Restricting the Hordes

Abstract

This chapter studies how government officials first looked to deportation as a solution to the post-war “immigration problem.” During and after the Red Scare, 1919–1924, government officials enacted new and more stringent immigration restrictions. Their implementation would curtail employers' virtually unfettered access to immigrant labor, a benefit businesses had enjoyed since the onset of industrialization. Companies continued to want immigrant workers, but decades of associating foreigners with labor unrest had reached an apex. Fear of subversive aliens combined with nativism and progressivism to convince many Americans of the need for more extensive exclusion. Only through proactive diligence, contended the restrictionist ranks, could the immigrant danger be ameliorated. The pertinent question was not if the maleficence truly existed but rather how best to eliminate it. Dismissing employers' arguments to the contrary, lawmakers ultimately enacted sweeping new quota-based restrictions, significantly reducing European immigration. Their passage effectively ended an epic chapter of American business and labor history.