Quotas

To regulate migration, a quota is a law establishing a maximum limit on the number of people who can immigrate into a country. Until the twentieth century, the United States did not have quotas. Since the passage of the Emergency Quota Act in 1921, the United States has had quotas.

U.S. Quota Acts

The Emergency Quota Act restricted the number of immigrants admitted from any country annually to 3 percent of the number of residents from that same country living in the United States in 1910. Limits were not set for professional workers and for citizens of Latin American countries. The quotas ensured that most immigrants to the United States would come from Northern and Western Europe.

Quotas were enacted following recommendations of the Dillingham Commission, which had been set up by Congress in 1907 to investigate the effects of immigration. The commission’s 40-volume report noted the shift displayed in Figure 3-13 in the principal source of immigrants to the United States from Northern and Western Europe to Southern and Eastern Europe (Figure 3-50). The report reflected the attitudes of many Americans at the time when it claimed that immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe were “inclined toward violent crime,” resisted assimilation, and “drove old-stock citizens out of some lines of work.” (Some Americans now use similar language to attack recent immigrants.) Prior to the 1921 Quota Act, several other acts in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had restricted the number of Chinese people allowed into the United States.

Immigrants Arriving In The United States From Germany, 1906

Since the 1921 Quota Act, key modifications in the U.S. quotas have included:

• 1924. For each country that had native-born persons already living in the United States, 2 percent of their number (based on the 1910 census) could immigrate each year. This ensured that most immigrants would come from Europe.

• 1965. Quotas for individual countries were replaced with hemisphere quotas (170,000 from the Eastern Hemisphere and 120,000 from the Western Hemisphere).

• 1978. A global quota of 290,000 was set, including a maximum of 20,000 per country.

• 1990. The global quota was raised to 700,000.

Skill- & Family-based Migration

Because the number of applicants for admission to the United States far exceeds the quotas, Congress has set preferences:

• Family reunification. Approximately three-fourths of immigrants are admitted to reunify families, primarily spouses or unmarried children of people already living in the United States.

• Skilled workers. Exceptionally talented professionals receive most of the remainder of the quota.

• Diversity lottery. A few immigrants are admitted by lottery under a diversity category for people from countries that historically sent few people to the United States.

The quota does not apply to refugees, who may be admitted once their refugee status is verified. Also admitted without limit are spouses, children, and parents of U.S. citizens. The number of immigrants can vary sharply from year to year, primarily because numbers in these two groups are unpredictable.

Other countries charge that by giving preference to skilled workers, immigration policies in the United States as well as other developed countries, contribute to a brain drain, which is a large-scale emigration by talented people. Scientists, researchers, doctors, and other professionals migrate to countries where they can make better use of their abilities. The countries from which they emigrated could then be left with shortages of skilled professionals.

Asians have made especially good use of the priorities set by the U.S. quota laws. Many well-educated Asians enter the United States under the preference for skilled workers. Once admitted, they can bring in relatives under the family reunification provisions of the law. Eventually, these immigrants can bring in a wider range of other relatives from Asia through a process of family-based migration, which is the migration of people to a specific location because relatives previously migrated there.

Pause & Reflect 3.4.2

What aspects of current U.S. immigration policy depart from a strict quota system? Over time, how does this affect the makeup of the country's immigrant population?

Once accepted into the United States, immigrants were transported by ferry from Ellis Island 1.6 kilometers (1 mile) across New York Harbor to New York City. However, the State of New Jersey, located only 400 meters (1,300 feet) from Ellis Island, long argued that Ellis Island was actually part of New Jersey rather than New York, as was generally believed. After decades of dispute, New Jersey took its case to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Ellis Island dispute was probably the first time that the Supreme Court turned to GIS to settle a case. Testimony during the trial included an explanation of how GIS works.

The U.S. government bought Ellis Island in 1808 to use as a fort. An 1834 agreement approved by the U.S. Congress gave Ellis Island to New York State and gave the submerged lands surrounding the island to New Jersey. When the agreement was signed, Ellis Island was only 1.1 hectares (2.75 acres), but beginning in the 1890s, the U.S. government enlarged the island, eventually to 10.6 hectares (27.5 acres). New Jersey state officials claimed that the 10.6-hectare Ellis Island was part of their state, not New York.

Critical evidence in the decision was a series of maps prepared by New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) officials using GIS. NJDEP officials scanned into an image file an 1857 U.S. coast map that was considered to be the most reliable map from that era. The image file of the old map was brought into ArcView, and then the low waterline shown on the 1857 map was digitized using a series of dots. The perimeter of the current island was mapped using global positioning system (GPS) surveying.

In 1998, the Supreme Court ruled 6–3 that New York had jurisdiction over 1.9 hectares (4.7 acres), encompassing the original island and most of the immigration buildings, but that New Jersey had jurisdiction over the rest. New York’s jurisdiction was set as the low waterline of the original island.

The victory was partly a matter of pride on the part of New Jersey officials to stand up to their more glamorous neighbor. After all, Ellis Island is closer to the New Jersey shoreline, yet most tourists—like immigrants a century ago—are transported by ferry to New York City. More practically, since the favorable ruling the sales tax collected by the Ellis Island museum gift shop now goes to New Jersey instead of New York.

What’s Your MIGRATION Geography?

More than 80 million people have migrated to the United States since colonial times. The Statue of Liberty – Ellis Island Foundation maintains records for more than 50 million of the 80 million immigrants, not just for the 12 million who were processed at Ellis Island.

1. Select one of your relatives who immigrated to the United States since the late nineteenth century. Or ask a friend or neighbor for the name of someone, or research the name of a famous athlete, writer, scientist, or performer who came through Ellis Island from 1892–1954.

2. In your Internet browser, go to www.libertyellisfoundation.org. Select Passenger Search.

3. Enter the name of the person. In what year did the person arrive? By what means of transport did the person arrive?

4. Does this information match what you expected to find? Why or why not?