In a move that has sent shockwaves through immigration circles, the Trump administration has announced a sweeping halt on issuing immigrant visas to applicants from 85 countries, a policy scholars warn is a direct descendant of the explicitly racist 1924 Immigration Act.
A Century-Old Blueprint Resurfaces
On 14 January, the administration stopped visa processing for nationals from 75 countries across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean, plus 10 nations in eastern Europe. The Department of Homeland Security justified the ban by claiming immigrants from these nations posed a "high risk" of becoming a "public charge" by relying on welfare.
Immigration scholar Heba Gowayed immediately challenged this economic rationale. She points out that most immigrants have been legally barred from cash welfare since 1996, and those eligible for benefits like SNAP and Medicaid use them at far lower rates than US-born citizens. Immigrants are net contributors to public coffers through taxes, a fact especially true for undocumented immigrants who are excluded from federal benefits.
Gowayed identified a more sinister pattern: the list of banned countries overlaps almost perfectly with those targeted by the 1924 Immigration Act's racial quotas.
The Johnson-Reed Act: A Legacy of Exclusion
Abolished in 1965 following pressure from the civil rights movement, the 1924 Immigration Act, known as the Johnson-Reed Act, shaped US policy for four decades. Its lead author, Representative Albert Johnson, was a noted eugenicist and Ku Klux Klan sympathiser who believed American institutions were "diluted by a stream of alien blood".
The law slashed total immigration to a fifth of pre-First World War levels. It used the 1890 census to set annual quotas, reserving nearly 90% of slots for immigrants from northern and western Europe. People from southern and eastern Europe received a small remainder, while Asians were almost entirely barred and total African admissions were capped at just 1,200 per year.
Critically, the 1924 Act also created the legal category of "illegal alien", introduced visa requirements, and its companion law funded the first US Border Patrol.
Eerie Parallels in Rhetoric and Policy
The parallels between the rhetoric of 1924 and today are jarring. Former President Donald Trump has claimed immigrants are "poisoning the nation's blood", mirroring Johnson's language. He has also expressed preference for immigrants from Nordic countries over those from "filthy, dirty, disgusting" nations.
The policy mechanisms are similarly aligned. Just as the current administration emphasises the "public charge" rule and English-language testing, Johnson ushered in a 1917 bill requiring a literacy test and excluding likely public charges as a precursor to his 1924 Act. Both eras demanded stringent health checks for immigrants.
The 1924 law was wildly popular, passing with over 80% congressional support and signed by President Calvin Coolidge, who declared "America must be kept American". It achieved its goal: the foreign-born population plummeted from 13% in the 1920s to under 5% by 1970, when the US was 87.5% white.
The Stakes of Resistance
Today, with 15% of the population foreign-born and only 57.8% white, demographic anxiety is a powerful political driver. Project 2025's mass deportation vision, which Trump is enacting, appears motivated by projections that the US will become majority non-white by 2045.
The human cost of such exclusionary policies is historic. In 1939, the US turned away the SS St. Louis, forcing over 900 Jewish refugees back to Europe; nearly a quarter later died in Nazi camps. Adolf Hitler himself praised the 1924 Act in Mein Kampf.
Modern admirers exist. Stephen Miller, architect of Trump's deportation policy, has praised the Coolidge era's low immigration. Yet, the post-1965 abolition of quotas brought immense economic growth, with new immigrants filling labour shortages and injecting trillions into the economy.
Gowayed argues the latest ban, like its predecessors, has nothing to do with economics or crime. Its purpose, she states unequivocally, is to "whiten the nation." The administration has shown there is "no price tag" on this goal.
The article concludes with a call to learn from the civil rights movement's multiracial coalition, which insisted on equality under the law. It reminds readers that the fight against enduring white supremacy requires continued organisation, protest, and a system that finally rejects racist reasoning to recognise the humanity of all.
