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The Control of Immigration as an Administrative Problem

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Paul S. Peirce
Paul S. Peirce
Affiliation:
State University of Iowa
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Extract

Our laws affecting immigration represent the accretions of ninety years, but the great mass of this legislation falls within the last third of this period. Since 1882 Congress has passed a score of immigration acts and amendments, besides the numerous immigration features embodied in laws relating primarily to other subjects.

From the standpoint of purpose and aim, the provisions of this legislation may be grouped under four main heads: 1. Restrictive; 2. Protective; 3. Distributive, and 4. Administrative.

For the first group a more accurately descriptive phrase would be “Restrictive and Selective,” for it is impossible to dissociate, in most provisions, the purpose of restricting the volume of immigration, lest the number of comers prove too great for our receiving population, and the purpose of controlling the quality of our immigrants, lest our citizenship suffer through undesirable additions.

What are the restrictive and selective provisions of our laws? In the first place, certain classes of aliens are excluded from admission to the United States. Since our first federal measure of restriction in 1862, this list of the unwelcome has gradually lengthened, until to-day twenty-three classes may not lawfully enter.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 4 , Issue 3 , August 1910 , pp. 374 - 389
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1910

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References

1 Note: Their special report of December 13, 1909, on steerage conditions, recommends legislation providing for the placing of government officials, both men and women, on vessels carrying third-class and steerage passengers, the expense to be borne by the steamship companies, and authorizing the Bureau of Immigration to send at intervals, investigators in the steerage in the guise of immigrants.

Their special report of December 1, 1909, on the importing of women for immoral purposes, embodies ten recommendations which are at once restrictive and protective in character and purpose and some of which were enacted into law by the session of congress just closed.

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