America’s Third Founding: May 24, 1924, the Immigration Act of 1924
The number of new legal immigrants as a share of the US population plummeted after 1924, and it has only slowly recovered. If the United States had granted legal permanent residence at the same per‐capita rate that it did from 1900–1914—before World War I disrupted travel—another 164 million immigrants would have been permitted to settle in the United States legally. Many of these immigrants would have ultimately returned to their home countries, as they did in great numbers even before airlines shrank the globe. Easier travel would likely have caused the rate of immigration to increase after World War II.
With far more immigrants, the US‐born population would have swelled as well. It is plausible that the United States would be twice its size today if immigration had continued. The United States would not have lost nearly as much diplomatic, social, and market influence to China and other countries in recent years if its economy and consumer base were twice as large as they are now. The larger population would mean a larger economy and more production of goods and services to benefit all Americans.
A century of freer immigration would have made the United States a vastly wealthier, freer, stronger, and more powerful country, while also raising hundreds of millions globally out of poverty and freeing hundreds of millions more from tyranny. The implications are too massive to summarize quickly, but Cato’s Alex Nowrasteh has written an excellent alternative history, exploring some less obvious implications for US and world history had immigration not been cut off.
Contrary to much of the commentary commemorating the 1924 act that claims it was “repealed” in 1965, the Immigration Act of 1924 established all the essential features of our current system: a presumption against legal immigration, a low overall cap, country‐by‐country caps, and a preference for family unity. The system has produced huge quantities of illegal immigration since then, resulting in about 56 million arrests by Border Patrol.
Indeed, the only reason that the immigrant share of the US population has recovered is due to the decades of illegal immigration combined with a low birth rate—not a liberal legal immigration system. In fact, many immigrants who now have since received legal status (through legalization programs or other programs) are only here because they chose to violate these onerous restrictions. People shouldn’t have to violate the law to join our society and contribute to our country.
There was nothing inevitable about this strange system. It was a choice to make immigration illegal. It is a choice to keep it illegal. America should reject its un‐American third founding and restore the laws governing immigration to the ones our founders gave us: a presumption of liberty. A century of arbitrary immigration restriction is too long.
David J. Bier is the associate director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute. This article, originally posted to the Cato Institute website, is published courtesy of the Cato Institute.
