United States Congress Joint Immigration Commission


The United States Immigration Commission was a bipartisan special committee formed in February 1907 by the United States Congress, President of the United States and Speaker of the House of Representatives, to study the origins and consequences of recent immigration to the United States. This was in response to increasing political concerns about the effects of immigration in the United States and its brief was to report on the social, economic and moral state of the nation. During its time in action the Commission employed a staff of more than 300 people for over 3 years, spent better than a million dollars and accumulated mass data.
It was a joint committee composed of members of both the House and Senate. The Commission published its findings in 1911, concluding that immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe was a serious threat to American society and culture and should be greatly reduced in the future, as well as continued restrictions on immigration from China, Korea and Japan. The report highly influenced public opinion around the introduction of legislation to limit immigration and can be seen to have played an integral part in the adoption of the 1921 Emergency Quota Act and subsequent Johnson Reed Act of 1924.

The Changing Face of Immigration

In 1800, the American population was about 5 million, by 1914, migration had led to a further 50 million people in the country. The Population had amassed to a total of 77 million, 14 years earlier, in 1900.
Historically, immigration policy had been based on economic arguments, but new research suggests eugenics as influencing public opinion on admission criteria. This change towards racial scientific theory was evident in the success of Madison Grant's works which argued that the old immigrant races were in danger of being overtaken by inferior races, particularly Southern and Eastern Europeans. Similarly, the work of Sir Francis Galton on advocating for Eugenics found heightened interest and readership during the late 1800s, reflecting the growth of racial pseudo-science based ideas amongst the American public at the time.
Modern historians have continued to argue that eugenic ideology supported immigration policy. However, Benton-Cohen's recent work highlights the importance of economics within the Commission members thinking, in particular when referring to commission member Jenks, arguing that it predates eugenics. In addition to this, pressure from labour leaders such as President Samuel Gompers of the American Federation of Labour to acknowledge the perceived negative effect of immigration on the American born workforce helped influenced the formation of the Dillingham Commission. Nonetheless, this fails to acknowledge that the immigration debate had been around for decades as well as early ideas of racial distinctions and these factors continued to influence commission members as much as economic ones.
Historian Robert, F. Zeidel situated the Commission within the Progressive Era, with Nativism as the motivation for the legal enforcement of immigration in this period. But before World War One, most restrictions were exclusively directed to the Asian population, without classification of races; factors such as income and education came first. Immigration Acts had previously banned prostitutes, convicts, the insane, and those with serious illness or disability. Nativism changed this through moving toward a racial hierarchy which pitted the superior natives of the United States against the 'inferior' immigrants.
, President at the time of the formation of the Commission.

The Commission's Investigations

Tension between nativists on one side of the debate and those that wished to reform existing rules and immigration systems which promoted the inclusion of 'good' immigrants in American society, played a part in the Dillingham Commission's investigation. The Commission was dedicated to taking an empirical approach, with plans to visit Europe, and places most associated with immigration to the US, which would then be used to inform states across America on which immigration would be most suited for the needs of America, and where. This sort of classification was not new to the Commission, with racial classification remaining popular from the turn of the century, into the 20th and beyond, scientifically informing the nativist rhetoric of the time. Data collected by the Commission did not support racial preconceptions, when taking to account the success of immigrants and their level of assimilation, but recommendations were made, nonetheless.
In the words of the report, "The former were from the most progressive sections of Europe and assimilated quickly... On the other hand, the new immigrants have come from the less progressive countries of Europe and congregated separately from native Americans and the older immigrants to such an extent that assimilation has been slow".
In reaching this conclusion the Commission made distinctions between 'old ' and more recent 'new' immigrants. The report favoured 'old' immigrants from North and Western Europe and opposed 'new' immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe and Asia. The Commission was highly influential due to it being based on 'scientific research'. However, the Commission did not hold any public hearings or cross-examine witnesses, also choosing not to use "information from census reports, state bureaus of labor and statistics or other agencies". The Commission used its own investigators to present their personal findings. This led investigators to form racial distinctions between different groups of immigrants, as evidenced by way of example by the reports description of Polish immigrants: "In their physical inheritance they resemble the 'Eastern' or 'Slavic' race more than that of North-Western Europe". When referring to Russian immigrants, they described them as 'clannish', which shared community through 'gangs' as reason for non-assimilation. When considering educational standards applicable to immigrants, only 2 out of 26 questions on an assessment form related to student achievements and failed to take into account economic differences, when reaching conclusions on literacy levels. The Commission's investigation stated that 'the ability to speak English is a matter of great importance, for it increases industrial efficiency and assists in the process of assimilation the degree of assimilation which has taken place'.

The Commission's Recommendations

The commission recommended that any future legislation should follow a set of principles, as follows:
The Commission agreed that:
It was also agreed that immigrants should be protected from exploitation. States were recommended to push regulations onto immigrant banks and employment was also targeted for regulation, to ensure stability. Immigrants that convinced others to send money overseas, thereby encouraging non-assimilation, were recommended deported. Finally, it was also recommended that information about opportunities for agricultural purposes be made available by states that desire more settlers, in order to attract immigrants that were willing to help with this need.
The Commission also agreed that:
The restriction of immigrants was to be determined considering:
Finally, they determined that reading and writing should be tested through literacy tests, as the best way to eliminate the inclusion of undesired citizens in American society. The Commission recommended that further restrictions be placed on unskilled immigrants with a literacy test to prove they would be of a sufficient educational standard to assimilate into American society. This led to the proposed bills for the new literacy test which were passed by Congress but vetoed first by William Taft in 1913 and subsequently Woodrow Wilson in 1915.

The Commission's Legacy and Impact

Benton-Cohen described the commission as 'one of the first federal agencies to employ women in professional positions', because the Commission employed around 200 women. The Commission came during a period in which women were offered very little opportunity to climb the professional ladder, and this even extended to college-educated women. Women were therefore able to have an impact on 'reform efforts', in regards to immigration, particularly focusing on 'sex trafficking, as well as the economic conditions of immigrant laborers'.
The Commission's recommendations had a substantial impact on American immigration policy. The recommendations eventually led to the introduction of literacy tests, the Emergency Quota Act of 1921 and Johnson Reed Act of 1924. It therefore placed immigration policy firmly in the hands of the federal government, as opposed to the previous state level of enforcement. Immigration from China,Korea and Japan continued to be restricted leading to the Immigration Act of 1917 which denied entry for immigrants from Eastern Asia and the Pacific islands. The literacy test and head tax that came with this act were ineffective, preventing just 1,500 immigrants annually, from entering the country between 1918 and 1921. Following these results, a quota system designed to prevent immigration, based on nationality was enacted, which meant that 3% of the amount of a particular nationality in a 1910 census, were to be permitted entry. Nativists were not satisfied by the results, culminating in the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924, which would limit Europeans to 150,000 a year, zero Japanese immigrants, and 2% of every other nationality's population in the 1890 census. Immigration in America declined much more significantly after this Act was enforced, in 1929:
European immigration to the United States, 1921-1930

Commission reports

In 1911, the Dillingham Commission issued a 41-volume report containing statistical overviews and other analyses of topics related to immigrant occupations, living conditions, education, legislation, and social and cultural organizations. A planned 42nd volume, an index of the other 41 volumes, was never issued.