Speech #820209429

In Hirabayshi v. United States (320 U. S. 81. 100) it was stated that "distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people." When our present immigration law was adopted in 1924. there was no doubt In anyones mind that it was directed squarely at Italian and other southern and eastern European immigration. For example. let us take Italian immigration. In 1914. the year immediately preceding the first World War. 296.000 natives of Italy had entered the United States. Our first quota law. passed in 1921. cut Italian immigration to 42.000 annually. by fixing an annual limit of 355.000 on all European immigration and by fixing national immigration quotas in proportion to the numbers of aliens of various national origins in the United States. But that left the Italian quota still too high to satisfy the antiEuropean. antiItalian. antiCatholic agitation of the 1920s. The Immigration Act of 1924. cut the italian quota to less than 6.000 by including all citizens in the population base on which quotas were figured and assuming that all people with English names came from England. People of Italian descent like the Cabots. originally Cabotto. whose names had been Anglicized. were counted as English.