Federal Restrictions on Immigration and Citizenship

Immigration and Migration

The 1920s saw a new wave of anti-immigration sentiment in the United States that was enforced by the federal government. The Immigration Act of 1924 (also known as the Johnson–Reed Act) limited the number of immigrants allowed in the United States by placing quotas based on nation of origin. Under the claim that “recent” immigrants had “failed to assimilate” into American culture, and in hopes of permanently preserving the “racial composition” of the country, these quotas intentionally allowed more immigrants from northern and western Europe while limiting immigrants from southern and eastern Europe; immigrants from Asia were barred from entering the United States. And the 1923 Supreme Court case United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind changed perceptions of race and citizenship.

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Video Transcript

SHARMILA SEN, Writer: Surely, any immigrant who comes to the United States, whether at the beginning of the 20th century, or even at the beginning of the 21st century, comes here and realizes there is a racial hierarchy in this country. The top is white, and at the bottom is black. That is how it works in the United States. And the new immigrant like any human being, wants to make sure that they're as far from the bottom of the pecking order as possible. In our quest for whiteness, often we're trying to say we're not black, we're not black, we're not black. That's what we're trying to tell the host country. I don't think Asians were always given the badge of honorary whiteness, certainly not during the Chinese Exclusion Act.

NARRATOR: Even with families, jobs, and dreams, Asians cannot become Americans. By law, only whites and blacks can apply for naturalized citizenship. So to become a citizen, Asian immigrants choose what they see as their only option.

TK: For South Asians who wanted to become citizens, for the most part they made the claim to being white.

SEN: The case of Bhagat Singh Thind is a particularly important case in US legal history, US immigration history, and the history of how we understand race and citizenship in this country. Bhagat Singh Thind was an Indian from the region of India called Punjab. He was Sikh. He came to the United States as a young man, and joined the US Army during the last year of World War I. Basically, he goes to court to prove that he is white. And this case goes back and forth, back and forth, all the way to the Supreme Court. The Court said that Bhagat Singh Thind is, as a North Indian, someone from the northern part of the subcontinent, he is Caucasian, but not, that's not white enough. So he's not white.

MAE NGAI, Historian: So you have here, in 1923, a really interesting example of the Supreme Court acknowledging that race is a social construct, right? What the common man on the street thinks is white, that is white, and nobody would consider you to be white.

SEN: If before Thind there were other Indians who could be counted as white, when the Court's verdict comes out, that Thind is not white, it has ramifications. Their citizenship were taken away. They lost land because landownership was tied to this.

ERIKA LEE, Historian: Following the Bhagat Singh Thind case, government officials came and knocked on Vaishno Das Bagai's door, the South Asian American who brought his entire family to the United States because he believed that the United States, unlike India under British colonial rule, was a place where his children could be free.

NARRATOR: Because of the Supreme Court decision, Vaishno Das Bagai is now de-naturalized, and his US citizenship revoked. And since noncitizens are banned from owning property, he loses his house and his store. He is stripped of his identity.

LEE: He said obstacles in front of me, and obstacles behind me. He could not find a way forward. And he committed suicide.

Take Notes

Watch this video on United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind and then answer the following question: How was race used to deny naturalization rights to Asian immigrants in the 1920s?

Based on what you have read about immigration and migration, to what extent do the 1920s deserve to be known as the “Roaring ’20s”? List two to three pieces of evidence to support your position.