949; and “Altri emigranti italiani truffati da un lestofante senza coscienza si fa il nome di un avvocato di Buenos Aires,” PIA, June 27, 1949, Newspaper Collection, IHRCA. 63. For the impact of the system of power­ful congressional committees and se­niority established e­ arlier in the twentieth c­ entury, see Tichenor, Dividing Lines, chap. 5. 64. Steinberg, “McCarran,” Harper’s Weekly, November 1950; 1950 Congressional Quarterly Almanac, vol. 6, 227. On McCarran’s anti-­Semitism, see Edwards, Pat McCarran, 195; Dinnerstein, Amer­ic­ a and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 248; Zolberg, Nation by Design, 311. 65. “Public Opinion,” 130–31. 66. Dinnerstein, Amer­i­ca and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 222–23. 67. “Public Opinion,” 131. 68. Dinnerstein, Amer­i­ca and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 224. 69. Genizi, “Interfaith Cooperation in Amer­i­ca on Behalf of the DP Acts,” 83–87. 70. “The Senate,” 133. 71. Schwartz, The Open Society, 107. See also Divine, American Immigration Policy, 159 and 165–66. 72. As quoted in Dinnerstein, Amer­i­ca and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 231.

Notes to Chapter Four 207 73. “Amended DP Act of 1950,” 143–44. 74. Dinnerstein, Amer­i­ca and the Survivors of the Holocaust, 250. 75. No title, HIAS News Release, no date, series 10, folder 287, HIAS Collection, YIVO; “Prob­lem of 75,000 Refugee Jews Discussed at HIAS Council,” HIAS News Release, no date, series 10, folder 288, HIAS Collection, YIVO. 76. Leonard  H. Pasqualicchio, Report to the Supreme Lodge Convention of 1951, ­August 27, 1951, box 3, folder 19, George Spatuzza Papers, IHRCA. 77. “Internal Security Act of 1950,” AJYB 53 (1952): 128–29. 78. As quoted in Hsu, Good Immigrants, 126. 79. No title, HIAS News Release, May 31, 1950, series 10, folder 287, HIAS Collection, YIVO. 80. Patrick McCarran to President of the Senate, no date, box 8, file “Displaced Persons, Immigration, 1949–1954,” Eva Adams Collection, UNR. 81. U.S. Congress, House, “Joint Hearings before the Subcommittees of the Committees on the Judiciary Congress of the United States,” 81st Congress, 1st session (1951). 82. For more on this dynamic, see Molina, How Race Is Made in Amer­i­ca. 83. Zolberg, Nation by Design, 312. 84. “General Immigration Legislation,” AJYB 53 (1952): 127–28. 85. Emanuel Celler to Herbert Lehman, February 23, 1951, box 115, file 1, Julius C. C. Edelstein Papers, Columbia University. 86. The patriotic organ­izations that supported McCarran’s bill included the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign War, Patriotic ­Women of Amer­ic­ a, National Society for Constitutional Security, Military Order of the Loyal Legion, American Legion Auxiliary, Regular Veterans Association, ­Daughters of the American Revolution, National Society of New ­England W ­ omen, Patriotic Sons of Amer­i­ca, Ser­vice Star Legion, Sons of the American Revolution, Society of the War of 1812, and Ladies of the ­Grand Array of the Republic. For a sample of the letters of endorsement McCarran received from ­these organ­izations, see, box 12, file “Immigration, Correspondence,” Patrick McCarran Collection, NHS. 87. McCarran to American Legion, January 20, 1950, box 9, file “Immigration Subcommittee, 1949–1950,” Eva Adams Collection, UNR. 88. For a brief history of this replaces, see chapter 1 in Erasmo Gamboa, Bracero Railroaders. 89. On the role of or­ga­nized ­labor during the debate over immigration in the 1950s, see Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door, 114–15; Divine, American Immigration Policy, 159; Ngai, Impossible Subjects, 243; Tichenor, Dividing Lines, 191; and Zolberg, Nation by Design, 312–13. 90. “Other Groups,” 86. 91. “Congressional History,” 83. 92. American Jewish Committee, Comments on the Debate in the Senate, no date, box 117, file 2, Julius C. C. Edelstein Papers, Columbia University. 93. Leonard H. Pasqualicchio, Report to the Supreme Lodge Convention of 1951, August 27, 1951, box 3, folder 19, George Spatuzza Papers, IHRCA. See also “Testimony on Quota Provisions,” 133. 94. “Testimony on Quota Provisions,” 133–34. 95. U.S. Congress, House, “Joint Hearings before the Subcommittees of the Committees on the Judiciary Congress of the United States,” 81st Congress, 1st session (1951), 378–411. 96. Jack Wasserman to William Bernard, April 28, 1951, box 115, file 2, Julius C. C. Edelstein Papers, Columbia University.

208  Notes to Chapter Four 97. U.S. Congress, House, “Joint Hearings before the Subcommittees of the Committees on the Judiciary Congress of the United States,” 81st Congress, 1st session (1951), 29–595. 98. As Hsu, Lee, and Salyer have demonstrated, critics of restriction had historically strug­ gled with how to engage with legislators’ doublespeak on race. 99. “Immigration and Freedom,” Congressional Rec­ord reprint, April 8, 1952, box 191, file 1, Hebert Lehman Papers, Columbia University. 100. Hebert Lehman to William Benton, July 12, 1951, box 115, file 1, Julius C. C. Edelstein Papers, Columbia University. 101. Cohen used an immigration bill that liberal Senator Paul Douglas (D-­IL) had introduced on the Senate floor in 1950 as his model and consulted closely with the Association of Immigration and Nationality ­Lawyers, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, International Rescue Committee, Jewish ­Labor Committee, National Catholic Rural Life Conference, National Catholic Welfare Conference, National Council on Naturalization and Citizenship, National Council of Jewish ­Women, American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Congress, Anti-­Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, Friends Ser­v ice Committee, National Lutheran Council, Church World Ser­v ice, Joint Conference on Alien Legislation, and Common Council of American Unity. Julius Edelstein to William Benton, July 3, 1951, box 140, file 89, Herbert Lehman Papers, Columbia University. 102. “Liberalized Immigration Bill Introduced,” Congressional Rec­ord (reprint), October 20, 1951, box 191, file 1, Herbert Lehman Papers, Columbia University. 103. Memorandum on Immigration, April 2, 1951; Julius Edelstein to Felix Cohen, April 24, 1951; Herbert Lehman to Chester Bowles, May 29, 1951; and Memorandum, Marcus Cohn to Julius Edelstein, June 11, 1951, box 115, file 1, Julius C. C. Edelstein Papers, Columbia University. As historians Wall and Fleegler demonstrate in their work, bringing dif­fer­ent constituencies together and educating Americans about the need for reform had a long history in the push for civil and immigrant rights. 104. Memorandum on Immigration, April 2, 1951, box 115, file 1, Julius C. C. Edelstein Papers, Columbia University. 105. Felix Cohen to Read Lewis, April 20, 1951, box 115, file 1, Julius C. C. Edelstein Papers, Columbia University. See also summary of meeting to establish a National Citizens Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, November 5, 1953, box 191, file 2, Herbert Lehman Papers, Columbia University. 106. Jack Wasserman to William Bernard, April 28, 1951 and William Bernard to Jack Wasserman, May 1, 1951, box 115, file 2, Julius C. C. Edelstein Papers, Columbia University. 107. Memorandum, Marcus Cohn to Julius Edelstein, June 11, 1951 and Read Lewis to Julius Edelstein, May 17, 1951, box 115, file 1, Julius C. C. Edelstein Papers, Columbia University. 108. John Slawson to Herbert Lehman, January 8, 1952 and Julius Edelstein to Jules Cohen, January 15, 1952, box 115, file 1, Julius C. C. Edelstein Papers, Columbia University. 109. On the consultations with immigration reform advocates in the summer, see Julius Edelstein to Jules Cohen, July 3, 1951; Thomas Mulholland to Herbert Lehman, July 9, 1951; Edelstein to Benton, July 3, 1951; Memo, Julius Edelstein to Frank McCulloch, August 29, 1951; and Julius Edelstein to William Bernard, August 29, 1951, box 115, file 1, Julius C. C. Edelstein Papers, Columbia University.

Notes to Chapter Four 209 110. Julius Edelstein to Jules Cohen, November 9, 1951; Julius Edelstein to Peter Bell, November 14, 1951; and Julius Edelstein to Henry Carpenter, November 29, 1951, box 115, file 2, Julius C. C. Edelstein Papers, Columbia University. 111. Julius Edelstein to Henry Carpenter, November 29, 1951, box 115, file 2, Julius C. C. Edelstein Papers, Columbia University. 112. Lester Gutterman to NCRAC Membership, December  13, 1951, box 116, file 3, ­Julius C. C. Edelstein Papers, Columbia University. 113. Gibbons, “Migration from Eu­rope,” ACIM Dispatch, April 1952; “ACIM Mourns Death of Founder,” ACIM Dispatch, June 1958. 114. Marchisio to Fred Scafidi, January  15, 1953, ACIM Collection, box A1, file “Fred Scafidi,” CMS. 115. “Guest Editorial,” ACIM Dispatch, April 1952. 116. “Memorandum re American Committee on Italian Migration,” no date, ACIM Collection, series A, box A14, file AFL, CMS. 117. Remarks of Julius Edelstein before National Federation of Settlements, March 1, 1954, box 191, file 2, Herbert Lehman Papers, Columbia University. 118. Memorandum, Julius Edelstein to Herbert H. Lehman, December 21, 1951, and Herbert H. Lehman to Ernest McFarland, December 20, 1951, box 115, file 1, Julius C. C. Edelstein Papers, Columbia University. 119. Sandy Bolz to W ­ ill Maslow, January 14, 1952, box 115, file 1, and Herman Edelsberg, “Confidentially Yours,” June 1952, box 116, file 3, Julius C. C. Edelstein Papers, Columbia University. 120. Julius Edelstein to Michel Cieplinski, February 11, 1952, box 144, file 237, Herbert Lehman Papers, Columbia University. 121. John Slawson to Lehman, January 17, 1952, box 115, file 2, Julius C. C. Edelstein Papers, Columbia University. 122. Leonard H. Pasqualicchio to House Representatives, February 29, 1952, box 314, file H.R. 5678, RG 233, CLA. 123. George Spatuzza, Report of the Supreme Venerable at the Supreme Convention, October 1949, box 1, folder 13, George Spatuzza Papers, IHRCA. 124. Memorandum about Meeting of the Civil Liberties Clearing House, March 5, 1952, box 40, file 12, Rec­ords of the Office of the General Secretary, Catholic University of Amer­ i­ca Archives. In addition to JACL, the meeting included representatives of the NCWC, National Council of Catholic Charities, OSIA, American Jewish Committee, Anti-­Defamation League, Polish Legion of American Veterans, Czechoslovak National Council, Jewish ­Labor Committee, National Association for the Advancement of Colored ­People, Chinese American Citizens National Association, Lithuanian American Congress, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, National Council of Churches of Christ, National Lutheran Council, Polish Immigration Committee, International Ladies Garment Workers Union, Amalgamated Clothing Workers, American Fund for Czechoslovak Refugees Inc., Lutheran Resettlement Ser­vice, American National Committee to Aid Homeless Armenians, the American Hellenic Veterans Association, and the CIO. 125. Edward Swanstrom to Howard Carroll, September 28, 1951, box 40, file 13, Rec­ords of the Office of the General Secretary, CUA.

210  Notes to Chapter Four 126. Minutes of 1952 Meetings on Immigration, no date, box 40, file 18, and “Comments on Statements and Activities of Monsignor O’Grady on the Immigration Question,” September 9, 1952, box 40, file 17, Rec­ords of the Office of the General Secretary, CUA. 127. Read Lewis to Members of the Joint Conference on Alien Legislation, March 7, 1952, box 32, file 5, Bruce Mohler Papers, CUA. 128. Joint Conference on Alien Legislation, Proposed Joint Statement on Immigration, box 32, file 5, Bruce Mohler Papers, CUA. 129. “Letter to Congressmen from 13 Organ­izations,” March 10, 1952, in Committee to Improve  U.S. Immigration Law, “U.S. Immigration Policy Statements of Position by Major Religious, ­Labor, Civic and Nationality Organ­izations,” 1952, box 4, file D361 24, William B. Welsh Papers, Columbia University. 130. The Order Sons of Italy in Amer­i­ca et al., March 12, 1952, box 40, file 12, Rec­ords of the Office of the General Secretary, Catholic University of Amer­ic­ a Archives. The signatories included OSIA, Jewish War Veterans, American Veterans Committee, Association of Immigration and Nationality ­Lawyers, Americans for Demo­cratic Action, American Jewish Committee, Anti-­Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, Czechoslovak National Council, National Community Relations Advisory Council, American Jewish Congress, Polish Legion of American Veterans U.S.A., Jewish ­Labor Committee, and National Council of Jewish ­Women. 131. Bruce Mohler to Thomas O’Dwyer, March 13, 1952; Bruce Mohler to Thomas Mulholland, March 12, 1952, box 32, file 5, Bruce Mohler Papers, CUA. 132. Harry S. Truman, “Special Message to the Congress on Aid for Refugees and Displaced Persons,” March 24, 1952, Public Paper of the Presidents, Truman Library, http:​/­​/­www​ .­trumanlibrary​.­org​/­publicpapers​/­index​.­php​?­pid​=­947&st​=& ­ st1​=­. 133. Interoffice Communication, March 14, 1952, box 32, file 5, Bruce Mohler Papers, CUA. 134. U.S. Congress, House, “Joint Statement by Specified Agencies Concerning United States Immigration Legislation,” April 8, 1952, box 314, file H.R. 5678, RG 233; “A Joint Statement on Immigration, Refugees, and Displaced Persons,” April 18, 1952; and Lewis Hoskins to Emanuel Celler, March  17, 1952, box 16, file “Immigration Correspondence, 1950–1954,” Emanuel Celler Papers, LOC. 135. Interoffice Communication, Bruce Mohler to Thomas Mulholland, March 14, 1952, box 32, file 5, Bruce Mohler Papers, CUA. 136. Walter Besterman to Blair Taylor, March 20, 1952, box 726, file T, RG 233 and Office of Senator Pat McCarran, McCarran-­Walter Omnibus Immigration and Nationality Act Bill (S2550) vs. Humphrey-­Lehman Substitute, no date, box 13, file “Immigration, Correspondence,” Patrick McCarran Collection, NHS. 137. Statement in Regard to the McCarran-­Walter Omnibus Immigration and Naturalization Bill, March 19, 1952, box 314, file H.R. 5678, RG 233, CLA. 138. “Your Letter Is Impor­tant to Save Amer­i­ca,” May 1, 1952, box 314, file H.R. 5678, RG 233, CLA. 139. Articles carried titles like “Jews Sabotage McCarran Act,” “Jews Use “Tolerance” Propaganda to Corrupt American Patriotism,” “The Plot Against the McCarran-­Walter Act,” “Jews Use ‘Anti-­Semitic’ Scare to Open U.S. Immigration Flood Gates,” and “Opposition to McCarran-­Walter Act Manufactured Hullabaloo!,” box 5, files D361 26 and D361 27, William B. Welsh Papers, Columbia University. See also “Immigration and Naturalization,” 77.

Notes to Chapter Four 211 140. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights, 11–12. See also Hall, “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Po­liti­cal Uses of the Past,” 1233–63. 141. “Masaoka Hails Walter’s Role in House Passage of Mea­sure,” Pacific Citizen, May 3, 1952. 142. The broad range of his lobbying activities can be seen in the numerous articles published in the Pacific Citizen in March, April, May, and June of 1952. 143. “Proposed Revision of Our Immigration Laws,” April 25, 1952, box 5, file 6, 1952, Adolph Sabath Papers, AJA. 144. Lieberman, Are Americans Extinct?, 109. 145. Paul Tanner to Joseph Ritter, June 23, 1952, box 32, file 2, Bruce Mohler Papers, CUA. See also “Comments on Statements and Activities of Monsignor O’Grady on the Immigration Question,” September 9, 1952, Rec­ords of the Office of the General Secretary, box 40, file 17, CUA. 146. Bruce Mohler to Paul Tanner, May 19, 1952, Rec­ords of the Office of the General Secretary, box 40, file 13, CUA. 147. Walter Besterman to Read Lewis, August 5, 1952, box 314, file H.R. 5678, RG 233, and Edelstein to Caroline Flexner, July 31, 1952, box 115, file 2, Julius C. C. Edelstein Papers, Columbia University. 148. Patrick McCarran to all Senators, May 21, 1952, box 11, file “Immigration, Correspondence,” Patrick McCarran Collection, NHS. 149. The New Leader, June 9, 1952, box 116, file 6; William Benton to Ben H. Brown, July 15, 1952, box 115, file 1; and Herman Edelsberg, “Confidentially Yours,” June 1952, box 116, file 3, Julius C. C. Edelstein Papers, Columbia University. 150. American Jewish Committee, Comments on the Debate in the Senate, no date, box 117, file 2, Julius C. C. Edelstein Papers, Columbia University. 151. Friends Committee on National Legislation, Washington Newsletter, May 27, 1952, box 116, file 4, Julius C. C. Edelstein Papers, Columbia University. 152. American Jewish Committee, Comments on the Debate in the Senate, no date, box 117, file 2, Julius C. C. Edelstein Papers, Columbia University. 153. Felix Cohen to Harry S. Truman, June 4, 1952, box 117, file 3, Julius C. C. Edelstein Papers, Columbia University; and Randolph Sakada to Harry S. Truman, June 12, 1952, RG 233, box 314, file HR678A-­H6.1, CLA. 154. Bruce Mohler, “Early Passage of Immigration Bill Foreseen,” NCWC News Ser­vice, May 31, 1952, Rec­ords of the Office of the General Secretary, box 40, file 13, CUA. See also “Bruce Mohler Says McCarran Bill is Forward Move,” Catholic Standard, June 6, 1952, box 32, file 6, Bruce Mohler Papers, CUA. 155. Press Release, Statement of Msgr. O’Grady, June 6, 1952, Rec­ords of the Office of the General Secretary, box 40, file 14, CUA. 156. John O’Grady, “The McCarran Immigration Bill,” The Commonweal, June 20, 1952, box 40, file 13, Rec­ords of the Office of the General Secretary. See also Press Release, Statement of Msgr. O’Grady, June 6, 1952, box 40, file 14, Rec­ords of the Office of the General Secretary; and “Msgr. O’Grady’s View,” Catholic Standard, June 13, 1952, box 32, file 6, Bruce Mohler Papers, CUA. 157. “Comments on Statements and Activities of Monsignor O’Grady on the Immigration Question,” September 9, 1952, Rec­ords of the Office of the General Secretary, box 40, file 17, CUA.

212  Notes to Chapter Five 158. Minutes of 1952 Meetings on Immigration, no date, Rec­ords of the Office of the General Secretary, box 40, file 18, CUA, and Herman Edelsberg, “Confidentially Yours,” June 1952, box 116, file 3, Julius C. C. Edelstein Papers, Columbia University. 159. Herman Edelsberg, “Confidentially Yours,” June 1952, box 116, file 3, Julius C. C. Edelstein Papers, Columbia University. 160. Murrey Marder, “McCarran Act Paradox,” Washington Post, October 31, 1952, box 32, file 8, Bruce Mohler Papers, CUA. 161. Zolberg, Nation by Design, 315–16. 162. Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door, 123. 163. Kraut, “Fearing Foreigners and Freedom”; and Hester, “Deportability and the Carceral State.” 164. “Congressional History,” 83. 165. “Congressional History,” 83–84. 166. Leonard H. Pasqualicchio, Statement presented to the United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization, November 28, 1955, box 3, folder 20, George Spatuzza Papers, IHRCA.

Chapter Five 1. George Spatuzza, Report of the Supreme Venerable at the XXIV Supreme Convention, October 1955, box 1, file 14, George Spatuzza Papers, IHRCA. 2. Emanuel Celler to Harry S. Truman, September 18, 1952, box 42, file “Immigration Visas Correspondence, August–­December 1952,” Emanuel Celler Papers, LOC. A ­ fter much pressure, the U.S. State Department de­cided not to provide any list of ethnic and racial categorizations, which included “Hebrew” per a recommendation of the Dillingham Commission in 1911. 3. “Address by Industrial Commissioner Edward Corsi to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society,” October 26, 1952, HIAS Collection, RG 245.8, series 10, file 289, YIVO. 4. Handlin, “The Immigration Fight Has Only Begun,” Commentary, July 1952. 5. Remarks by Senator Lehman at Lower Manhattan Rally, November 1, 1952, box 191, file 1, Herbert Lehman Papers, Columbia University. 6. “Other Groups,” 86–87. 7. “Position of Jewish Organizations86”; “Recommendations on Immigration Written into Demo­cratic Platform,” ACIM Dispatch, August 1952. 8. Through the first half of 1953, AICM Dispatch published critiques of the McCarran-­ Walter Act by, among ­others, President Eisenhower; the National Lutheran Council; the National Council of Catholic W ­ omen; the National Board of the YMCA; the Minnesota Council of Churches; the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.; B’nai B’rith; HIAS; Secretary of L ­ abor Maurice J. Tobin; Department of Agriculture statistician Louis H. Bean; Council of the American Acad­emy of Arts and Sciences; the New York County ­Lawyers Association; Clare Boothe Luce, U.S. Ambassador to Italy; and Senator Hubert Humphrey from Minnesota. See “The McCarran Law,” ACIM Dispatch, January–­ May 1953. 9. “Public Opinion,” 65.

Notes to Chapter Five 213 10. See Moore, “The Plot Against the McCarran-­Walter Act,” Cross and the Flag, January 1953; and Hart, “Opposition to McCarran Walter Act Manufactured Hullabaloo,” Cross and the Flag, April 1953, box 5, file 361 26, William Welsh Papers, Columbia University. Moore had published an article by the same time in the National Republic, December 1952, box 478, file H.R. 4394 (2), Emanuel Celler Papers, LOC. 11. “Appeals to Xenophobia,” 73–74. 12. “Needed: A New Approach to Immigration Policy,” Congressional Rec­ord (reprint), July 4, 1952, box 512, file 10, and “Statement by Lehman and Humphrey on the Appointment of a Special Commission,” September 9, 1952, Herbert Lehman Papers, box 512, file 12, Columbia University. 13. As quoted in President’s Commission on Immigration and Naturalization, Whom We ­Shall Welcome, xi, https:​/­​/­archive​.­org​/­details​/­whomweshallwelco00unit. 14. Cohen, Not F ­ ree to Desist, 371. 15. President’s Commission on Immigration and Naturalization, Whom We S­ hall Welcome. It appears that it was Representative Celler who recommended including in the report the testimonies, statements, and data collected by the committee. See Philip Pearlman to Emanuel Celler, January 7, 1953, box 16, file “Immigration Correspondence, 1950–1954” (reel 3), Emanuel Celler Papers, LOC. 16. Statement by Senator Pat McCarran, December 24, 1952, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Collection, Rec­ords of the Office of the General Secretary, box 40, file 16, UNR. 17. Walter as quoted in Arthur Greenleigh, “The McCarran-­Walter Immigration Law: Implications for Minority Groups,” January 18, 1953, box 5, file 361 29, William Welsh Papers, Columbia University. 18. “Jews Sabotage McCarran Act,” American Nationalist, December 10, 1952, and “Jews Use ‘Anti-­Semitic’ Scare to Open U.S. Immigration Flood Gates,” February 25, 1953, box 5, file D361 27, William Welsh Papers, Columbia University. 19. “Before Attacking Immigration Law, Why Not Read it?,” Saturday Eve­ning Post, February 21, 1953. 20. Tempo, Americans at the Gate, 40. 21. The numbers come from “Eisenhower Discusses Migration with ACIM Leaders,” ACIM Dispatch, April 1953. 22. For an example, see “Memorandum re American Committee on Italian Migration,” no date, series A, box A14, file AFL, ACIM Collection, CMS. 23. “Celler, Swanstrom, Marchisio discuss Emergency Immigration Legislation,” ACIM Dispatch, March 1953. Celler regularly received updates from the Italian Embassy about Communism making gains in Italy b­ ecause of the country’s high rates of unemployment and population growth. See correspondence in box 236, file Italian Embassy and box 237, file “Italy, 1955–1958,” Emanuel Celler Papers, LOC. 24. “Memorandum re American Committee on Italian Migration,” no date, series A, box A14, file AFL, ACIM Collection, CMS. 25. “Eisenhower discusses Migration with ACIM leaders,” ACIM Dispatch, April 1953. 26. “Urgent to Our Readers!,” ACIM Dispatch, May 1953. 27. “Washington Flooded by Letters and Wires from ACIM Chapters,” ACIM Dispatch, June 1953.

214  Notes to Chapter Five 28. “Watkins Bill Backed by 32 Nationality Groups,” ACIM Dispatch, June 1953. 29. “Refugee Relief Act of 1953,” 67–68. 30. “Judge Marchisio Testifies at Senate Hearings on Watkins Bill,” ACIM Dispatch, June 1953. 31. “ACIM Protests McCarran Opposition to Italian Nationals,” ACIM Dispatch, July–­ August 1953. 32. “McCarran-­Walter Repeal Drive Spurred by Revelation of Deal,” no publication title, October 1, 1953, box 11, file “Compendium about the Immigration and Nationality Act,” Mc­ Carran Collection, NHS. See also Emanuel Celler to John McCormack, October 31, 1953, box 478, file H.R. 4394 (2), Emanuel Celler Papers, LOC. 33. Lieberman, Are Americans Extinct?, 68–69. 34. For more on the passage of the 1953 Refugee Relief Act, see Bon Tempo, Americans at the Gate, chap. 2, and Zolberg, Nation by Design, chap. 9. 35. “ACIM’s First Goal Achieved—­New Emergency Legislation Permits Entry of 60,000 Italians, Among O ­ thers,” ACIM Dispatch, July–­August 1953. 36. Emanuel Celler to Herbert Lehman, December 22, 1952, Celler Paper, box 16, file “Immigration Correspondence, 1950–1954” (reel 3), LOC. 37. American Jewish Congress to Emanuel Celler, January 2, 1953, box 16, file “Immigration Correspondence, 1950–1954” (reel 3), Emanuel Celler Papers, LOC. 38. The 1920 census on which the existing quotas w ­ ere based excluded Native Americans and African Americans. 39. “A New Immigration Act,” August 3, 1953 in Proceedings and Debates, 83rd Congress, 1st session, Congressional Rec­ord, box 7, file “Eisenhower Administration, printed material,” Emanuel Celler Papers, LOC. 40. Ngai, Impossible Subjects, chap. 7; Zolberg, Nation by Design, chap. 9. Both scholars refer to Leh­man’s proposal in passing, but I argue that a closer examination of his rationale for the cap on the Western Hemi­sphere provides a more nuanced understanding of the proposal. For a discussion about how the cap made it into the final version of the 1965 act, see Marinari, “ ‘Americans Must Show Justice in Immigration Policies Too,’ ” 219–45. 41. Julius Edelstein to Clarence Se­nior, April 20, 1955, box 113, file 12, Julius C. C. Edelstein Papers, Columbia University. 42. Emanuel Celler, “Legislative Program Must Include Immigration Changes,” press release on October 24, 1953, box 7, file “Eisenhower Administration, printed material,” Emanuel Celler Papers, LOC. See also Celler, “State of the Union Message Not Altogether Pleasing Says Representative Emanuel Celler,” press release on January 7, 1954, Emanuel Celler Papers, LOC. 43. For the correspondence on this issue between Lehman and Celler, see Lehman to Celler, March 29, 1954, Celler to Lehman, March 31, 1954, and Lehman to Celler, April 15, 1954, box 478, file H.R. 4394 (2), Emanuel Celler Papers, LOC. In an irony of fate, Javits would be elected to Leh­man’s Senate seat a­ fter he retired and become one of the key politicians involved in the passage of the 1965 Immigration Act. 44. Keep Amer­i­ca Committee, Open Letter to Congress, February 4, 1954, box 478, file H.R. 4394 (2), Emanuel Celler Papers, LOC. See also Keep Amer­ic­ a, “A Sovereign, ­Free, Sovereign Republic,” no date, Emanuel Celler Papers, LOC.

Notes to Chapter Five 215 45. Herbert Lehman to William Langer, May 15 1954, box 478, file H.R. 4394 (2), Emanuel Celler Papers, LOC. 46. Emanuel Celler to Julius Edelstein, June 24, 1954, box 478, file H.R. 4394 (2), Emanuel Celler Papers, LOC. 47. Julius Edelstein to Lewis Hoskins, July 1, 1954, box 478, file H.R. 4394 (2), Emanuel Celler Papers, LOC. See also Julius Edelstein to Winifred Armstrong, August 11, 1954, box 113, file 13, Julius C. C. Edelstein Papers, CUA. 48. Julius Edelstein to Emanuel Celler, July 2, 1954, box 478, file H.R. 4394 (2), Emanuel Celler Papers, LOC. See also Edelstein to Lewis Hoskins, July 1, 1954. 49. Emanuel Celler to American Association of Social Workers, April 19, 1954, box 478, file H.R. 4394 (2), Emanuel Celler Papers, LOC. 50. Julius Edelstein to Walter Van Kirk, Edward Swanstrom, Paul Empie, John O’Grady, John Slawson, Benjamin Epstein, Elsie Elfenbein, and Lewis Hoskins, June 21, 1954, box 478, file H.R. 4394 (2), Emanuel Celler Papers, LOC. 51. Some of the organ­ization that mobilized included OSIA, B’nai B’rith, the American Friends Ser­vice Committee, Association of Catholic Trade Unionists, National Community Relations Advisory Council, United Board for Christian Colleges in China, American Association of Social Workers, American Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born, Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds, and the Nationalities Division of the Demo­cratic National Committee. 52. National Community Relations Advisory Council to Emanuel Celler, July 16, 1954, box 478, file H.R. 4394 (2), Emanuel Celler Papers, LOC. For a sample of the letters Celler received from a broad range of stakeholders, including religious organ­izations and lay advocacy groups, see box 478, file H.R. 4394 (2), Emanuel Celler Papers, LOC. 53. American Jewish Congress to Emanuel Celler, May 20, 1954, box 478, file H.R. 4394 (2), Emanuel Celler Papers, LOC. 54. Al Longo and Sandy Giampapa to James Donnaruma, June 28, 1954, box 1, file 3, James Donnaruma Papers, IHRCA. 55. Palmer Di Giulio, Report of the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Order Sons of Italy in Amer­ic­ a, 1957, box 3, file 19, George Spatuzza Papers, IHRCA. 56. NCRAC “A Statement of Princi­ples Regarding American Immigration and Naturalization Policies,” March 15, 1955, box 5, file D361 34, Welsh Papers, Columbia University. 57. Coordinating Council for Amending the McCarran-­Walter Act to Emanuel Celler, June 24, 1955, box 478, file 4394 (4), Emanuel Celler Papers, LOC. 58. Memorandum, Donanzan to Marchisio, May 20, 1955, series E, box 27, file “American Immigration Conference,” ACIM Collection, CMS. 59. The Communication Workers of Amer­i­ca to Celler, August 15, 1955; John Campbell Bruce to Emanuel Celler, October 22, 1955; and Unico National to Emanuel Celler, December 9, 1955, box 478, file 4394 (4), Emanuel Celler Papers, LOC. 60. Emanuel Celler to Isaac Rosengarten, October 25, 1955, box 478, file 4394 (4), Emanuel Celler Papers, LOC. 61. Palmer DiGiulio, Statement Supplementing Memorandum on Resolution on Immigration, no date, box 479, file H.R. 4394 (1), Emanuel Celler Papers, LOC. See also Palmer Di Giulio, Statement Supplementing Memorandum on Resolution on Immigration to the

216  Notes to Chapter Five Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization, 1955, box 3, file 20, George Spatuzza Papers, IHRCA. 62. As quoted in “Controversy over U.S. Immigration Policy,” Congresional Digest, January 1956, box 113, file 10, Julius C. C. Edelstein Papers, Columbia University. 63. Leonard H. Pasqualicchio, Report of the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Order Sons of Italy in Amer­i­ca, October 1, 1955, box 3, file 19, George Spatuzza Papers, IHRCA. 64. “Celler Proposes a Flexible Alien Law,” Washington Post, January 22, 1957, box 479, file H.R. 4394 (1), Emanuel Celler Papers, LOC. 65. For a sample of the letters against reform Lehman received, see box 601, files 8, 9, and 10, and box 602, file 1, Herbert Lehman Papers, Columbia University. For a sample of the letters encouraging him to reform, see box 602, files 2, 3, and 4. 66. Edelstein to Lehman, September 10, 1956, box 114, file 1, Julius C. C. Edelstein Papers, Columbia University. 67. Leonard H. Pasqualicchio, Report of the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Order Sons of Italy in Amer­i­ca, October 1, 1955, box 3, file 19, George Spatuzza Papers, IHRCA. 68. Julius Edelstein to Emanuel Celler, December 23, 1952, box 144, file 219, Herbert Lehman Papers, Columbia University, and Sol Rabkin to Edelstein, April 16, 1954; Edelstein to Simon Sobeloff, November 10, 1954; Julius Edelstein to Sol Rabkin, April 27, 1954; and Julius Edelstein to Winifred Armstrong, June 16, 1954, box 113, file 13, Julius C. C. Edelstein Papers, Columbia University. Rabkin worried especially about the presence of the American Jewish Congress, the only Jewish organ­ization McCarran and Walter had singled out by name during their attacks to defend their bill. 69. Edelstein to Lehman, September 10, 1956, box 114, file 1, Julius C. C. Edelstein Papers, Columbia University. 70. Edelstein to Jules Cohen and Arthur Greenleigh, April  6, 1954, box 113, file 13, ­Julius C. C. Edelstein Papers, Columbia University. See also Winifred Armstrong to Edelstein, March 12, 1954, box 114, file 1, Julius C. C. Edelstein Papers, Columbia University. Edelstein successfully recruited several Protestant organ­izations and representatives from Chinese, Greek, and Polish organ­izations. See minutes of Meeting Structure Committee, April 28, 1954, box 113, file 13, Julius C. C. Edelstein Papers, Columbia University. 71. Swanstrom to Diocesan Resettlement Directors, Members of the National Catholic Resettlement Council and Members of American Committee on Special Migration, December 18, 1952, Series Office of the General Secretary, box 40, file 16, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Collection, CUA. 72. “Recommendations for approval of the administrative board ­adopted at a meeting at NCWC headquarters,” October 31, 1952, Series Office of the General Secretary, box 40, file 15, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Collection, CUA. 73. George Spatuzza, Report of the Supreme Venerable at the XXIII Supreme Convention, November  1953, box 1, file 13, George Spatuzza Papers, IHRCA. Julius Edelstein to Winifred Armstrong, June 16, 1954, box 113, file 13, Julius C. C. Edelstein Papers, Columbia University. 74. Winifred Armstrong to Julius Edelstein, April 5, 1954, box 113, file 13, Julius C. C. Edelstein Papers, Columbia University.

Notes to Chapter Five 217 75. “American Immigration Conference,” 179–80; “American Immigration Conference”; “American Immigration Conference.” See also Joseph Errigo to George Spatuzza, December 23, 1955, box 3, file 21, George Spatuzza Papers, IHRCA. 76. Memorandum, Donanzan to Marchisio, May 20, 1955, series E, box 27, file “American Immigration Conference,” ACIM Collection, CMS. 77. Palmer Di Giulio to George Spatuzza, November 16, 1955, box 3, file 21, George Spatuzza Papers, IHRCA. 78. Alexander, “In Defense of the McCarran-­Walter Act,” 386. 79. Lieberman, Are Americans Extinct?, 107. 80. “Editorial: Cut the Red Tape,” ACIM Dispatch, May 1954. See also “Machinery of Refugee Act Stalled by Red-­Tape,” ACIM Dispatch, February 1954; “Machinery of Refugee Program Still Stalled,” ACIM Dispatch, March  1954; “Editorial,” ACIM Dispatch, May 1954. 81. “Machinery of Refugee Act Stalled by Red-­Tape,” ACIM Dispatch, February 1954. 82. Horatio Tocco, “Requirements for Sponsorship of New Italian Immigrants,” ACIM Dispatch, December 1953–­January 1954; “ACIM Launches Nationwide Campaign to Obtain Job and Housing Assurances,” ACIM Dispatch, April 1954. 83. “New UNICO President Pledges Support to ACIM,” ACIM Dispatch, November 1953; “ACIM and ARCIR Join Forces on Refugee Act Program,” ACIM Dispatch, June 1954; and “ACIM Recognized and Registered by State Department,” ACIM Dispatch, September 1955. 84. Touster, “The ‘New Look’ for Jewish Immigration Ser­vices in the New Year,” no date, RG 245.8, series 4, file 12a, HIAS Collection, YIVO. 85. “Report of Sessions of United HIAS Ser­vice,” March 1955, RG 245.8, series 4, file 15, HIAS Collection, YIVO. 86. “Report of Sessions of United HIAS Ser­vice.” 87. Touster, “The ‘New Look’ for Jewish Immigration Ser­vices in the New Year,” no date, RG 245.8, series 4, file 12a, HIAS Collection, YIVO; “Eu­ro­pean Operations,” May 24, 1955, RG 245.8, series 4, file 13, HIAS Collection, YIVO; and “United States Operations,” May 24, 1955, RG 245.8, series 4, file 13, HIAS Collection, YIVO. 88. At the Evian conference in 1938, Trujillo announced that his country would accept up to one hundred thousand refugees from Central Eu­rope. Despite the blessing of the Roo­se­ velt Administration and the strategic support of the Joint Distribution Committee, only 757 Jewish refugees reached the Dominican Republic. Wells, Tropical Zion, xxvi. 89. Wells, Tropical Zion, xix. 90. Reverend Francesco Lardone, Apostolic Nuncio; Reverend Riccardo Pittini, archbishop of Ciudad Trujillo; United States ambassador to the Dominican Republic Phelps; Antonio Cottafavi, Italian Ambassador to the Dominican Republic; and Arturo Calventi, ­Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs in Italy all helped to or­ga­nize the meeting between Trujillo and ACIM leaders. 91. “Dominican Republic W ­ ill Welcome 100,000 Italians Says Trujillo,” ACIM Dispatch, April 1953. 92. “Dominican Republic Mission Most Successful, Say ACIM Leaders,” ACIM Dispatch, June 1953. See also “Msgr. Ligutti to Fly to Dominican Republic with ACIM Officials,” ACIM Dispatch, May 1953. 93. “ACIM Pi­lot Proj­ect Set for South Amer­i­ca,” ACIM Dispatch, April 1959.

218  Notes to Chapter Five 94. Ann Petluck, “Draft of Statement on Immigration,” April 28, 1958, RG 245.8, series 4, file 16, HIAS Collection, YIVO. 95. “­Father Donanzan’s Address,” May 17, 1959, series C, box C1, file “Symposium proceedings,” ACIM Collection, CMS. 96. “Mrs. Luce Says Overpopulation is Basic Prob­lem for Italy,” ACIM Dispatch, October 1953; Caesar Donanzan, “The Critical Prob­lem of Overpopulation In Italy,” ACIM Dispatch, October 1953; Caesar Donanzan, “The Critical Prob­lem of Overpopulation in Italy,” ACIM Dispatch, November 1953; Caesar Donanzan, “The Critical Prob­lem of Overpopulation in Italy,” ACIM Dispatch in Italy, December 1953–­January 1954; John O’Grady, “A Christian Immigration Policy,” ACIM Dispatch, March 1954; William F. Kelly, “Assurances Vital for Success of Refugee Act,” ACIM Dispatch, March 1954; “Facts and Data on Overpopulation in Italy,” ACIM Dispatch, February 1955; “Facts and Data on Overpopulation in Italy,” ACIM Dispatch, March 1955; “Facts and Data on Overpopulation in Italy,” ACIM Dispatch, April 1955; “Facts and Data on Overpopulation in Italy,” ACIM Dispatch, May 1955; “Address by H. E. Manlio Brosio,” ACIM Dispatch, December 1955–­January 1956; Kennedy, “Nine Months of Experience with the ‘Reunion of Families’ Legislation,” ACIM Dispatch, June 1958. 97. Lieberman, Are Americans Extinct?, 115. 98. “Refugee Act Amended to Admit More Relatives,” ACIM Dispatch, October 1954. See also “Refugee Relief Act.” 99. “Italian Quota in Refugee Program More than One-­Third Completed,” ACIM Dispatch, September 1955. 100. Tempo, Americans at the Gate, 46. 101. “Rep. Walter Terms Corsi Unfit for Job,” Chicago Daily Tribune, April 16, 1955. 102. Corsi, “My Ninety Days in Washington.” 103. “Refugee Relief Act,” 178. 104. George Spatuzza, Report of the Supreme Venerable at the XXIV Supreme Convention, October 1955, box 1, file 14, George Spatuzza Papers, IHRCA. 105. “Immediate Action Urged on Lange and Walter Bills,” ACIM Dispatch, June 1956, and “Refugee Relief Act,” 178–79. 106. Quoted in Lieberman, Are Americans Extinct?, 117. 107. “Bills to Carry out Eisenhower’s Proposals on Immigration Introduced,” ACIM Dispatch, March 1956; “Immigration,” 140–41. 108. Tempo, Americans at the Gate, 35. 109. John McCormack to Emanuel Celler, September 25, 1953, box 478, file H.R. 4394 (2), Emanuel Celler Papers, LOC. 110. “Both Parties Include Immigration Plank,” ACIM Dispatch, September 1956. See also Dwight Eisenhower, Press Release, February 8, 1956, box 478, file H.R. 4394 (3), Emanuel Celler Papers, LOC. 111. Keating, “Prospects for Immigration Legislation in the 85th Congress,” ACIM Dispatch, March 1957. 112. “Both Parties Include Immigration Plank,” ACIM Dispatch, September 1956. See also Dwight Eisenhower, press release on February 8, 1956, box 478, file H.R. 4394 (3), Emanuel Celler Papers, LOC. 113. Emanuel Celler, press release on January 27, 1957, box 479, file H.R. 4394 (1), Emanuel Celler Papers, LOC.

Notes to Chapter Five 219 114. Emanuel Celler, press release on January 27, 1957, box 479, file H.R. 4394 (1), Emanuel Celler Papers, LOC. 115. Palmer Di Giulio to Emanuel Celler, February 14, 1957, box 479, file H.R. 4394 (1), Emanuel Celler Papers, LOC. See also Palmer Di Giulio, Statement and Recommendation, no date and OSIA, Resolutions A ­ dopted by the Supreme Council of the Supreme Lodge of the Order Sons of Italy, January 26–27, 1957, box 3, file 20, George Spatuzza Papers, IHRCA. 116. Smoot, “The McCarran-­Walter Immigration Act,” Smoot Report, February 11, 1957, box 479, file H.R. 4394 (1), Emanuel Celler Papers, LOC. 117. Walter, “Should We Rewrite our Immigration Laws?,” Washington Pro & Con, January 1957, box 479, file H.R. 4394 (1), Emanuel Celler Papers, LOC. 118. Palmer Di Giulio, “Report of the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Order Sons of Italy in Amer­i­ca,” 1957, box 3, file 19, George Spatuzza Papers, IHRCA. 119. “S. 2792,” 101. 120. “Public Reaction,” 104. 121. “ACIM sets Legislative Goals for 1957,” ACIM Dispatch, February 1957. About OSIA, see Palmer Di Giulio, Report of the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Order Sons of Italy, 1957, box 3, file 19, George Spatuzza Papers, IHRCA. 122. “Statement Issued by ACIM Gets Favorable Congressional Reaction,” ACIM Dispatch, April 1957. 123. “ACIM ‘Reunion of Families’ Attained,” ACIM Dispatch, October 1957; “Keating, Kennedy, Walter Introduce Bills Containing ACIM Objectives,” ACIM Dispatch, May–­ June 1957. 124. Kennedy as quoted in Lieberman, Are Americans Extinct?, 118–19. 125. “Provisions,” AJYB 59 (1958): 102. 126. Shing-­Tai Liang to Emanuel Celler, August 27, 1957, box 479, file H.R. 4394 (1), Emanuel Celler Papers, LOC. 127. “Immigration,” 98; “Emigration from Egypt,” 100. 128. “Immigration,” 98–99. 129. “Emigration from Egypt,” 100. 130. “Emigration from Egypt.” See also Ann Petluck, “Annual Report: January through December  1957: United States Operations,” December  19, 1957, RG 245. 8, series 6, file 41, HIAS Collection, YIVO. 131. “ACIM ‘Reunion of Families’ Attained,” ACIM Dispatch, October 1957. 132. “Plight of Italian Refugees in Tunisia and Egypt Serious,” ACIM Dispatch, April 1959. 133. “Congress Urged to Support Program to Speed Issuance of ‘Reunion’ Visas,” ACIM Dispatch, January 1958. 134. “ACIM Launches Drive for Reunion of ‘Fourth Preference’ Cases,” ACIM Dispatch, February 1958. 135. “Congressional Sentiment ­Favors ACIM ‘Fourth Preference’ Goal,” ACIM Dispatch, March–­April 1958. 136. “Congress Funds Quicken Issuance of ‘Reunion Visas,’ ” ACIM Dispatch, May 1958. 137. Kennedy, “Nine Months of Experience with the ‘Reunion of Families’ Legislation,” ACIM Dispatch, June 1958. 138. “Eisenhower ­Favors Solution of ‘Fourth Preference’ Prob­lem,” ACIM Dispatch, November 1958.

220  Notes to Chapter Six 139. “Fourth Preference ‘Clean-­Up’ Bill Introduced by Keating,” ACIM Dispatch, February 1959. 140. “Fourth Preference ‘Clean-­Up’ Bill Introduced by Keating.” 141. “Kennedy Announces 7-­point Program for Immigration Bill,” ACIM Dispatch, March 1959; “Kennedy Bill Would Admit 150,000 Relatives Annually,” ACIM Dispatch, April 1959. 142. “Kennedy Announces 7-­point Program for Immigration Bill,” ACIM Dispatch, March 1959. 143. Statement by Representative Emanuel Celler, July 6, 1959, box 479, file H.R. 4394 (3), Emanuel Celler Papers, LOC. 144. “Walter Introduces Immigration Bill to Re­unite ­Family Units,” ACIM Dispatch, March 1959; “Eisenhower Signs Bill to Re­unite Families,” ACIM Dispatch, September 1959. 145. “Eisenhower Signs Bill to Re­unite Families,” ACIM Dispatch, September 1959. 146. “New Walter Bill Passed by House,” ACIM Dispatch, January 1960. 147. Emanuel Celler to Julie A. Jones, January 10, 1955, box 478, file H.R. 4394 (2), Emanuel Celler Papers, LOC. 148. Leonard H. Pasqualicchio, Report of the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Order Sons of Italy in Amer­ic­ a, October 1, 1955, box 3, file 19, George Spatuzza Papers, IHRCA. 149. “Transcription of Symposium Proceedings,” May 1959, series C, box C1, file “Symposium Proceedings,” ACIM Collection, CMS.

Chapter Six 1. Caesar Donanzan to Joseph De Serto, June 25, 1962, box 2, file 12, ACIM Chicago Papers, IHRCA. 2. Liskofsky, “Immigration Act of October 3, 1965.” 3. Donanzan to De Serto, June 25, 1962, box 2, file 12, ACIM Chicago Papers, IHRCA. 4. “Statement of Edward J. Ennis before the Demo­cratic Platform Committee at its Hearings in New York City on June 21, 1960,” series 6, subseries 6.3, Microfilm MKM 30.5, file 70, HIAS Collection, YIVO. Jennis also spoke on behalf of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of Amer­i­ca, American Civil Liberties Union, American Council for Émigrés in the Professions, American Council for Nationalities Ser­vice, American Friends Ser­vice Committee, International Social Ser­vice, Italian Welfare League, YWCA, National Conference of Catholic Charities, National Council Protestant Episcopal Church, Self-­Help of Émigrés from Central Eu­rope, Union of American Hebrew Congregations, United Automobile Workers of Amer­i­ca, and the United Steelworkers of Amer­i­ca. 5. Lieberman, Are Americans Extinct?, 122. 6. American Council for Nationalities Ser­v ice, “­Factor in Ethnic Equality,” National Newsletter, December 1960, series 6, subseries 6–3, Microfilm MKM 30.6, file 77, HIAS Collection, YIVO. See also American Council for Nationalities Ser­vice, “Wallflower at the Legis­ lative Ball,” National Newsletter, February 1962. 7. As demonstrated by Gallup polls administered from February  1960 through ­October 1960.

Notes to Chapter Six 221 8. American Council for Nationalities Ser­v ice, “Immigration Legislation,” National Newsletter, December 1960, series 6, subseries 6–3, Microfilm MKM 30.6, file 77, HIAS Collection, YIVO. 9. American Council for Nationalities Ser­v ice, “Wallflower at the Legislative Ball,” National Newsletter, February 1962, series 6, subseries 6–3, Microfilm MKM 30.6, file 77, HIAS Collection, YIVO. 10. Lieberman, Are Americans Extinct?, 124–26. On the inefficacy of private bills, see also Kennedy, A Nation of Immigrants, 78–79. 11. “Congressman Walter Sponsors New Immigration Legislation,” ACIM Dispatch, May 1961. 12. “Registered Demands for Visas,” ACIM Dispatch, September 1961. See also “20,000 Relatives still to Be Re-­United ­Under Public Law 363,” ACIM Dispatch, March–­April 1961. 13. “Third Preference Quota Dilemma,” ACIM Dispatch, September 1960. See also “Reunion of Families to Be Stepped Up,” ACIM Dispatch, November 1960; Donanzan to ACIM Officers, July 27, 1961, box 2, file 11, ACIM Chicago Papers, IHRCA; and “Stopgap Legislation Sought by ACIM to Re­unite Families,” ACIM Dispatch, September 1961. 14. “Third Preference Quota Dilemma,” ACIM Dispatch, September 1960. 15. “A Step Forward,” ACIM Dispatch, October–­November 1961. 16. Donanzan to ACIM Officers, July 27, 1961, box 2, file 11, ACIM Chicago Papers, IHRCA. 17. “Reunification of Families Now,” ACIM Dispatch, May 1962. 18. Donanzan to De Serto, June 25, 1962, box 2, file 12, ACIM Chicago Papers, IHRCA; “Senator Hart Bill,” ACIM Dispatch, May 1962; and “Congress Passes Immigration Bill,” ACIM Dispatch, October 1962. Hart’s bill proposed to set up a two-­part formula based on population ratios and immigration patterns over the previous fifteen years. Despite the support of twenty-­five other senators, Congress refused to take the bill into consideration. The bill resembled the one Celler had proposed in the 1950s. 19. “Reunification of Families Now,” ACIM Dispatch, May 1962 and Donanzan to De Serto, June 25, 1962, box 2, file 12, ACIM Chicago Papers, IHRCA. 20. Donanzan to De Serto, June 25, 1962, box 2, file 12, ACIM Chicago Papers, IHRCA. 21. “Senate and House Bills Support ACIM Fourth Preference Appeal,” ACIM Dispatch, June 1962. 22. Donanzan to ACIM Officers, Chapter Chairmen, and Priest Con­sul­tants, October 17, 1962, box 2, file 12, ACIM Chicago Papers, IHRCA. 23. Donanzan to ACIM Officers, Chapter Chairmen, and Priest Con­sul­tants, October 17, 1962, box 2, file 12, ACIM Chicago Papers, IHRCA. 24. For many immigration reform advocates, refugee policy represented a side door to entering the United States. Hsu, Good Immigrants, 5. See also Zolberg, Nation by Design, 10. 25. Goldberg, “New York Association for New Americans”; Goldberg, “New York Association for New Americans” (1962); Goldberg, “Refugee Programs” (1962); Goldberg, “Migration Ser­vices” (1963); Goldberg, “Refugee Programs” (1963); Goldberg, “Refugee Programs” (1964); Goldberg, “Migration Ser­vices” (1965); and Goldberg, “Refugees” (1965). 26. Swanstrom to Walter, February 5, 1960 and Swanstrom to Eisenhower, February 5, 1960, box 1, file 11, ACIM Chicago Papers, IHRCA. 27. “Marchisio Surveying Plight of Tunisian Refugees,” ACIM Dispatch, February 1960.

222  Notes to Chapter Six 28. “Judge Marchisio Reports,” ACIM Dispatch, March–­April 1960. See also “Letter from Tunisia,” ACIM Dispatch, January 1960, and “Action on Refugee from Tunisia Urged by ACIM,” ACIM Dispatch, June 1960. 29. “Congress Stirred by Marchisio Report on Tunisia Refugee,” ACIM Dispatch, May 1960. 30. “Refugee Immigration Bill Passed,” ACIM Dispatch, September 1960. 31. Millenson, “The Drive for Immigration Reform,” April 28, 1964, WHCF, Legislation Subject Files, box 74, file LE/IM 1963–64, LBJ Presidential Papers, LBJPL. 32. Memo from Roy Millenson to Edwin Lukas, October 1959, box 115, folder “Immigration, 1959–1960,” AJC Collection, AJA. 33. As cited in Lieberman, Are Americans Extinct?, 120. For more on how other immigrant groups entered the U.S. outside the quotas during this period, see Hsu, The Good Immigrants; Laney, German Rocketeers in the Heart of D ­ ixie; Oh, To Save the C ­ hildren of K ­ orea; and Wu, Color of Success. 34. “Notes of Discussion of a Special Meeting of the Representatives of the American Immigration Council of Voluntary Agencies for Foreign Ser­vice,” March  30, 1960, series 6, subseries 6.3, Microfilm MKM 30.5, file 70, HIAS Collection, YIVO. 35. Blumenthal, “The Private Organ­izations in the Naturalization and Citizenship Pro­ cess,” 451. 36. Liskofsky, “Immigration Act of October 3, 1965.” 37. Starting in 1961, the American Immigration and Citizenship Conference held annual meetings on immigration policy that brought together a broader range of stakeholders. Report of Ruth Murphy, March 24, 1961, box 480, file H.R. 7700/1, Emanuel Celler Papers, LOC. On conversations with the White House, see Sol Rabkin to Sidney Liskofsky, January 19, 1961, box 115, file “Immigration, 1960–1961,” American Jewish Committee Collection, YIVO. 38. “Immigrants Help Amer­i­ca Reap G ­ reat Profits States U.S. ­Labor Secretary,” ACIM Dispatch, December 1962–­January 1963. 39. “35 Senators from 23 States Cosponsor Immigration Bill,” ACIM Dispatch, February 1963. See also “Winds of Change or Lulling Breeze?,” ACIM Dispatch, June 1964, and Liskofsky, “Provisions of Act of October 3, 1965 (PL 89–236).” 40. Emanuel Celler to John F. Kennedy, June 24, 1963, box 415, file H.R. 3926, Emanuel Celler Papers, LOC. 41. Ann Petluck and James Rice to Cooperating Agencies, July 25, 1963, series 6, subseries 6.3, Microfilm MKM 30.6, file 90, HIAS Collection, YIVO. See also Murray I. Gurfein and James P. Rice to John F. Kennedy, July 29, 1963. 42. American Immigration and Citizenship Conference to John F. Kennedy, September 1963, and American Immigration and Citizenship Conference to Members of Congress, October 25, 1962, series 6, subseries 6.3, Microfilm MKM 30.6, file 79, HIAS Collection, YIVO. 43. Some of the other organ­izations that signed the letter included the American Fund for Czechoslovak Refugees, UAW, Iuliu Maniu American Romanian Relief Society, Italian Welfare League, Jewish ­Labor Committee, National Council of Jewish ­Women, Polish American Immigration and Relief Committee, Tolstoy Foundation, Ukrainian Workingmen’s Association, United Friends of Needy and Displaced P ­ eople of Yugo­slavia, United HIAS Ser­ vice, and United Steelworkers of Amer­i­ca. Several of ­these organ­izations had also been part of the co­ali­tion in 1952 but played a lesser role.

Notes to Chapter Six 223 44. Bern­stein, Guns or Butter, 252–53. 45. Tichenor, Dividing Lines, 212. 46. The American Council of Voluntary Agencies for Foreign Ser­vice, American Friends Ser­vice Committee, American Jewish Congress, and the editors of the Chinese Times all contacted the president on behalf of several organ­izations and individuals. See WHCF, Immigration Subject Files, box 1, files GEN IM 1963–64, and GEN IM 1964, LBJ Presidential Papers, LBJPL. 47. Tichenor, Dividing Lines, 213. 48. As LBJ scholars are aware, ­there is ­little in the archives written by Johnson himself ­because he preferred oral communication. As such, it is often difficult to establish with certainty what his position on an issue was. On immigration, the most helpful insights come from the interviews that Tichenor conducted with members of the Johnson Administration for his Dividing Lines. 49. Johnson, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, 112–18. 50. “Monday, January 13, 1964 Immigration Meeting,” January 11, 1964, WHCF, Legislation Subject Files, box 1, file EX IM 1963–65, LBJ Presidential Papers, LBJPL. 51. See correspondence about the meeting in WHCF, Immigration Subject Files, box 1, file EX IM 1963–65, LBJ Presidential Papers, LBJPL. 52. Kennedy, “The Immigration Act of 1965,” 140; and Schwartz, Open Society, 112–16. 53. The bill mandated that the Immigration Board include seven members, three appointed by the president and two each by the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House. The creation of an Immigration Board soon became a point of contention, as many believed that it would give too much authority to the president and weaken Congress. Representative Celler (NY), “Section-­by-­Section Analy­sis of Administration’s Immigration Bill,” H13133. 54. Office of the White House Press Secretary, “Remarks of the President to Representatives of Organ­izations Interested in Immigration and Refugee ­Matters,” January 13, 1964, WHCF, Immigration Subject Files, box 1, file EX IM 1963–65, LBJ Presidential Papers, LBJPL. 55. ­After the meeting, an undisclosed administration aide told the New York Times that Feighan was “the prime opponent to new legislation.” “President Urges New Alien Law,” NYT, January 14, 1964. 56. Established by the McCarran-­Walter Act in 1952, the Joint Committee on Immigration had met only once since its creation. About liberal reformers’ fears, see also Wagner, “The Lingering Death of the National Origins Quota System,” PhD diss., Harvard University, 1986, 395. 57. Office of the White House Press Secretary, “Remarks of the President to Representatives of Organ­izations Interested in Immigration and Refugee M ­ atters.” 58. See correspondence about the meeting in WHCF, Immigration Subject Files, box 1, file EX IM 1963–65, LBJ Presidential Papers, LBJPL. 59. Schwartz, Open Society, 119. 60. Johnson and Germany, eds., The Presidential Recordings of Lyndon B. Johnson, 445. 61. “Legislative Branch Appropriations Bill, 1965,” H7619–47. 62. “Rep. Lindsay Introduces Reform Bill,” ACIM Dispatch, June 1964. 63. “Congressman Feighan Announces Start of Immigration Hearings,” ACIM Dispatch, June 1964.

224  Notes to Chapter Six 64. “Immigration Reformer: Michael Aloysius Feighan,” NYT, August 25, 1965. 65. Schlei, as quoted in Bern­stein, Guns or Butter, 253. 66. Considering Celler a longtime po­liti­cal nemesis, Feighan held him personally responsible for the ­limited role in the immigration reform pro­cess he had held ­until then. Feighan’s frustration with Celler continued throughout the entire negotiations over the immigration bill, as he admitted in a letter to Jack Valenti in August 1965. Feighan to Valenti, August 9, 1965, WHCF, Legislation Subject Files, box 73, file LE/IM 1965, LBJ Presidential Papers, LBJPL. 67. Lyndon Johnson to Mrs. Albert J. Murphy, April 25, 1964, WHCF, Legislation Subject Files, box 74, file LE/IM 1964, LBJ Presidential Papers, LBJPL. 68. Arthur Schlesinger Jr. to Jack Valenti, June 1, 1964, WHCF, Legislation Subject Files, box 74, file LE/IM 1964, LBJ Presidential Papers, LBJPL. 69. “The Time is Now,” ACIM Dispatch, June 1964. In a letter to ACIM officer De Serto, Donanzan wrote that letters from ACIM chapters from across the country w ­ ere flooding the White House, conveying “to the President, we hope, that ­there is a ground swell of sentiment in f­ avor of the Bill throughout the nation.” Donanzan to De Serto, May 13, 1964, box 2, file 15, ACIM Chicago Papers, IHRCA. 70. Donanzan to ACIM Officers, February 17, 1964, box 2, file 15, ACIM Chicago Papers, IHRCA. In his detailed guidelines, Donanzan proposed to hold the rallies over the Easter recess, have an admission fee of a dollar to cover the expenses, ask the local legislator who was most interested in immigration to address the rally, and invite local entertainers to perform for f­ ree to attract a larger audience. 71. De Serto to Donanzan, May 7, 1964, box 2, file 15, ACIM Chicago Papers, IHRCA. See also Donanzan to De Serto, May 13, 1964, box 2, file 15, ACIM Chicago Papers, IHRCA. 72. Jack Valenti to Michael Feighan, June 17, 1964, and Valenti to Larry O’Brien, memorandum, June 17, 1964, WHCF, Legislation Subject Files, box 73, file LE/IM 1964, LBJ Presidential Papers, LBJPL. During a 1983 phone interview with historian Stephen Wagner, Valenti said that Johnson assigned him to do more work on immigration reform ­because the president believed that his ethnic background would help him bring more passion to the issue; Wagner, “The Lingering Death of the National Origins Quota System,” 393–94. 73. Ceasar Donanzan to Jack Valenti, April 23, 1964, WHCF, Legislation Subject Files, box 74, file LE/IM 1963–64, LBJ Presidential Papers, LBJPL. 74. Caesar Donanzan to Jack Valenti, April 23, 1964, WHCF, Legislation Subject Files, box 74, file LE/IM 1963–64, LBJ Presidential Papers, LBJPL. 75. Roy H. Millenson, “The Drive for Immigration Reform,” April 28, 1964, WHCF, Legislation Subject Files, box 74, file LE/IM 1963–64, LBJ Presidential Papers, LBJPL. 76. “Dean Rusk Assails Immigration Quotas,” ACIM Dispatch, July–­August 1964. In the only reference to immigration reform that Rusk made in his memoir, it is clear that he was very interested in abolishing the exclusion of immigrants from the Asia-­Pacific Triangle and in granting nonquota status to newly in­de­pen­dent nations in the Western Hemi­sphere. He makes no reference to the ceiling on immigration from the Western Hemi­sphere or to the national origins quota system. Rusk, As I Saw It, as Told to Richard Rusk, 589. 77. “Statement by the Honorable Dean Rusk,” no date, WHCF, Immigration Subject Files, box 1, file EX IM 1963–65, LBJ Presidential Papers, LBJPL. 78. “Judge Marchisio Testifies before House Subcommittee,” ACIM Dispatch, July–­ August 1964.

Notes to Chapter Six 225 79. “R. F. Kennedy Urges New Immigration Quotas,” ACIM Dispatch, July–­August 1964, and “Wirtz Says Immigration Helps  U.S. L ­abor Force,” ACIM Dispatch, July–­ August 1964. 80. “Immigration Leaders Criticize Plank in Republican Platform,” ACIM Dispatch, July–­ August 1964. 81. “Immigration Legislation Ready for Next Congress,” ACIM Dispatch, November–­ December 1964. 82. Mike Masaoka to Myer Feldman, September 8, 1964, WHCF, Legislation Subject Files, box 74, file LE/IM 1964, LBJ Presidential Papers, LBJPL. James Anello to Jack Valenti, August 11, 1964, WHCF, Legislation Subject Files, box 74, file LE/IM 1 1964, LBJ Presidential Papers, LBJPL. 83. Juvenal Marchisio to Victor Anfuso, June 15, 1964, WHCF, Legislation Subject Files, box 74, file LE/IM 1964, LBJ Presidential Papers, LBJPL. About the request for the meeting, see Victor Anfuso to Jack Valenti, June 15, 1964, WHCF, Legislation Subject Files, box 74, file LE/IM 1964, LBJ Presidential Papers, LBJPL. 84. James P. Rice to Emanuel Celler, July 9, 1964, box 480, file H.R. 7700/2, Emanuel Celler Papers, LOC. 85. Millenson, “The Drive for Immigration Reform,” April 28, 1964, WHCF, Legislation Subject Files, box 74, file LE/IM 1963–64, LBJ Presidential Papers, LBJPL. 86. Ceasar Donanzan to Jack Valenti, April 23, 1964. ­Earlier in the month, Valenti remarked to O’Brien: “my Italian compatriots are deluging me with cries of help.” Valenti often used the letters he received from ACIM to nudge O’Brien. Jack Valenti to Larry O’Brien, April 2, 1964, Ceasar Donanzan to Jack Valenti, April 23, 1964, WHCF, Legislation Subject Files, box 74, file LE/IM 1963–64, LBJ Presidential Papers, LBJPL. 87. De Serto to ACIM Chicago Chapter Supporters, November 18, 1964, box 2, file 16, ACIM Chicago Papers, IHRCA. 88. Letter to Lyndon B. Johnson, December 11, 1964, WHCF, Immigration Subject Files, box 1, file GEN IM 1964–65, LBJ Presidential Papers, LBJPL. 89. Richard Smith to Myer Feldman, December 4, 1964, WHCF, Immigration Subject Files, box 1, file GEN IM 1964–65, LBJ Presidential Papers, LBJPL. O ­ thers, like the Chinese World editors, wrote Celler to urge him to push for immigration reform and “show your constituents of the Chinese race and the countries of South-­East Asia that we are sincere in our strug­gle for the freedom of the Asians.” J. K. Choy to Emanuel Celler and Phillip Burton, June 17, 1964, box 480, file H.R. 7700/2, Emanuel Celler Papers, LOC. 90. Tichenor, Dividing Lines, 214. 91. “LBJ’s Immigration Proposals,” ACIM Dispatch, January–­February 1965. 92. Lieberman, Are Americans Extinct?, 128–29, 132. 93. Donanzan to ACIM Officers, January 21, 1965, box 2, file 17, ACIM Chicago Papers, IHRCA. 94. Zolberg, Nation by Design, 330. The White House regularly received letters that criticized its efforts to reform immigration and called for more restrictive immigration legislation. For a sample of ­these letters, see WHCF, Legislation Subject Files, box 73, file LE/IM 1964–65, and box 73, file LE/IM 1964, LBJ Presidential Papers, LBJPL. 95. For more on the importance of the reforms that diminished the power of the House Rules Committee and their significance in the passage of the 1965 immigration act, see

226  Notes to Chapter Six William S. Stern, “H.R. 2580, The Immigration and Nationality Amendments of 1965,” PhD diss., New York University, 1975, chap. 3. 96. Katzenbach selected Representatives Harold Donohue (D-­MA) and Jacob Gilbert (D-­ NY), both from heavi­ly ethnic districts, and longtime Johnson ally Jack Brooks (D-­TX). Schwartz, Open Society, 121. 97. Wagner, “Lingering Death of the National Origins Quota System,” 427. 98. Donanzan to ACIM Officers, January 21, 1965, box 2, file 17, ACIM Chicago Papers, IHRCA. 99. Attendees included representatives from ACIM, American Friends Ser­vice Committee, Council of Churches in Southern California, Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, International Rescue Committee of Los Angeles, JACL, Jewish Federation Council, and Southern California Baptist Convention. “Report on Los Angeles Conference on Immigration,” January 18, 1965, box 2, file 17, ACIM Chicago Papers, IHRCA. 100. “Planning Committee for a Midwest Conference on Immigration,” February 25, 1965, box 2, file 17, ACIM Chicago Papers, IHRCA. 101. “­Here’s How You Can Help Immigration Reform,” ACIM Dispatch, January–­ February 1965. 102. Miriam Winborne to LBJ, January 25, 1965, WHCF, Legislation Subject Files, box 73, file LE/IM December 1, 1964–May 3, 1965, LBJ Presidential Papers, LBJPL. The box contains several folders with letters to the Johnson White House. 103. For some examples, see WHCF, Legislation Subject Files, box 1, file GEN IM 1964– 65, LBJ Presidential Papers, LBJPL. 104. Jack Valenti to Lyndon Johnson, March 12, 1965, WHCF, Immigration Subject Files, box 1, file EX/IM 1963–65, LBJ Presidential Papers, LBJPL. 105. “New Bills and Hearings Announced in Congress,” ACIM Dispatch, January–­ February  1965, and “In Washington: Leaders Support Action on Bills,” ACIM Dispatch, January–­February 1965. 106. “Kennedy Pledges ‘Origins’ ­Battle,” ACIM Dispatch, January–­February 1965. 107. While the Kennedy and Johnson administrations never considered placing a cap on the Western Hemi­sphere, the restrictionist Southern Demo­crats used Leh­man’s 1953 bill and his rationale as a pre­ce­dent to justify their request for a ceiling on the Western Hemi­sphere. Senator Lehman (NY), “Immigration and Citizenship Act of 1953,” S10959–68; Senator Lehman (NY), “Proposed Immigration and Citizenship Act of 1955,” S2093–101. See also Marinari, “Divided and Conquered,” 9–40. 108. Tempo, Americans at the Gate, 96. 109. Hartley, “United States Immigration Policy,” 58; Wagner, “Lingering Death of the National Origins Quota System,” 423–24. 110. Reimers, Still the Golden Door, 66–68. 111. Liskofsky, “Immigration Act of October 3, 1965.” 112. Liskofsky, “In the House of Representatives.” 113. National Committee for Immigration Reform, confidential bulletin no. 2, June 21, 1965, box 482, file Immigration, 89th Congress, H.R. 8662/4, Emanuel Celler Papers, LOC. For more information about the goals of the organ­ization, see National Committee for Immigration Reform press release, June 1965. 114. “Outlook for the Proposals,” ACIM Dispatch, January–­February 1965.

Notes to Chapter Six 227 115. Kennedy, “Immigration Act of 1965,” 144–45. 116. “New Bills and Hearings Announced in Congress,” ACIM Dispatch, January–­ February  1965; “In Washington: Leaders Support Action on Bills,” ACIM Dispatch, January–­February 1965. 117. U.S. Congress, House, Subcommittee no. 1 of the Committee on the Judiciary, Immigration, Hearing, March 8, 1965 (Serial no. 7), Washington, DC, 1965. 118. Memorandum, Valenti to Johnson, March 23, 1965, WHCF, Legislation Subject Files, box 73, file LE/IM 1963–65, LBJ Presidential Papers, LBJPL. 119. Feighan’s preference system for immigrants from the Eastern Hemi­sphere, which was ­later a­ dopted as part of the final bill, included four preference categories for ­family reunification, two categories for immigrants with skills needed in the United States, and one category for refugees. 120. Wagner, “Lingering Death of the National Origins Quota System,” 425–27. 121. Schwartz, Open Society, 123. 122. Senator Ervin (NC), “Amendment of Immigration and Nationality Act,” S24231–37. 123. Memorandum, Perry Barber to Valenti, July 8, 1965, WHCF, Legislation Subject Files, box 73, file LE/IM 1963–65, LBJ Presidential Papers, LBJPL. 124. Hartley, “United States Immigration Policy,” 60; Kennedy, “Immigration Act of 1965,” 146; and Memorandum, Barber to Valenti, July 8, 1965, WHCF, Immigration Subject Files, box 1, file EX IM 1963–65, LBJ Presidential Papers, LBJPL. See also “Amending the Immigration and Nationality Act,” H21816–21. 125. “Amending the Immigration and Nationality Act,” H21816–21; Memorandum, Manatos to O’Brien, August 20, 1965, WHCF, Immigration Subject Files, box 1, file EX IM 1965– 67, LBJ Presidential Papers, LBJPL; and see also Kennedy, “Immigration Act of 1965,” 142. 126. Senator Ervin (NC), “Amendment of Immigration and Nationality Act,” S24236. 127. Lieberman, Are Americans Extinct?, 156–58. 128. Annunzio to Pierini, April 27, 1965, and De Serto to Dirksen, April 28, 1965, box 3, file 19, ACIM Chicago Papers, IHRCA. 129. Memorandum, Manatos to O’Brien, August 20, 1965, WHCF, Immigration Subject Files, box 1, file EX IM 1965–67, LBJ Presidential Papers, LBJPL. 130. Liskofsky, “In the House of Representatives”; Liskofsky, “In the Senate”; and Liskofsky, “Provisions of Act of October 3, 1965.” 131. Kennedy, “Immigration Act of 1965,” 147. The New York Times was ­under the same impression. On September 21, 1965, the newspaper published an article that noted that, although the administration opposed the ceiling on immigration from the Western Hemi­ sphere, “­there apparently ­will be no strong effort to have it eliminated in the Senate.” “Kennedy Backs Immigration Bill,” NYT, September 21, 1965. 132. ­After President Johnson privately admitted that a ceiling on the Western Hemi­sphere made sense to him, the U.S. Department of State, the sole remaining objector, capitulated as well. Memorandum, Barber to Valenti, July 8, 1965, and Memorandum, Valenti to Johnson, August 25, 1965, WHCF, Legislation Subject Files, box 73, file LE/IM 1963–65, LBJ Presidential Papers, LBJPL. 133. Hartley, “United States Immigration Policy,” 61. 134. Memorandum, Valenti to Johnson, August 25, 1965, WHCF, Legislation Subject Files, box 73, file LE/IM 1963–65, LBJ Presidential Papers, LBJPL.

228  Notes to Chapter Six 135. Senators Eastland, Ervin, McClellan (D-­AR), Dirksen, and Fong (R-­HI) voted for the amendment, while liberal immigration reformers Senators Kennedy, Hart, and Javits voted against it; Kennedy, “Immigration Act of 1965,” 147. In a final demonstration of his influence, Dirksen blocked the Senate Judiciary Committee from immediately considering the immigration bill so as to extract one more concession, taking advantage of Johnson’s eagerness to move forward on immigration legislation to add a rider to the immigration bill to advance an unrelated piece of legislation that he favored. Kennedy, “Immigration Act of 1965,” 147; “Dirksen Maneuver Delays Alien Bill,” NYT, August 31, 1965; and “Dirksen Maneuver Blocks Senate Unit Action on Immigration Bill,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, September 1, 1965. 136. Lyndon B. Johnson to Joseph Errigo, August 24, 1965, WHCF, Immigration Subject Files, box 1, file EX IM 1965–67, LBJ Presidential Papers, LBJPL. 137. Report of the Supreme Venerable, August 1965, box 1, folder 5, Aldo Caira Papers, IHRCA. 138. Senator Javits (NY), “Amendment of Immigration and Nationality Act,” S24469–71. See also “Immigration Change Backed,” NYT, September 22, 1965, and “Javits Hits Curb on Immigration,” NYT, September 21, 1965. 139. Kennedy, “Immigration Act of 1965,” 148. Attorney General Katzenbach published an open letter to Kennedy in the Congressional Rec­ord that reassured reformers in the Senate that the administration recognized the need for further changes in immigration policy and promised to send an omnibus bill to both immigration subcommittees the following year. Senator Kennedy (MA), “Amendment of Immigration and Nationality Act,” S24479. 140. Liskofsky, “Immigration Act of October 3, 1965.” 141. “Immigration Bill Passes Senate with New Curbs,” NYT, September 23, 1965. 142. Liskofsky, “Provisions of Act of October 3, 1965.” 143. Letter to Lyndon Johnson, September 30, 1965, WHCF, Legislation Subject Files, box 74, file LE/IM 1965, LBJ Presidential Papers, LBJPL. Some of the organ­izations included ACIM, ACLU, American Friends Ser­v ice Committee, AJC, American Jewish Congress, Anti-­Defamation League, HIAS, JACL, National Catholic Rural Life Conference, NCWC, National Chinese Welfare Council, Order of AHEPA, and branches of the AFL-­CIO. 144. Caesar Donanzan to Jack Valenti, October 4, 1965, WHCF, Legislation Subject Files, box 74, file LE/IM 1965, LBJ Presidential Papers, LBJPL. 145. James P. Rice to Lyndon Johnson, September 22, 1965, WHCF, Legislation Subject Files, box 74, file LE/IM 1965, LBJ Presidential Papers, LBJPL. 146. Liskofsky, “Immigration Act of October 3, 1965.” 147. As quoted in Liskofsky, “United States Immigration Policy.” 148. Liskofsky, “United States Immigration Policy.” 149. “A Message from F ­ ather Donanzan,” October 3, 1965, box 3, file 23, ACIM Chicago Papers, IHRCA. 150. As Tichenor explains, a solid alliance existed among Eastland, INS officials, and Southwestern growers that motivated his efforts to block any legislation and hold any hearings over unauthorized immigration from Mexico throughout most of the 1970s. Tichenor, Dividing Lines, 226–30. 151. Schwartz, Open Society, 125.

Notes to Conclusion 229

Conclusion 1. On September  5, 2017, two articles drew explicit connections to the 1920s: Cobb, “Trump’s Move to End DACA and Echoes of the Immigration Act of 1924,” New Yorker, and Mathis-­Lilley, “Jeff Sessions Once Said Restrictions on Jewish and Italian Immigration ­Were ‘Good for Amer­i­ca.’  ” 2. In August 2016, Donald Trump gave a campaign speech in Arizona that laid out ten detailed points about the immigration policy he intended to pursue if elected. From building the wall to ending DACA and temporary protected status to introducing travel bans and reforming the l­ egal immigration system, the speech turned out to be a roadmap of his actions on immigration since entering the White House. Pierce, Bolter, and Selee, “Trump’s First Year on Immigration Policy,” Migration Policy Institute, January  2018, https:​/­​/­www​ .­migrationpolicy​.­org​/­research​/­trump​-­first​-­year​-­immigration​-­policy​-­rhetoric​-­vs​-­reality. 3. Even applications for citizenship now have long backlogs. For an example, see Rojas, “Immigrants Waiting Longer for US Citizenship as Backlog Builds,” KPCC, November 10, 2017, https:​/­​/­www​.­scpr​.­org​/­news​/­2017​/­11​/­10​/­77606​/­immigrants​-­waiting​-­longer​-­for​-­us​ -­citizenship​-­as​-­ba​/­. 4. At the time of this writing, about 437,000 individuals from ten countries besieged by extreme vio­lence or affected by natu­ral disasters have temporary protected status in the United States. By May 2018, the Homeland Security Department ­under Trump had discontinued TPS for p­ eople from El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, and Sudan. 5. Since the beginning of the new administration, migration scholars, including myself, have been very active in providing a historical perspective on the current immigration debate to caution Americans against g­ oing down the same path. For a parallel between then and now, see Marinari, “Another Time in History that the US Created Travel Bans—­Against Italians,” Public Radio International, October 2, 2017, https:​/­​/­www​.­pri​.­org​/­stories​/­2017​ -­10​-­02​/​­another​-­time​-­history​-­us​-­created​-­travel​-­bans​-­against​-­italians. About the first ban, see also Shah, ed., “We’ve Been ­Here Before,” Public Radio International, February 1, 2017, https:​/­​/­w ww​.­pri​.­org​/­stories​/­2017​-­02​-­01​/­we​-­ve​-­been​-­here​-­historians​-­annotate​-­and​ -­analyze​-­immigration​-­bans​-­place​-­history. 6. For an example of the r­ ipple effect of U.S. immigration legislation, see Minian, “Increased Border Security Is Why So Many ‘Dreamers’ Are ­Here in The First Place,” LA Times, January 18, 2018. 7. Their success pushing for f­ amily reunion came at a high price, however. Despite their efforts, they failed to hold legislators accountable for the country’s continuing need for unskilled workers, which contributed to the marginalization and exploitation of unskilled foreign ­labor. 8. Oh and Wu, “Why Immigration Advocates Must Take Back the Term ‘Chain Migration,’ ” Washington Post, February 1, 2018. See also the responses to this article: Goodman and Pineau, “Why Donald Trump Could Win the Immigration Fight,” Washington Post, February 16, 2018, and Kearse, “ ‘Chain Migration,’ ” NYT, March 20, 2018. 9. For con­temporary examples, see Editorial Board, “The U.S. Separates a ­Mother and ­Daughter Fleeing Vio­lence in Congo,” Washington Post, March 11, 2018; Flores, “Another Immigrant F ­ ather Has Accused U.S. Authorities of Taking Away His Son,” BuzzFeed News, November 23, 2017; Frej, “War Tore ­Family Apart for a De­cade,” Huffington Post, December 19, 2017;

230  Notes to Conclusion and Wang and Sacchetti, “A Chemistry Professor Got His Kids Ready for School,” Washington Post, February 5, 2018. 10. For a historical perspective, see Kramer, “Trump’s Anti-­Immigrant Racism Represents an American Tradition,” NYT, January 22, 2018. 11. Shah, “We’ve Been H ­ ere Before,” Public Radio International, February 1, 2017. 12. In the spring of 2018 alone, President Trump referred to deported immigrants as animals and said that undocumented immigrants “pour into and infest our country.” Kilgore, “Trump Uses Language of Exterminators about Immigrants,” New York Magazine, June 1, 2018. 13. Goldstein, Politics of Ethnic Pressure, quoted in MacDonald, The Culture of Critique, 248. 14. Cesar Donanzan to Members of ACIM Board of Directors, September 29, 1965, box 3, file 22, ACIM Chicago Papers, IHRCA. 15. Schwartz, “The Tree of Life Shooting and the Return of Anti-­Semitism to American Life,” New Yorker, October 27, 2018.

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Index

Addams, Jane, 32, 85, 195–96n82 Adler, Cyrus, 25 Advisory Committee on Po­liti­cal Refugees, 87, 100 AFL-­CIO, 158, 159, 168 Africa: immigrants, 68, 177; refugees, 102 African Americans, 9, 12, 21, 27, 64; ­Great Migration, 49 agriculture. See farm workers Alexander, Robert C., 137 alien registration, 91, 99, 195–96n82 Alien Registration Act of 1940, 100–101 Alien Seaman Act of 1926, 90 “aliens without proper visas.” See undocumented immigrants Alliance Israélite Universelle, 24 Amer­i­ca First Party; platform, 49, 99 American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), 85, 92, 113, 158, 164 American Co­ali­tion of Patriotic Socie­ties, 166, 167, 169 American Committee on Italian Migration (ACIM), 116, 126, 129–31, 135, 137, 142, 150, 180; ­family reunion emphasis of, 147–49, 153–54; immigration reform legislation and, 144–45, 152–55, 158, 159, 163, 164, 165–66, 170–71, 173–74; pragmatism of, 151; refugee resettlement and, 138–40, 141, 146–47, 155 American Council for Nationalities Ser­vice, 153, 156 American Council for Voluntary Agencies, 156 American Council of Learned Socie­ties, 73 American Federation of ­Labor (AFL), 11, 20, 22, 31, 50, 90; liberal immigration reform and, 108, 132, 158; literacy test

and, 29, 39; restrictive immigration and, 81, 112. See also AFL-­CIO American Friends Ser­vice Committee, 119, 137, 164 American Immigration and Citizenship Conference (AICC), 137, 156–57, 158, 159, 162, 167, 168, 222n37 American Jewish Committee (AJC), 24–30, 33–38, 70, 77, 88, 180, 205n36; B’nai B’rith conflict with, 189n48; displaced persons advocacy, 102–5, 107, 108, 136; diverse co­ali­tion and, 115, 137; ­family reunification and, 81, 82; founding members of, 25, 29, 189n48 (see also Marshall, Louis); humanitarian emphasis of, 25, 38, 44; immigration reform bills and, 17, 112, 126, 134, 136, 144, 152, 155–56, 158, 159, 162–64, 166, 167; influence of, 24; interethnic/interreligious collaboration and, 97, 99, 115–16; Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, 84–85; LPC executive order and, 84; McCarran-­Walter Act and, 112, 113–14, 123, 126, 127; National Liberal Immigration League contrasted with, 24, 25, 26; national origins quotas and, 33, 38–39, 40, 45–47, 52, 55, 61–62, 65–66, 67, 74, 113, 128, 198n16; pragmatism of, 151; refugee resettlement and, 100, 132, 141, 145–46; tactics of, 24, 25–26, 28, 29, 33–38, 41, 42, 48; undocumented immigrants and, 91–92 American Jewish Congress, 32, 50, 61–62, 67, 69, 82, 84, 86, 108, 126, 132, 159, 163, 164 American Jews. See Jewish Americans American Legion, 37, 74, 112, 136, 143, 167, 169, 207n86

252 Index American Protective Association (APA), 185n27 American Resettlement Council for Italian Refugees, 139 American Seamen’s Union, 90 Anarchist Exclusion Act. See Immigration Act of 1903 anarchists, 8, 19, 20, 28, 43 Anfuso, Victor, 163 Anglo-­Saxons, 7, 27, 68, 146, 170 anti-­Communism, 98, 99, 107, 109, 110, 115, 127, 140, 149; First Red Scare (1920) and, 45; immigration issues and, 125, 137–38, 143; Italian elections and, 105–6; McCarran and, 120, 128, 137–38; McCarthyism and, 117, 120. See also Cold War Anti-­Defamation League (ADL), 96, 126, 137, 152, 159, 163, 164, 166 anti-­immigration rhe­toric, 1, 3, 7–12, 70, 167; con­temporary, 175–76; in 1930s, 84–88; Red Scare (1920) and, 45; World War I and, 38, 65 anti-­Semitism, 5, 8, 25, 27, 40, 45, 81, 92–93, 96; Amer­i­ca First campaign and, 99; in con­temporary Amer­i­ca, 181–82; Displaced Persons Act (1948) and, 104, 105, 107; “international Jewish conspiracy” rhe­toric, 50; McCarran-­Walter Act and, 120, 127, 128, 131; refugee legislation and, 99; restrictive immigration and, 46, 84; State Department officials and, 86; sterilization proposal and, 59; tropes of, 5, 50, 51, 52 Armenians, 46 Asian exclusion, 2, 7, 12, 21, 22, 39, 46, 63, 101, 188n36, 194n39, 194n45; broadening of, 60; challenges to, 104; Johnson-­Reed Act and, 43; McCarran-­Walter Act’s end to, 111; prejudice and, 8, 43; “yellow peril” trope and, 194n45 Asian immigrants, 118, 120, 122, 123, 124, 126, 177, 188n39, 188n47. See also Chinese immigrants; Japa­nese immigration Asia-­Pacific Triangle, 111, 120, 132, 151, 153, 157, 158, 160, 162, 165, 167, 168, 169, 224n76

Asiatic Barred Zone, 39, 42, 62, 68 Asiatic Exclusion League, 46 assimilation, 7, 21, 34, 47–48, 51; ­factors in, 31; melting pot concept and, 63; nativist view of, 21, 31, 36, 37, 52, 59, 63; old vs. new immigrants and, 51; pressures for, 71 Association of Foreign Language Newspapers, 33–34, 35 Association of Immigration and Nationality ­Lawyers, 113 asylum, 38, 85, 87, 140 atomic bomb, 109 Australia, 139, 146 Austria, 102 Austria-­Hungary, 36 Baker, Howard, 73 Baldwin, Roger, 85 Baptists, 64 Barber, Perry, 168 Beard, Charles, 85 Behar, Nissim, 24–25, 32 Bemis, Edward, 9, 21 Bennet, William, 34, 40 Bernard, William, 203n3 Bern­stein, Irving, 158 Bern­stein, Philip S., 104 Black Hand society, 27 B’nai B’rith, 25, 29, 30, 67, 74, 82, 99, 189n48; conflict with American Jewish Conference, 189n48. See also Anti-­Defamation League Boas, Franz, 30–31 Bolshevik Revolution, 45 Bon Tempo, Carl, 129, 142, 166 Borah, William E., 87 Boston Committee Against Unfair Restricted Immigration, 64–65 bracero program, 112 Brandeis, Louis D., 86 Brent, Charles Henry, 8 Brosio, Manlio, 140 Brylawski, Fulton, 34 Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization. See Immigration Bureau

Index 253 Burnett, John, 30–35, 38–40, 44–46 Bush, George H. W., 177 Caetani, Gelasio, 61 Caminetti, Anthony, 51, 52 Canada, 58, 63, 100, 146 Cannon, Joseph, 28, 31, 34, 38 Caporetto, ­Battle of (1917), 41 Ca­rib­bean quota system, 43, 67, 111, 132 Car­ne­gie, Andrew, 24, 32 Car­ne­gie Institute, 84 Carr, Wilbur, 86 Carusi, Ugo, 106–7 Case, Clifford P., 146 Catholic Association for International Peace, 126 Catholic Relief Ser­vices, 118, 154, 159 Catholics, 64, 139, 185n27; anti-­Catholic sentiment and, 8, 54; immigration issues and, 110, 116, 118, 119, 122, 129–31, 136–37, 180; Jewish activist relations with, 136–37; Kennedy presidency and, 151; organ­izations, 103, 104–5, 106, 115, 118, 126, 127. See also National Catholic Welfare Conference Catt, Carrie Chapman, 85 Celler, Emanuel, 60, 66, 84, 122, 150, 153, 213n23; displaced persons legislation and, 103, 104, 106, 108; ­family reunion expansion and, 148; immigration reform and 111–12, 114–16, 119, 130, 132, 133–36 (see also Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965); McCarran-­Walter bill and, 117, 118, 119, 121, 125, 142–44; reallocation of unused quotas and, 117, 118; Refugee Relief Act and, 129–32; religious categorization of Jewish immigrants and, 125 census, U.S. See ­under national origins quota system Central Amer­i­ca, 63, 67, 139, 177; refugees from (2018), 181–82 Chamber of Commerce, New York, 17, 18 Chamber of Commerce, New York Italian, 24, 30, 55

Chamber of Commerce, Philadelphia, 72–73 Chamber of Commerce, U.S., 37, 64 Chandler, William, 9 Chicago Immigrants’ Protective League, 195–96n82 China, 62, 139 Chinese American Citizens Alliance, 188n47 Chinese American Civic Council, 166 Chinese communists, 109, 145, 154 Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, 7, 9, 17, 21, 79, 91; exemptions, 110, 197n113; as national origin quota system pre­ce­dent, 53; repeal of (1943), 98, 101, 102, 104 Chinese immigrants, 7, 21, 90, 91, 156, 184n22 Choate, Mark, 61 Church World Ser­vices, 106, 159–60 CIO. See AFL-­CIO; Congress of Industrial Organ­izations circular migration, 72 Citizens Committee on Displaced Persons (CCDP), 103, 107, 108, 136, 203n3 citizenship, 5, 48, 53, 56–57, 83, 106. See also naturalization civil rights, 2, 4, 13, 25, 93, 113, 114; Cold War rhe­toric and, 13, 98, 105, 116, 120, 140, 178; deportation and, 93; immigration reform and, 159 Clapper, Raymond, 88 class distinctions, 197n113 Cleveland, Grover, 10, 11, 32, 35 Clinton, Bill, 177 Cockran, William Bourke, 17 Cohen, Felix, 114 Cohen, Jules, 118 Cold War: immigration policy, 6, 7, 97, 98, 124, 152, 159, 160, 178; Italian Americans and, 5; McCarran-­Walter Act and, 13, 111, 112, 119, 122; national origins quota system and, 110, 124, 160; rhe­toric of, 4, 13, 98, 105, 115, 116, 120, 140, 143, 178; state and religious nonprofits policy and, 206n55. See also anti-­Communism; Communism; foreign policy

254 Index Cold War Civil Rights (Dudziak), 120 Collier, P. F., 17 Colt, LeBaron B., 50 Commerce Department, 22, 73 Commissioner of Immigration, 10, 58, 76, 92 Commissioner of Immigration v. Gottlieb (1924), 69, 78 Common Council for American Unity, 121, 137 Communism: China and, 109, 145, 154; displaced persons from, 101–2, 104, 105, 109–10, 119, 206n55; Italy and, 105, 130, 131, 140, 144, 147; refugees from, 130–31, 138, 140, 142, 145–46, 152, 155. See also anti-­Communism; Cold War Conference of Catholic Bishops, U.S., 137 Congress, U.S.: committee power, 9–10, 26, 30, 31, 39, 179, 185n31; literacy test and, 12, 14, 20–21, 26, 27, 28, 31, 34, 39, 42, 43, 44; lobby for liberal immigration reform, 126–27, 157; nativist co­ali­tion, 1, 6, 98; petitions to, 20, 27, 33; restrictionist co­ali­tion, 3–4, 7, 18–21, 30, 35, 38, 41–42, 44, 46–48, 58, 65, 69, 70, 76, 80–81, 87, 93–94, 103, 107, 130, 147, 151; se­niority system, 72. See also specific committees Congressional Rec­ord, 32 Congress of Industrial Organ­izations (CIO), 86, 112, 113, 132, 137, 158. See also AFL-­CIO consulates, U.S., 75, 81, 84, 86, 87, 109, 148 Coo­lidge, Calvin, 56, 65, 67, 68, 69, 73, 77 Coo­lidge, Marcus, 93, 94 Cooper Union (N.Y.) mass meetings (1897, 1898), 10–11, 18 Coordinating Council for Amending the McCarran-­Walter Act, 137 Copeland, Royal S., 91, 93 Corsi, Edward, 74–75, 85, 86, 107, 125; firing of, 140–41 Cotillo, Salvatore, 41, 60, 62, 74 Coughlin, ­Father Charles, 96 criminals, 19, 59, 68 Cuban refugees, 152, 155 Cusumano, Gaspare, 94

Czecho­slo­va­kia, 80, 109 Czolgosz, Leon, 20 DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), 176, 229n2 Daniels, Roger, 69 ­Daughters of the American Revolution, 37, 74, 136, 169 Davis, James J., 78, 92 De Michelis, Giuseppe, 51, 55, 58, 196n84 Demo­cratic Party, 11, 28, 54, 185n27; immigration policy, 26–27, 35, 45, 70, 106, 126, 143; immigration reform platforms, 152, 162, 163; Italian and Jewish American members, 80; New Deal, 12–13, 84, 96. See also Southern Demo­crats departments and agencies. See key word deportation, 29, 47, 56, 57, 153, 177; constitutional rights and, 93; critics of, 134, 135, 152; Ellis Island and, 85–86; in excess of quota (1921), 54; ­family reunification and, 56, 90–91, 93, 94; first Supreme Court case (1893) on, 93; Red Scare (1920) and, 45, 49; reentry permit, 202n118; Trump reference to, 230n12; of undocumented immigrants, 90–91, 92, 93, 94 Depression of 1930s. See ­Great Depression derivative citizenship, 56–57 Dickstein, Samuel, 60, 61–62, 66, 83–84, 87, 200n65 Dies, Martin, 87, 94 Di Giulio, Palmer, 143, 144 Dillingham, William P., 27–32, 47; restrictive immigration bill, 27–29, 30, 35, 39–40, 48–49 Dillingham Commission, 30–31, 32, 47 Dinnerstein, Leonard, 102, 106, 109 Dirksen, Everett, 141, 169, 170, 172, 228n135 disabilities. See ­mental disability; physical disability Di Silvestro, Giovanni, 61, 75, 80, 82, 83 displaced persons (DPs), 98, 101–10, 119, 129, 172, 203n3; Truman directive on, 102–3, 104, 106, 204n29

Index 255 Displaced Persons Act of 1948, 104, 105, 106–9, 110, 115, 129, 136, 145, 180, 206n55 Displaced Persons Act of 1950, 129, 136, 180 Displaced Persons Act of 1953, 129, 136 Displaced Persons Commission, 106–8, 109, 110, 136, 206n55 Dixiecrats. See Southern Demo­crats Dodsworth, W., 17 Donanzan, Caesar, 135, 137, 139, 148, 154, 173–74; Immigration Act of 1965 endorsement by, 162, 163, 165; pragmatism of, 151 Donnaruma, James, 32, 38, 47 Douglas, Paul, 208n101 dual citizenship, 106 Dulles, John Foster, 140 Duner v. Curran, 79 eastern Eu­rope: displaced persons, 105; refugees from Communism, 142, 146; stigmatization of, 7–12, 15, 21, 29, 31, 32, 36, 40, 43, 44, 52–53, 57, 59, 59–60, 62, 63, 71, 77, 80, 84, 126, 193n45; undocumented immigrants, 57. See also Jewish immigrants Eastland, James, 144, 148, 160, 166, 228n135; legislative power of, 125, 136, 141, 153, 174, 228n150 Edelstein, Julius, 112, 115, 117, 134, 136, 137 Egypt, refugees from, 145, 146, 155 Eisenhower, Dwight, 130, 133, 134, 135, 141, 212n8; immigration reform and, 142, 143, 144, 167, 178; preferential visas and, 148 Eliot, Charles W., 32 Elliott, Roland, 118 Ellis Island, 41, 85–86 Emergency Quota Act of 1921, 7, 43, 52–56, 75 ­enemy alien, 99–100 Engel, Irving, 205n36 Ennis, Edward J., 152 Errigo, Joseph, 170–71 Ervin, Sam, 133, 164, 169, 170, 172, 228n135 Ethiopia, Italian invasion of (1935), 95 eugenics, 8, 9, 11, 12, 30, 31, 33, 46 Eugenics Rec­ords Office, 59, 84

Eugenics Research Association, 46, 59 Eu­ro­pean immigrants, 8, 9, 14, 177, 195–96n82, 200n65; national origin quota system for, 71. See also displaced persons; refugees; specific nationalities executive branch: first Jewish cabinet member, 22; first restrictionist president, 49; immigration policy, 4, 11, 20, 86–87, 150, 151, 154, 178, 179; veto power, 11, 23, 34–35, 38–39, 67. See also specific departments and presidents executive ­orders, 179, 181; LPC, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85 Fairchild, Henry Pratt, 63, 69 Fair Share Refugee Act of 1960, 62, 75–80, 155 ­family reunification: activist push for, 75–76, 97, 125–26; arbitrary rulings on, 78; backlog of applicants, 154; barriers to, 76, 77–79; bills facilitating, 84; con­temporary rejection of, 177–78; deportation and, 56, 90–91, 93, 94; Emergency Quota Act and, 52, 53; expanded relationships, 104, 135, 143, 148, 149, 153, 154; formal recognition of, 84; as fundamental right, 91; Immigration Act of 1957 and, 147; importance of, 5, 6, 12–13, 24, 34, 43–44, 50, 53, 58–59, 66, 67–69, 70, 111, 150, 158, 160, 161, 166, 168, 172, 176–77; increased immigration and, 88, 156; Italian immigrants and, 24, 34, 42, 79–80, 82–83, 107, 144, 145, 147–49, 150, 153–54, 168, 172, 177; Jewish immigrants and, 56, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 177; Lehman bill and, 114, 132; McCarran-­Walter Act and, 113, 126, 138, 148, 177; national origins quotas and, 75–76, 126, 132, 143, 144, 147–49, 154; naturalized citizens and, 57, 72, 75, 77, 80, 81, 107; Refugee Relief Act and, 140, 142; restrictionists and, 80–88; State Department policy on, 84; Supreme Court ruling on, 69, 78; visa issuance and, 68; ­after World War II, 98

256 Index farm workers, 55, 105 fascism, 61, 75, 79–80, 83, 89, 95; displaced persons and, 104; Italian colonies and, 129. See also Mussolini, Benito feeblemindedness, 59, 79 Feighan, Michael A., 157–58, 160–69, 172, 173 Feldman, Meyer, 159, 160 Ferguson, Homer, 103 Ferguson-­Kilgore bill, 108–9 Fiancées and Fiancés Act of 1946, 104, 149 Fields, Harold, 88 Fifth Amendment, 93 fingerprinting, 195–96n82 Fleegler, Robert, 37 Fong, Hiram, 228n135 Fong Yue Ting v. United States (1893), 93 Ford, Henry, 45 Foreign Language Information Ser­vice, 75–76 foreign-­language newspapers, 14, 35–36, 47 foreign policy, 4, 7, 62–63, 102, 162; immigration reform and, 101, 107, 110, 152, 159; national interest immigrants and, 101, 132, 143, 152; racist immigration laws and, 98, 178; refugee resettlement and, 140. See also anti-­Communism; Cold War Fourth Amendment, 93 Frank­furter, Felix, 86 Gabaccia, Donna R., 69, 184n22, 188n36 Gardner, Augustus Peabody, 28, 31 Gardner-­Burnett bills, 35, 38 Garland, Libby, 58, 89, 185n35 Geary Act of 1892, 91, 92 General Order 106 (1928), 92 Gentlemen’s Agreement (U.S.-­Japan), 29, 188n36 German American Jews, 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 14, 15, 16, 21–22, 23, 25, 31–32, 61, 62 German Americans, 17, 25, 31, 37, 185n27; organ­izations of, 10, 20, 99; politics and, 11; quota system and, 64, 65–66, 73 Germany: displaced persons in, 102, 108,

109; immigrant admissions quota, 100; immigrants from, 7–8, 19; treatment of Jews (1930s), 86. See also Nazism Giaccone, Francis X., 71, 95 Gibbons, James, 29, 41, 48, 115, 118 Goldfogle, Henry, 28, 32, 34 Goldman, Samuel, 56–57 Goldman v. Tod, 56 Good Neighbor Policy, 170 Gossett, Ed Lee, 104 Gottlieb, Solomon, 69 Grant, Madison, 66 ­Great Depression (1930s), 71, 72, 80, 81, 96 ­Great Society, 151, 155, 174 Greek immigrants, 80, 109, 154, 156 Griffith, William B., 93 Haitians, 67, 176 Hall, Prescott F., 14, 20 Hammering, Louis, 14–15, 35 Hansen, Marcus, 73 Harding, Warren G., 49, 52, 53, 59, 67 Harrison, Earl G., 102, 103, 127 Hart, Philip, 154, 157, 160, 164, 170, 228n135 Hart-­Celler Act. See Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 Haymarket Square bombing (1886), 8 head tax, 12, 19, 27, 28, 29, 31, 39 health. See physical disability Hearst, William Randolph, 22 Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), 38, 39, 50, 56, 102, 106, 126, 158; immigration reform bill and, 163, 164; refugee resettlement and, 139, 140, 146, 160 Hester, Torrie, 197n109 Hill, Joseph, 73, 74 Hiss, Alger, 109 History of the American ­People (Wilson), 8 Hitler, Adolf, 84 Hoffman, Walter W., 63 Holocaust, 101, 110, 205n36 Homeland Security Department, U.S., 177 Hoover, Herbert, 74, 81, 82–83, 84, 86 Horney, Ainsley, 99 Hourwich, Isaac A., 30–31, 33

Index 257 House Appropriations Committee, 165 House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, 10, 27–28, 31, 40, 45, 46, 48, 49, 54, 56, 62, 76, 81–84, 85, 117; conservative chairs of, 72; “scientific” restrictive method and, 59–60 House Committee on Un-­American Activities, 87 House Judiciary Committee, 103, 108, 112, 119, 131, 134, 135, 153, 154, 162; Subcommittee on Immigration, 158, 160, 165, 168–69 House Rules Committee, 28, 93, 165 Hughes, Charles Evans, 46, 66 Hull, Cordell, 86, 87 Hull, Harry, 76 humanitarianism, 13, 25, 38, 44, 47, 50 ­human rights, 50, 62, 91, 140 Humphrey, Hubert, 114, 115, 127, 212n8. See also Lehman-­Humphrey bill Hungarian immigrants, 3, 21, 35, 80 Hungarian Revolution (1956), refugees from, 142, 143, 145–46 Husband, W. W., 54, 56, 77 identification (ID) cards, 92 illegal immigration. See undocumented immigrants illiteracy. See literacy test immigrant advocacy organ­izations, 10, 12, 17, 23–24, 27–33; campaign against quota system, 65–66, 71, 128; co­ali­tion of, 13; “old” vs. “new,” 30. See also specific organ­izations Immigration Act of 1882, 9, 12 Immigration Act of 1885, 9 Immigration Act of 1891, 9 Immigration Act of 1903, 20 Immigration Act of 1907, 27–29, 65 Immigration Act of 1917, 7, 15, 41–44, 65; critics of, 44, 47–48; loophole in, 56, 85, 177 Immigration Act of 1921. See Emergency Quota Act of 1921 Immigration Act of 1924, 6, 7, 12–13, 35, 43–70, 107, 113, 175, 178; campaign

against, 44, 61–65, 71, 72–73, 95, 96; defenders of, 64–65; delayed implementation of, 73–75; enactment (1929) of, 71; exclusions, 43, 53, 63, 66, 67–68, 78, 83, 177, 197n113; legislation following, 123; passage of, 66–70; pre­ce­dent set by, 77; prob­lems created by, 94; State Department empowerment by, 85–86; undocumented immigrants and, 88–89. See also national origins quota system Immigration Act of 1959, 153, 154 Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. See McCarran-­Walter Act of 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act of 1957, 145, 146, 147, 149 Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, 4, 99, 133, 151–74, 177, 228nn135, 139; backlash to, 174; contents of, 158; endorsing organ­izations, 164–66; hearings on, 167–71; passage of, 151, 172–73; restrictionists and, 177; significance of, 174, 182; three objectives of, 160; vote on, 171–72 Immigration and Naturalization Ser­vice, 101, 109, 153 Immigration Board, 160, 223n53 Immigration Bureau, 22, 58, 75, 85, 89, 90, 198n16 Immigrant Invasion (Warne), 8 Immigration Protective League (IPL), 17–18 immigration reform, 1–13; activists in 1930s, 97; activists in 2018, 175; bipartisan commission, 127–28; bulwarks against, 153; conditions needed for, 156; constrained agenda of, 98–99; final push for, 152–70; Lehman bill and, 114–16, 126, 132, 135–36, 167, 226n107; obstacles to, 136, 137; Truman executive order, 127–28; ­after World War II, 88, 97, 98–124 Immigration Restriction League (IRL), 9–12, 14, 20, 31, 44, 63, 185n27; literacy test and, 39; quota system and, 69; racism of, 21; U.S. presidents and, 49

258 Index In­de­pen­dent Order of B’nai B’rith. See B’nai B’rith Industrial Commission, U.S., 18, 19, 20 “inferior” groups. See eugenics; race insanity, 20, 43 intelligence mea­sure­ments, 45 interethnic alliances, 97, 99, 115, 175–76 Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees, 87, 139–40 Internal Security Act of 1950, 109–10, 111 International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union, 113 International Rescue Committee, 102 Inter-­R acial Council, 47–48 IQ test, 45 Irish Americans, 7–8, 10, 11, 17, 19, 20, 25, 64, 151, 185n27 isolationists, 133, 178, 193n45 Israel, State of, 108, 110, 139, 146 Italian American Demo­cratic Union of Greater New York, 24 Italian American ­Labor Council, 162 Italian Americans, 1–2, 4; anti-­ Communism of, 105–6; basis of attacks on, 43; Cold War and, 5; Demo­cratic Party and, 80; Dies bill support by, 94; displaced persons legislation and, 103, 105–6, 107, 108, 129; Fascist schism among, 75, 95; immigration reform and, 5, 7, 13–17, 21–24, 26, 32, 34–35, 64–65, 69–73, 76, 94–95, 96, 105–6, 110, 116, 126, 129–30, 137, 150, 151, 155, 156–57, 170–71, 175, 178, 179–82; leaders of, 15, 74–75; literacy test position of, 40–41; Mussolini policies and, 82–83; national organ­izations, 16, 23–24, 26, 74–75, 120 (see also American Committee on Italian Migration; Order Sons of Italy in Amer­i­ca); patriotism of, 37; po­liti­cal action and, 95; prejudices against, 12; prominent leaders of, 74–75; quota system and, 49, 50, 51, 54, 55, 60, 73–74, 113, 129–31; refugee resettlement and, 107, 139; transnational lives of, 4–5, 16,

79–80, 100, 180; as voting bloc, 95; World War II and, 99–100 Italian Chamber of Commerce (N.Y.), 30, 49, 55 Italian Communist Party, 130, 131 Italian immigrants, 7, 11, 12, 21, 188n36; arrival numbers of, 80, 156; assimilation of, 34; barriers to, 162–63, 189; categorization of, 11; continued homeland ties of, 4–5, 16, 22, 26, 34, 36, 55, 61, 65, 72, 79–80, 95, 180; criticisms of, 19, 36, 37; declining numbers of, 72; Emigration Bureau closure and, 89; ­family reunification and, 24, 34, 42, 79–80, 82–83, 107, 144, 145, 147–49, 150, 153–54, 168, 172, 177; illegal entry of, 58; literacy test and, 34; McCarran-­Walter bill and, 129; Mussolini government and, 61, 79–80, 82–83, 89, 95; naturalization and, 48; patterns of, 4; quotas for, 54–55, 112, 156; Red Scare (1920) and, 45; ste­reo­types of, 1, 2, 5, 19, 21, 22, 27, 52, 80, 90, 99–100, 184n22; undocumented, 58, 88–91 Italian-­language press, 64–65, 89, 94, 95 Italian refugees, 129–30, 138–40, 146, 147, 155 Italy: Cold War and, 116, 140, 144, 147; Communists and, 105, 106, 130, 131; displaced persons in, 102; ­family reunion blockage and, 79–83; Fascism and, 61, 75, 79–80, 83, 89, 95, 104, 129 (see also Mussolini, Benito); immigrant returns to, 4–5, 16, 22, 26, 34, 36, 55, 61, 65, 72, 79–80, 95, 180; immigrant waiting list, 80; national origin quotas and, 51–52, 54; unification of, 22; U.S. medical inspectors and, 196n84; World War I defeat of, 41, 61 Ives, Irving M., 130, 140, 146 Jamaica, 111 Jamaica BWI Progressive League, 135 Japa­nese American Citizens League ( JACL), 114, 117–20, 122, 125, 158, 160, 164, 188n47 Japa­nese American internment, 81

Index 259 Japa­nese American Ser­vice Committee, 166 Japa­nese ­enemy aliens, 99 Japa­nese exclusion, 21, 35, 67, 68 Japa­nese immigration, 156; Gentlemen’s Agreement and, 29, 188n36 Japanese-­U.S. relations, 29, 62, 101 Javits, Jacob K., 133, 146, 170, 171, 228n135 Jenkins, Thomas Albert, 77, 84 Jewish Americans: Demo­cratic Party and, 80; Dillingham bill and, 39–40; displaced persons plight and, 102–103, 106, 108, 110; generational division among, 95–96; of German descent, 1, 2, 4, 7, 14, 15, 16, 21–22, 23, 25, 31–32, 61, 62; immigration reform activists, 23–30, 43, 46, 61–62, 69–72, 76, 83–85, 93–96, 102–10, 118, 126, 134–35, 181–82 (see also Jewish organ­izations); leaders of, 1, 15, 24–25, 28, 37, 43; McCarran-­Walter Act and, 120, 122, 127; national immigration policy and, 16–17, 23, 24–26, 27, 28, 33–34, 49–50, 65–66; patriotism of, 37; quota system and, 49–50, 55–57, 60, 61–62, 65–66, 73–74, 113; racial vs. religious identity of, 11, 125, 185n35; refugee crisis and, 86–88, 95–96, 100–101, 131; ste­reo­types of, 2, 14 Jewish homeland. See Israel, State of; Zionism Jewish immigrants, 1, 2, 7, 11, 17, 25; deportation and, 56–57; ­family reunification and, 56, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 177; Italian immigrants compared with, 4–5, 19, 22; literacy test and, 34; naturalization rate of, 19, 36; from Nazi Germany, 84–88; quota system and, 45, 46, 55, 73, 84–85; racism and, 11, 21; Red Scare (1920) and, 45; religious persecution clause and, 44; restrictionists and, 11, 21, 37, 83–84; ste­reo­types of, 2, 29, 80, 90, 106; undocumented, 58, 88, 90–93. See also Jewish refugees Jewish ­Labor Committee, 166 Jewish organ­izations, 12, 18, 24–26, 31–32,

136; Catholic hierarchy relations with, 136–37; co­ali­tion building and, 33; Lehman-­Celler bill and, 134–35; strategic differences among, 24–25; two refugee crises and, 145–46. See also American Jewish Committee; American Jewish Congress; B’nai B’rith Jewish refugees: Cold War crises and, 145–46; creation of Jewish homeland and, 100, 103, 108, 110; as displaced persons, 105, 204n29; HIAS resettlement of, 139, 140, 146, 160; Nazi persecution and, 71, 84–88, 93, 95–96, 101, 110, 173; non-­European, 155; U.S. sponsors of, 139 Johnson, Albert, 51–52, 61, 68; restrictive immigration and, 35, 46–47, 59–60, 72. See also Immigration Act of 1924 Johnson, Lyndon B., 123, 141, 224n72; ­Great Society legislation of, 151, 166, 174; immigration reform and, 4, 151, 158–63, 164, 170, 172–73, 178, 182, 226n107, 227n132 Johnson-­Reed Act. See Immigration Act of 1924 Joint Conference on Alien Legislation, 115, 118 Ju­nior Order of United American Mechanics, 136 Justice Department, U.S., 101, 146, 160, 177 Katzenbach, Nicholas, 165, 167, 168, 170, 228n139 Keating, Kenneth B., 142, 144, 148 Keep Amer­i­ca Committee, 133 Kellor, Frances, 37 Kelly, Clyde, 83 Kennedy, Edward M., 154, 161, 166, 169, 170 Kennedy, John F.: assassination of, 158; immigration reform and, 4, 150, 154, 158, 159, 160, 161, 171, 174, 178, 226n107, 227n131, 228n135, 228n139; presidency of, 151, 152–57, 161; Senate activity of, 123, 140, 144, 145, 147, 148 Kennedy, Robert F., 154 Kerr, John, 93

260 Index Kerr-­Coolidge bill (1936), 93, 94 Kilgore, Harley, 135 Knights of L ­ abor, 8, 11 Know Nothing Party, 18, 32 Kohler, Max J., 30, 31, 47, 62–63, 82, 85, 195–96nn82, 84 Kristallnacht (1938), 86 Ku Klux Klan, 45 ­labor: anti-­immigrant arguments and, 20, 26–27, 50; contract, 81; immigrant, 10, 14, 18, 19, 32, 35, 46, 48, 49, 64; Mexican, 46, 49, 111, 112, 191n116, 192n22, 197n109; unskilled, 72, 112, 113. See also or­ga­nized ­labor; skills, immigrants with ­Labor and Commerce Secretary, U.S., 22, 29, 32, 47 ­Labor Department, U.S., 47, 55, 56, 57, 73; immigrant restrictions, 77–79, 198n16; Immigration and Naturalization Ser­vice moved from, 101; immigration statistics, 157; undocumented immigrants and, 85, 86, 92, 93, 94 ­labor ­unions. See or­ga­nized ­labor; specific ­unions La Guardia, Fiorello H., 37, 41, 47, 66, 71; anti-­Fascism and, 74, 83; displaced persons and, 103; ­family reunification and, 76, 79, 83, 84; opposition to immigrant ID cards, 92 Langer, William, 140–41 Latin Amer­i­ca: exemption from quota system, 63, 67; ­family reunification and, 177; Good Neighbor Policy, 170; immigrants from, 73, 169; Italian mi­grant relocation in, 139, 140; Jewish refugee relocation in, 100, 139, 146. See also Central Amer­i­ca Laughlin, Harry H., 59–60, 84 Lauterbach, Edward, 24–25 League of Christian ­Women, 169 League of German American Associations, 20 League of Nations Conference on Refugees, 86

League of United Latin American Citizens, 188n47 League of ­Women Voters, 73 Lehman, Herbert H., 85, 104, 112, 113–16, 117, 120, 127, 167; Catholic hierarchy and, 136–37; reform bill provisions, 114–16, 119, 126, 132, 226n107. See also Refugee Relief Act of 1953 Lehman-­Celler bill, 132–36, 137, 142 Leonard, Henry B., 25 Lewis, Read, 118 Life (magazine), 37 Liskofsky, Sidney, 151, 173 literacy test, 9–21, 23–42; adoption of (1917), 12, 14, 43, 44; Burnett bill and, 33–34; Dillingham bill and, 39; endorsements of, 19–20; exemptions from, 4, 28, 34, 40, 42; first pop­u­lar­izer of, 21, 42; undocumented immigrants and, 58; illiteracy and, 22, 40, 68; Italian Americans and, 40–41; lobbyists for, 20–21, 26, 32; opponents of, 10, 11, 14, 15, 16, 18, 20, 24–25, 27, 28, 30–40, 42, 47, 65; override of Wilson’s veto of, 36, 39, 40, 41–42; as restrictionist tool, 32, 44; World War I and, 36–37 Littauer, Lucius, 28 Lodge, Henry Cabot: Dillingham bill and, 27–29, 30; Immigration Restriction Committee and, 9–10; literacy test and, 10–11, 16, 18, 20, 21, 42; national origins quotas and, 66; Versailles Treaty and, 45 Low, Seth, 32 LPC clause (likely to become public charge), 78–84, 97; Hoover executive order, 82–83, 84 Luce, Clare Boothe, 140, 212n8 Lutherans, 106, 119; Immigration Ser­vice, 164; Resettlement Ser­vice, 108; World Federation, 102 lynchings, 12 MacCormack, Daniel, 93 Mafia, 27 Magee, Walter V., 57

Index 261 Magnuson Act of 1943, 101, 104 Marchisio, Juvenal P., 116, 129–30, 131, 137, 139, 148, 154, 162–63 Marshall, Louis: anti-­restrictionist campaign, 26, 28, 33, 34, 35, 38–53, 62, 63; Commissioner of Immigration v. Gottlieb and, 69; critique of Johnson-­Reed Act, 71; deportations and, 56, 57; distinguished l­ egal background of, 25; ­family reunification barriers and, 76, 77, 78, 79; literacy test exemption and, 34; on patriotism of American Jews; po­liti­cal connections of, 57; pragmatism of, 33; tactical approach of, 26 Masaoka, Mike, 114, 117–18, 120, 121, 122, 125, 173 Mayo-­Smith, Richard, 7, 8, 31 McCall, Samuel, 9–10 McCarran, Patrick, 98, 107, 108, 109, 110, 113, 116–17, 118, 122, 123; anti-­Communism and, 120, 128, 137–38; Celler revision bill and, 142; death of, 125; opposition to Refugee Act of 1953, 131, 140, 141 McCarran-­Walter Act of 1952, 109, 111, 112–23, 130–36, 172, 178; ad hoc legislation and, 156; adjustments to, 143, 155; amendment ban ­until 1957, 142; anti-­Semitism and, 120, 127, 128, 131; compromise and, 126; critiques of, 125–28, 129, 135–38, 159, 212n8; debates over, 13, 179; defenders of, 127, 130, 159; as discriminatory, 125, 132; effects of, 123, 125–26; ­family reunification and, 113, 126, 138, 148, 177; passage of, 122–24, 131, 160; popu­lar support for, 135–36, 207n86; provisions of, 111–12, 147, 156; revision and replacement bills, 115, 132, 133, 142–44, 149; supporters of, 117–18, 127, 135–36; testimonies against, 112–13; Truman veto of, 119, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 158; unsustainability of, 147, 150. See also national origins quota system McCarthyism, 117, 120 McClellan, John, 228n135 McCormack, John, 119, 131

McFarland, Ernest, 116 McGuire, Constantine E., 73 McKinley, William, 18, 19–20 McLeod, Scott, 140, 141 medical inspectors, 196n84 melting pot, 63 ­mental disability, 20, 43, 46, 57, 59, 79 Mertz, Homer, 99 Mexican Americans, 188n47 Mexican Revolution, 40, 42 Mexico, 53, 63, 67, 68, 73; illegal immigration from, 58, 81, 143, 228n150; immigrant ­labor from, 46, 49, 111, 112, 191n116, 192n22, 197n109 mi­grant workers, 72 Migration and Refugee Assistance Act of 1962, 152 Millenson, Roy, 155, 163 Miller, Alexander F., 96 Mohler, Bruce, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122; on immigration reform, 125, 136–37, 173 Moley, Raymond, 86 Molina, Natalia, 186n2, 188n47, 192n22 Morgenthau, Henry, 102 Moyers, Bill, 159 Muslim bans (2017), 176 Mussolini, Benito, 61, 65, 79–80; closure of Emigration Bureau, 89; ­family reunification restrictions, 82–83; Italian immigrant support for, 95 National Association for the Advancement of Colored ­People (NAACP), 86, 113, 135 Nagel, Charles, 32 National Association of Manufacturers, 37, 49, 64 National Catholic Resettlement Council, 116, 129 National Catholic Rural Life Conference, 115 National Catholic Welfare Conference (NCWC), 102, 103, 106, 108, 117–18, 119, 120, 125, 136, 146, 158, 160, 164 National Catholic Welfare Council, 206n55 National Chinese Welfare Council, 160, 164

262 Index National Committee for Constructive Immigration Legislation, 48 National Committee for Immigration Reform, 167 National Community Relations Advisory Council (NCRAC), 115, 126, 160, 163 National Conference of Catholic Charities, 118 National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., 137 National Council on Immigration and Citizenship, 156–57 national interest immigrants, 101, 132, 143, 152–54 National League for American Citizenship, 88 National Liberal Immigration League (NLIL), 24–38; American Jewish Committee contrasted with, 24, 25, 26; broad nonsectarian co­ali­tion and, 33–34; Dillingham bill opposition and, 29, disintegration of, 38; influence of, 24; tactics of, 26, 28, 32–36; National Lutheran Council, 106, 119 national origins quota system, 4, 5, 13, 31, 43, 44, 45–70, 99, 101; abolition of, 174, 180, 182 (see also Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965); allocation basis, 8, 45, 48, 53, 55, 65, 68, 72–73, 74, 77; allocation basis change, 99, 157; bill establishing, 52–53, 60–70; bypassing of, 80, 102–3, 156; Catholic church and, 137; Celler flexible system, 142–44; census (1790) basis, 73; census (1890) basis, 60, 62, 66, 68, 69; census (1910) basis, 53; census (1920) basis, 47, 57, 60, 74; census (1950) basis, 114, 132; census (1960) basis, 152; challenges to, 71, 73–74, 137, 147; co­ali­tions against, 47–49; Cold War and, 98, 110, 124, 160; computation of, 66; congressional committees and, 49; critics of, 5, 45–49, 60–61, 68, 113, 123, 126–28, 131, 134–35, 152, 160, 162, 167, 169, 171; cruelty of, 62; damaged U.S. reputation from, 159; delayed start of,

73–74; displaced persons admittance and, 101, 102–4, 108–10; Emergency Quota Act (1921) and, 7, 43, 52–56, 75; exemptions from, 49, 53, 63, 66–69, 78, 79, 111, 112, 133, 158, 160, 161, 162, 165, 168, 197n113; explanation of, 69; ­family reunification and, 75–76, 126, 132, 143, 144, 147–49, 154; final challenge to, 13, 59–70, 72–80, 157–58; flexibility recommendations, 64; Italian American campaign against, 105–6, 116, 126, 129–31, 180; Jews and, 45, 46, 47, 49–50, 55–57, 60, 61–62, 65–66, 73–74, 84–85, 100–101, 113; Kennedy modifications of, 153, 158; Lehman reform bill and, 114–15, 132; loopholes in, 56, 72 (see also ­family reunification); McCarran-­Walter Act and, 111, 119, 123, 132; most restrictionist years of, 88; phasing out of, 160; prioritized immigrants and, 126; racial aspects of, 6, 45, 107, 117, 144, 145, 198n16; reallocation of unused quotas, 112, 113, 117, 118, 124, 130, 135, 141, 144, 145, 153; reform proposals, 126, 132, 135, 154, 155–56; refugee admissions and, 129, 130, 131, 132, 142; repeal phases, 73–74, 150, 151, 164, 167; supporters of, 66, 128, 169–70; waiting lists, 80 nativists, 2, 6–9, 17, 18, 32, 33, 177, 185n27; congressional co­ali­tion of, 1, 6, 98; Dillingham Commission report and, 31; ­family reunification and, 76, 82; federal bureaucrats and, 31, 72, 77–78; literacy test and, 14; 1930s and, 96; 1950s and, 98, 107, 133, 143; racism of, 21, 22, 25, 45, 63–65, 178; rhe­toric of, 63–64; State Department and, 138; Trump Administration and, 178, 179; types of attacks by, 36 naturalization, 5, 9, 48, 53, 57, 122n85, 188n39; barriers to, 82, 101; ­family reunification and, 57, 72, 75, 77, 80, 81, 107; Italian Fascist opposition to, 79; Jewish immigrant rate of, 19, 36; ­Labor Department and, 77; racialization of, 198n16; rates of, 36, 77

Index 263 Nazism: American sympathizers with, 96; displaced persons and, 108, 109; Holocaust, 101, 110; Jewish refugees from, 71, 84–88, 93, 95–96, 101, 173 Neely, Matthew, 1 Nelson, Henry Loomis, 17 New Deal, 12–13, 84, 96 New York City, 16, 106; antirestrictionist mass meetings, 10–11, 18, 32, 66; immigrant advocates, 10–11, 83–84; Italian American community, 24, 55, 65; politicians, 94; prominent Italian and Jewish Americans, 23–24, 49–50 New York Non-­Partisan Citizenship Committee, 38 New York State, 17, 41, 60, 74–75, 76, 80, 130 New York Times, 62, 63, 88, 126, 168, 171 Ngai, Mae, 66, 73, 98, 132–33 Niebuhr, Reinhold, 85 9/11 terrorist attack, 177 Nixon, Richard M., 152 Nordic race, 8, 71, 73, 74 Norris, James J., 129 North American Civic League for Immigrants, 37 O’Connor, Edward M., 106 O’Grady, John, 118, 119, 122, 127, 136–37, 140 Old World in the New, The (Ross), 7 open-­door policy, 9 Order of B’nai B’Brith. See B’Nai B’rith Order Sons of Italy in Amer­ic­ a (OSIA), 23–24, 26, 32, 34, 37, 38, 41, 143; antirestrictionist campaign of, 105–6; campaign against McCarran-­Walter bill, 117, 124, 125; Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, 105–6, 137; Corsi firing and, 141; Italian Fascists and, 75, 80; Johnson reform bill and, 162, 170–71; Kennedy-­Walter bill and, 144; Lehman-­ Celler bill and, 134, 135; McCarran-­ Walter Act critique, 126; national origins quotas and, 60–61, 67, 135, 137; refugee resettlement and, 139; undocumented immigrants and, 91

Order Sons of Italy of the State of New York, 60 or­ga­nized ­labor, 8, 11, 20, 22, 113; Americani­ zation programs and, 37; Displaced Persons Act of 1948 and, 108; immigration issues and, 20, 22, 26, 112, 132, 164, 172; Red Scare of 1920 and, 45. See also specific ­unions Orr, Alexander E., 17 Orthodox Jews, 103, 108 Palmer raids (1920), 49 Passing of the ­Great Race, The (Madison), 8 Passport Control Act of 1918, 75 passports: forgery of, 89–90; issuance of, 51–52 Pastore, John O., 148–49, 154 Path de­pen­dency theory, 88 Patriotic Order of Sons of Amer­ic­ a, 31 patriotic socie­ties, 37, 39, 81, 207n86 Patton, Pola, 57 Patton v. Tod, 56, 57 paupers, 43, 68 Perkins, Frances, 85, 86, 93, 94, 101 Perlman, Nathan D., 76, 79 “permanent guilt” princi­ple, 110 persecution, 5, 36, 40, 69, 84–85, 93, 132. See also religious persecution petitions, 27, 33, 35 Petluck, Ann S., 158 Philadelphia Board of Trade, 27 Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, 72–73 physical disability, 9, 19, 20, 29, 30–31, 68; medical inspectors and, 196n84 Pisani, Lawrence Frank, 95 Poland, 7, 32, 35, 72, 80, 105, 108, 109 Poletti, Charles, 103 po­liti­cal parties, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12–13, 16, 22, 29, 84, 94, 185nn27,31; conservatives and, 72; ethnic vote and, 18; immigrant policies and, 26–27, 31, 41, 70, 156–57; immigrant realignment with, 44–45; immigrant ste­reo­types and, 80. See also Demo­cratic Party; Progressive movement; Republican Party

264 Index po­liti­cal refugees, 28, 40, 42, 85–88, 109 Pope, Fortune, 139 Pope, Generoso, 94 Presbyterian Church, 92 presidency. See executive branch; executive ­orders; specific presidents presidential election of 1860, 18 presidential election of 1898, 18 presidential election of 1912, 9, 33, 35 presidential election of 1928, 54, 73–74 presidential election of 1948, 106 presidential election of 1952, 115, 116, 117, 126 presidential election of 1956, 142 presidential election of 1960, 150, 151, 152 presidential election of 1964, 163–64 presidential election of 2016, 178 professionals, 78, 79, 143, 197n113 Progressive movement, 9, 12, 48, 185n31; intellectuals and, 14; legislative reforms and, 19, 26, 31; literacy test support, 27–28, 31 Prohibition, 12, 45 prostitutes, 43 Protestant Episcopal Church, 8 Protestant organ­izations, 37, 45, 104–5, 106, 108, 118, 122, 126, 127, 137, 185n27 public charge. See LPC clause quotas. See national origins quota system race, 4, 6–12, 118; Amer­i­ca First Party and, 49, 99; color and, 7, 8, 9, 21, 23, 27, 53, 126, 141, 193n45; con­temporary rhe­toric of, 178; Emergency Quota Act (1921) and, 7, 43, 52–56, 75; immigration law hierarchy of, 176; Jewish identity and, 11, 86, 125, 185n35; language of, 54, 63; nativists and, 21, 22, 25, 45, 63–65, 178; naturalization pro­cess and, 198n16; preferential, 7, 8, 27, 68, 71, 74, 146, 170; as quota system ­factor, 6, 45, 71, 107, 117, 144, 145, 169–70, 198n16; restrictionists and, 7–9, 12, 21, 23, 27, 36, 43, 46, 53, 54, 55, 59, 63, 67, 68, 71, 75, 98, 107, 111, 114, 146, 161, 170, 178; “scientific” racism and, 8, 10; Speranza

writings and, 23, 53–54, 193n45; typologies of, 63; of undocumented immigrants, 91; U.S. composition of, 104, 177; white supremacists and, 9, 27, 126, 141. See also eugenics Races of Eu­rope, The (Ripley), 8 racial profiling, 92 Raker, John, 54 Reagan, Ronald, 177 Red Scare (1920), 45, 49 Reed, David A., 63, 66, 68, 71. See also Immigration Act of 1924 Refugee Relief Act of 1953, 129–32, 138, 139, 140–42, 155, 226n107; expiration date, 142; expiration replacement bills, 144–45; Johnson-­Dirksen amendment, 141 Refugee Relief Program, 137 refugees, 5, 13, 42, 150, 154; Central Amer­i­ca, 181–82; Cold War, 130–31, 138, 140, 142, 145–46, 152, 155; con­temporary crisis of, 179, 181–82; Hungarian Revolution, 142; Immigration Act of 1965 and, 172; Jewish American aid to, 100–101; legislation, 99, 129, 130, 138–42, 154, 172; national origins quota system and, 129, 130, 131, 132, 142; permanent U.S. policy for, 160; po­liti­cal, 28, 40, 42, 85–88, 109; resettlement in 1930s of, 71, 84–88, 93, 95–96; resettlement in 1950s of, 130, 131, 138–47; State Department and, 100, 138, 140–41, 146, 147, 155; Suez crisis and, 145, 146; U.S. sponsors for, 138–39; World War I, 44; World War II, 77, 88, 99, 100–103, 110, 111. See also displaced persons; Italian refugees; Jewish refugees Regulation of Illegal Residence in the United States Act of 1929, 91 religious leaders, 8, 167; exemption from quota system, 69, 78, 79, 197n113 religious organ­izations, 64, 67, 115–16, 118–19; displaced persons plight and, 102–3, 106; refugee flow and, 138 religious persecution, 4, 28, 40, 42, 44, 53; Nazi Germany, 85, 93

Index 265 Republican Party, 18, 22, 143, 185n27; displaced persons legislation, 103–4; Dixiecrat co­ali­tion with, 130; immigrant vote and, 185n27; immigration reform and, 152, 162, 163; Lehman-­Celler bill and, 133; literacy test and, 27–29, 30; prominent Jewish members of, 25, 61; restrictive immigration and, 25, 26, 44–45, 49, 70, 80, 123, 178 Reynolds, Robert R., 93–94 Rice, James P., 158, 163 Ripley, William Z., 7, 8, 31 Rodino, Peter W., 168–69 Roo­se­velt, Eleanor, 103 Roo­se­velt, Franklin D., 12–13, 84, 85, 86–87, 94; immigration policy and, 87, 100–101, 178; Italian and Jewish support for. See also New Deal Roo­se­velt, Franklin D., Jr., 114 Roo­se­velt, Theodore, 19, 20, 22, 23, 27, 29, 188n36 Rosen, A. Abbot, 96 Rosenfield, Harry H., 106, 127 Rosenwald, Julius, 33 Rosenwald, Lessing, 205n36 Ross, Edward A., 7, 36 Rothenberg, Morris, 50 Rusk, Dean, 162, 224n76 Rus­sia, 7, 36, 45, 46, 56, 80. See also Soviet Union Rus­sian Jews, 56, 105 Sabath, Adolph J., 34, 46, 48, 101, 120 Sakada, Randolph, 122 Sanders, Leon, 38, 50 Scandinavian Americans, 73 Scaramelli, Louis J., 49 Schevelovitz, Rabbi, 78 Schiff, Jacob H., 25, 33, 40 Schlei, Norbert A., 160, 161 Schurz, Carl C., 18 Schwartz, Abba P., 159, 160, 161, 165, 166, 174 “scientific” racism, 8, 10 Sellaro, Vincenzo, 23 Senate Immigration Committee, 66, 130;

conservative chairs of, 9–11, 28, 72; national origins quota bill, 48, 49–51, 74 Senate Judiciary Committee, 117, 123, 134, 141, 153, 154, 161, 172, 228n135 Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization, 135, 140, 152, 160, 169, 170, 174 Senner, Joseph, 10, 17 settlement ­houses, 37 Shipstead, Henrik, 73 Siegel, Isaac, 45, 46 Simon, Abram, 56 Sirianni, Giuseppe, 82–83 Sixteenth Amendment, 93 skills, immigrants with, 5, 13, 49, 66, 67, 68, 84, 88, 98, 110, 131, 132, 143, 150; arrival statistics (1947–61), 157; prioritization of, 158, 160, 163, 166, 171, 172, 177–78; professional categories, 78, 79, 143, 197n113 Smith, Al, 54, 74 Smith, “Cotton Ed,” 40 Smoot, Dan, 143 smuggling rings, 89, 90 social engineering, 7–8. See also eugenics Socialist United Hebrew Trades, 10–11 social workers, 14 Society for the Protection of Italian Immigrants, 54 Sons of Italy G ­ rand Lodge, 74–75 Soros, George, 181 South, U.S.: African American migration from, 49; cheap l­ abor and, 27, 46; immigration politics, 11–12, 23, 26–27, 72, 164, 171–72 (see also Southern Demo­ crats); suffrage restrictions, 9, 27; white supremacy ideology, 8, 9, 27, 126, 141 South Amer­i­ca. See Latin Amer­i­ca Southard, Earl, 99 South Carolina, 40 Southern Demo­crats, 26–27, 40, 130, 164; influence of, 171–72; restrictive immigration and, 44–45, 70, 80, 84, 123, 151, 189n50, 226n107

266 Index southern Eu­rope: quota system and, 71; stigmatization of, 7–12, 14, 19, 21, 22, 27, 29, 31, 32, 35, 36, 43, 44, 52–53, 59–60, 63, 77, 80, 84, 184n22, 193n45; undocumented immigrants from, 57, 58. See also Italian immigrants Soviet Union, 105, 109, 116. See also Cold War Spatuzza, George, 125 Special Commission on Immigration and Naturalization, 127–29, 130, 132, 167 Speranza, Gino, 23, 53–54; “The Immigration Peril,” 54, 193n45 Starnes, Joseph, 93–94 State Department, U.S., 73, 79–80; displaced persons policy, 102, 108; ­family reunion policy, 84; immigrant restriction and, 46, 51, 65, 75, 81, 84, 85–86, 93, 227n132; immigration reform bill, 160, 169, 170; Jewish categorization and, 25; refugee resettlement and, 100, 138, 140–41, 146, 147 steamship companies, 10, 23, 51, 54 ste­reo­types, 2, 19, 29, 80, 90, 99, 106, 143, 182 sterilization, 12, 46, 59, 99 Stettinius, Edward R., Jr., 103 Stimson, Henry L., 81–82 Stratton, William G., 103–4 Straus, Oscar S., 17, 22, 29, 32, 85–86 strikes, 8, 49 Stritch, Samuel A., 116 Suez crisis (1956), 145, 146 suffrage. See voters Sulzberger, Cyrus L., 25 Sulzberger, Mayer, 33 Sulzer, William, 32 Supreme Court, U.S., 69, 78, 93 Swanstrom, Edward E., 116, 118, 119, 122, 129, 130, 137, 138, 139, 150, 154 Swing, Joseph M., 140, 148 Taft, Robert, 103 Taft, William Howard, 35, 38 Tammany Hall, 94

Tanner, Paul, 120, 121 Taylor, Blair, 119 temporary protective status (TPS), 176, 229n2, 229n4 Teutonic race, 8 Tichenor, Daniel J., 86, 159, 164, 185n31, 206n63, 223n48, 228n150 Tolstoy Foundation, 119 travel ban (2017), 229n2 treaties. See key word Tree of Life Synagogue shootings (Pittsburgh), 181 Trevor, John, 66 Trujillo, Rafael, 139 Truman, Harry S.: changed po­liti­cal climate (1952) and, 117; displaced persons directive, 102–3, 104, 106, 204n29; immigration policy, 13, 107, 127–29, 130, 132, 167, 178; veto of McCarran-­Walter Act, 109, 119, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 158 Trump, Donald J., 178, 179, 229n2, 229nn4,5, 230n12 Tunisia, 155 undocumented immigrants, 57–58, 88–97, 176, 178; ID cards and, 92; legislation on, 90–91, 94; from Mexico, 58, 81, 143, 228n150; reform advocates, 91–97, 106; Trump’s view of, 130n12 Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 30, 56, 195–96n82 ­unions. See or­ga­nized ­labor; specific ­unions United HIAS Ser­vice, 139, 140, 160 United Ser­vice for New Amer­i­cas, 106, 139 United Steelworkers of Amer­ic­ a, 164 university professors, 78, 79, 143, 197n113 unskilled workers, 112, 113 vagrants, 43 Valenti, Jack J., 159, 162, 163, 166, 170, 173, 224n72 Vandenberg, Arthur H., 103 Versailles Treaty (1919), 45

Index 267 Veterans of Foreign Wars, 112, 207n86 Villard, Henry, 17 Vinci, Adolfo, 51–52, 54–55, 196n84 visas, 52, 68, 75, 85; for displaced persons, 108; fourth-­preference, 147–48; LPC clause application and, 81, 84; for refugees, 87, 100, 140, 141, 145, 146, 147–48 Volksdeutsche, 102, 108, 109 voluntary agencies (VOLAGS), 102, 106 voters, 12, 18, 73, 84; immigrant, 28, 45; Southern white, 9, 27 Wadsworth, James Wolcott, 76, 91 Wagner, Stephen, 224n72 Wald, Lillian, 32, 48, 85 Walker, Francis (social theorist), 7–8, 31 Walter, Francis (U.S. congressman): anti-­Semitism and, 128; Celler bill and, 111, 112, 129, 135; Communist threat and, 137, 143; Corsi dismissal and, 140–41; Feighan successor to, 158; immigration bills of, 117, 118, 119, 120, 148–49; Kennedy relationship with, 150, 152, 154; legislative influence of, 122, 125, 136, 148, 151, 153–56; Refugee Relief Act and, 144, 145, 155. See also McCarran-­ Walter Act of 1952 War Brides Act of 1945, 104 war refugees. See refugees War Relief Ser­vices, 129 Wasem, Ruth, 189n50 Watchorn, Robert, 85–86 Watkins, Arthur, 130, 131, 134 Wells, Allen, 139 West, U.S., 10, 11, 12, 70, 72, 80 Western Hemi­sphere: exemption from quota system, 53, 63, 66, 67–68, 111, 112, 133, 158, 160, 161, 162, 165, 168; inclusion in quota system, 132, 133, 169, 170, 171, 172,

226n107, 227n132. See also Latin Amer­i­ca; Mexico White, Horace, 17 white supremacy ideology, 9, 27, 126, 141 Whom We ­Shall Welcome (report), 128 Wilson, Woodrow, 24, 35, 45; presidential vetoes, 36, 38–39, 40, 41–42, 49, 53; “scientific” racism and, 8, 184n22 Winborne, Miriam, 166 Wirtz, Willard, 157, 163, 166 Wise, Stephen, 32, 61–62, 69, 84, 86 workers. See ­labor World Council of Churches, 102 World War I, 6, 7, 10, 15, 36–46, 49; anti-­immigrant paranoia and, 7, 36, 41, 43, 44, 64, 65; immigrants’ ser­vice in, 51, 52, 53, 79; Italian immigrants and, 60, 61, 79; literacy test and, 36–37; Passport Control Act and, 75; po­liti­cal climate following, 45–46, 67 World War II, 4, 5, 6, 7, 13; Chinese exclusion repeal and, 101; displaced persons and, 98, 101–6; ­enemy alien designation and, 99–100; immigration reform and, 88, 97, 98, 107, 110, 116–17; Italian Americans and, 99–100; Japa­nese American internment and, 81; quotas and, 77; refugees, 77, 88, 99, 100–103, 110, 111; U.S. anti-­Semitism and, 96 Wycislo, Aloysius, 129, 146 xenophobia, 5, 43 “yellow peril,” 193n45 Young Men’s and Young ­Women’s Christian Associations, 37, 73, 92 Zionism, 32, 100, 103, 108, 185n35 Zolberg, Aristide R., 69, 87–88, 132–33 Zucca, Antonio, 24

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