By Roy Beck
A century ago, overwhelming majorities of both parties in Congress voted for the Immigration Act of 1924, which dramatically cut immigration.
The editors of Black newspapers and magazines across the country enthusiastically backed these reductions. Some even advocated for deeper cuts.
These early 20th-century African American leaders wanted to reduce the number of foreign workers admitted each year to give descendants of American slavery a competitive advantage in the labor market. Over the next four decades, the Immigration Act made it more difficult for employers to import foreign workers instead of recruiting Black U.S. citizens -- just as African American leaders had anticipated.
The legislation immediately resulted in immigration dropping from 707,000 in 1924 to 294,000 in 1925 -- and to less than 200,000 a year, on average, over the next four decades.
Labor markets tightened, leading to historic improvements in incomes and working conditions for Americans of all races. But African Americans enjoyed the most rapid gains of any group. By 1929, W.E.B. DuBois exclaimed in the NAACP's journal that the "stopping of the importing of cheap White labor on any terms has been the economic salvation of American Black labor."
In recent decades, this positive consequence of the 1924 law has been overshadowed by criticism of the law's national origin quota system, with its near-bans on immigration from Africa and Asia.
Yet we shouldn't forget that the bill's most important advocates were unions, progressive civic and religious reformers, Black leaders, and civil rights publications. They got the results they sought from the law -- increased incomes for America's workers and a society with much less inequality.
Economists and historians have repeatedly noted that American incomes rose almost immediately for all classes after 1924.
Nobel laureate economist Sir Angus Deaton of Princeton recently explained that "inequality was high when America was open [to immigration before 1924], was much lower when the borders were closed, and rose again post Hart-Celler [the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965] as the fraction of foreign-born people rose back to its levels in the Gilded Age. It has also been plausibly argued that the Great Migration of millions of African Americans from the rural South to the factories in the North would not have happened if factory owners had been able to hire the European migrants they preferred."
David Leonhardt of The New York Times wrote in his recent book "Ours Was the Shining Future" that reduced immigration following the 1924 Act "contributed to the surge in working-class incomes" in a period that saw Black workers rise even faster than white workers, "well before the passage of 1960s civil rights laws."
Simply put, America became a middle-class nation during the long period of lower immigration. Dramatically lower immigration was not the only cause. But it was one of the key ones.
In 1965, Congress scrapped the 1924 law. In the spirit of the Civil Rights Era, lawmakers' intention was to end the discriminatory national origin quotas.
Their Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 restarted mass immigration. No Congress since has corrected the mistake. Today, the federal government hands out over 1 million green cards annually, welcomes hundreds of thousands of guest workers, and accepts millions of illegal immigrants and other uninvited entrants.
Naturally, that affects labor markets. The head of the International Monetary Fund recently remarked that, compared to other developed countries, U.S. "wages are not pushing up, because there is no strong pressure because of lack of labor."
As Americans mark the centennial of the Immigration Act of 1924, policymakers would be wise to consider the fact that the legislation unleashed the power of tight labor markets to improve the lives of ordinary Americans.
A century ago, overwhelming majorities of both parties in Congress voted for the Immigration Act of 1924, which dramatically cut immigration.
The editors of Black newspapers and magazines across the country enthusiastically backed these reductions. Some even advocated for deeper cuts.
These early 20th-century African American leaders wanted to reduce the number of foreign workers admitted each year to give descendants of American slavery a competitive advantage in the labor market. Over the next four decades, the Immigration Act made it more difficult for employers to import foreign workers instead of recruiting Black U.S. citizens -- just as African American leaders had anticipated.
The legislation immediately resulted in immigration dropping from 707,000 in 1924 to 294,000 in 1925 -- and to less than 200,000 a year, on average, over the next four decades.
Labor markets tightened, leading to historic improvements in incomes and working conditions for Americans of all races. But African Americans enjoyed the most rapid gains of any group. By 1929, W.E.B. DuBois exclaimed in the NAACP's journal that the "stopping of the importing of cheap White labor on any terms has been the economic salvation of American Black labor."
In recent decades, this positive consequence of the 1924 law has been overshadowed by criticism of the law's national origin quota system, with its near-bans on immigration from Africa and Asia.
Yet we shouldn't forget that the bill's most important advocates were unions, progressive civic and religious reformers, Black leaders, and civil rights publications. They got the results they sought from the law -- increased incomes for America's workers and a society with much less inequality.
Economists and historians have repeatedly noted that American incomes rose almost immediately for all classes after 1924.
Nobel laureate economist Sir Angus Deaton of Princeton recently explained that "inequality was high when America was open [to immigration before 1924], was much lower when the borders were closed, and rose again post Hart-Celler [the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965] as the fraction of foreign-born people rose back to its levels in the Gilded Age. It has also been plausibly argued that the Great Migration of millions of African Americans from the rural South to the factories in the North would not have happened if factory owners had been able to hire the European migrants they preferred."
David Leonhardt of The New York Times wrote in his recent book "Ours Was the Shining Future" that reduced immigration following the 1924 Act "contributed to the surge in working-class incomes" in a period that saw Black workers rise even faster than white workers, "well before the passage of 1960s civil rights laws."
Simply put, America became a middle-class nation during the long period of lower immigration. Dramatically lower immigration was not the only cause. But it was one of the key ones.
In 1965, Congress scrapped the 1924 law. In the spirit of the Civil Rights Era, lawmakers' intention was to end the discriminatory national origin quotas.
Their Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 restarted mass immigration. No Congress since has corrected the mistake. Today, the federal government hands out over 1 million green cards annually, welcomes hundreds of thousands of guest workers, and accepts millions of illegal immigrants and other uninvited entrants.
Naturally, that affects labor markets. The head of the International Monetary Fund recently remarked that, compared to other developed countries, U.S. "wages are not pushing up, because there is no strong pressure because of lack of labor."
As Americans mark the centennial of the Immigration Act of 1924, policymakers would be wise to consider the fact that the legislation unleashed the power of tight labor markets to improve the lives of ordinary Americans.
Roy Beck is author of Back of the Hiring Line: A 200-year history of immigration surges, employer bias, and depression of Black wealth. This piece originally ran in the Houston Chronicle.
