Immigration Act Bars Entry of Anarchists to the U.S.
The 1918 Immigration Act, passed on this day in the middle of anti-radical hysteria during World War I, amended the restrictive 1903 Immigration Act (passed on March 3, 1903) to expand the definition of, and restrictions on, anarchists.
The new law barred the entry of anarchists into the U.S., and also allowed their deportation. Anarchists were defined as anyone teaching opposition to organized government, teaching the violent overthrow of government, or were members of organizations that advocated those ideas. It also repealed the provision in the 1903 law that had exempted from deportation immigrants who had lived in the U.S. for five years or longer.
In the years ahead, additional restrictive immigration laws were passed. The 1924 Immigration Act, passed on May 26, 1924, imposed a national origins quota system that discriminated against people from Southern and Eastern Europe seeking to come to the U.S. The 1952 McCarran-Walter Act, effective June 27, 1952, was a Cold War measure that excluded alleged “subversives” from the U.S. and allowed the government to deport alleged “subversive” immigrants already in the U.S. The 1965 Immigration Act, which President Lyndon Johnson signed into law on October 3, 1965, abolished the 1924 national origins quota system in favor of a non-discriminatory policy.
View a timeline of anarchist incidents in America, 1886-1920 here
Learn more: Margaret Sands Orchowski, Immigration and the American Dream: Battling the Political Hype and Hysteria (2008)
Read about the hysteria of the World War I and Red Scare years: Christopher M. Finan, From the Palmer Raids to the Patriot Act: A History of the Fight for Free Speech in America (2007)
Learn more at a timeline on U.S. immigration laws: http://immigration.procon.org/view.timeline.php?timelineID=000023#1900-1949
Read: Paul Avrich, Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America (1996)