The Johnson Reed Act

Name
Instructor
Course
Date
The Johnson-Reed Act
The Johnson-Reed Act, also referred to as the Immigration Act of 1924, was a measure that was taken by the United States to reduce immigration rates. According to this act, the calculation of the number of immigrants from a specific country that were allowed into the United States was based on the number of immigrants from that country. Only 2% of immigrants from a particular country were allowed to migrate to the United States. The act also provided that if 2% of immigrants in a population were below 100, then the immigration office was not to allow further immigration from that country (Lee 61).
The Immigration Act was discriminatory in nature, but successful in the reduction of immigrants. The Immigration Act was received with hostility from a particular group of people because it was perceived to be lenient with specific countries and discriminated against other nations. According to Lee, the Johnson-Reed Act reduced immigrants by close to 50% (35). The discriminatory Act fell heavily on Eastern Europe, which as analyzed by historians and scholars was a significant reason for the cut relationship between the two countries. The Eastern Europe immigrants were reduced by 88% upon enactment of the 1924 Act. Other countries that were affected by the act include Italy that had a reduced rate of 89% (Lee 27). Many people, however, saw the Act as a great idea of preserving the American homogeneity. The Immigration Act was also said to have been inspired by eugenics.

Eugenics was an old government practice that referred to the advocacy of improvement of human hereditary qualities through selective breeding. Therefore, the question whether the act had positive or negative impacts on the American immigration depends on the angle from which one examines it.
Work Cited
Lee, Catherine. “Family reunification and the limits of immigration reform: Impact and legacy of
the 1965 Immigration Act.” Sociological Forum. Vol. 30. 2015.