Immigration Act of 1903
Pub. L.57–162 | |
Statutes at Large | 32 Stat. 1213 |
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Legislative history | |
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The Immigration Act of 1903, also called the Anarchist Exclusion Act, was a law of the
Background
Anarchism came to public attention in the United States with the
The idea of excluding anarchists from immigrating was first mentioned at a Congressional hearing in 1889.[2] A bill introduced on July 20, 1894 sought to restrict the entry of anarchists by requiring potential immigrants to visit a U. S. consulate for a political review before immigrating.[3] A substitute bill proposed a system within the United States to detect, question, and deport immigrants accused of anarchism.[4] Both died in committee.[3]
On September 6, 1901, Leon F. Czolgosz, an American-born son of Polish immigrants and a self-proclaimed anarchist, assassinated President William McKinley.[5] The police responded by arresting a number of anarchists, including Emma Goldman and a group of Chicago anarchists that published Free Society, the leading English-language communist-anarchist periodical in the US at the time.[6] They were all later released because no evidence of conspiracy could be found. Also, there were some viewpoints in the anarchist opinion that strongly denounced Czolgosz, with some calling him a "dangerous crank," despite what was to come next.
Theodore Roosevelt urged the exclusion and deportation of anarchist immigrants in his first address to Congress on December 3, 1901:[7]
I earnestly recommend to the congress that in the exercise of its wise discretion it should take into consideration the coming to this country of anarchists or persons professing principles hostile to all government ... They and those like them should be kept out of this country; and if found here they should be promptly deported to the country whence they came.
Legislation
President
It was the first legislation in the US since the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 that called for questioning potential immigrants about their political beliefs.[13] The Act barred anyone "who disbelieves in or who is opposed to all organized government, or who is a member of or affiliated with any organization entertaining or teaching such disbelief in or opposition to all organized government."[14] The law also limited the deportation of non-citizen anarchists to the first three years of their residency in the US.
Enforcement
The impact of the law was slight. The Commissioner-General of Immigration reported that from the time the law took effect in 1903 to June 30, 1914, a total of 15 anarchists were denied entry to the US. He reported that four anarchists had been expelled in 1913 and three in 1914.[15]
In October 1903, immediately following a speech given by the
Darrow and Masters presented their defense of Turner before the
Amendment
The Act was re-enacted on June 29, 1906.[17]
Advocates for using the immigration laws to combat radicalism campaigned to expand the law's definitions of those who could be excluded or deported. Immigration officials complained about the law's limitation on deportation to the first three years of an immigrant's residency:
The anarchist of foreign birth... remains very quiet, as a rule, until the time limit protects him from deportation and then he is loud and boisterous and begins his maniac cry against all forms of organized government.... There should be no time limit to the deportation of these criminals... and should one remain in hiding sufficiently long to become naturalized he should, at the first symptoms, be shorn of his cloak and forthwith deported.[18]
The 1903 Act was amended by the Immigration Act of 1918, which expanded and elaborated the brief definition of anarchist found in the 1903 Act and enhanced the government's ability to deport adherents of anarchism.[19]
See also
Notes
- ^ a b c Fine, 779
- ^ Hutchinson, 97
- ^ a b Hutchinson, 111
- ^ Hutchinson, 112
- ^ Fine, 780
- ^ Fine, 781
- ^ Hutchinson, 127
- ^ Van Dyne, 93
- ^ Fine, 788
- ^ Hutchinson, 133
- ^ Hing, 210
- ISBN 978-1-4529-0531-0.
- ISBN 0-7432-6004-X
- ^ a b New York Times: "In Defense of Anarchy," December 5, 1903 , accessed May 29, 2011
- ^ Report of the Commissioner-General of Immigration to the Secretary of Labor for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1914 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1914), 7, 104-7, 110. The years 1913 and 1914 refer to fiscal years ending on June 30.
- ^ a b Chalberg, 85–86
- ^ Tribune Almanac and Political Register: 1909, accessed May 29, 2011
- ^ Report of the Commissioner-General of Immigration to the Secretary of Labor for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1913 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1914), 227, 259
- ^ Avrich, 133
Sources
- Paul Avrich, Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991)
- John Chalberg, Emma Goldman: American Individualist (NY: Harper Collins, 1991), ISBN 0-673-52102-8
- Sidney Fine, "Anarchism and the Assassination of McKinley", American Historical Review, vol. LX, no. 4 (July 1955)
- Bill Ong Hing, Defining America Through Immigration Policy (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004)
- Edward P. Hutchinson, Legislative History of American Immigration Policy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981)
- Frederick Van Dyne, Citizenship of the United States (Lawyers' Co-operative Publishing, 1904), available online, ISBN 0-8377-1229-7