How Jews actually felt about the 1924 immigration restriction

It's widely believed by Jews today that the 1924 legislation that cut back on immigration was an anti-Semitic conspiracy. That mythology is one of the main reasons the media is, on the whole, so virulently against immigration restriction today. In reality, Jewish opinion in 1924 was, sensibly, much more mixed. The most politically powerful Jewish figure in America in the early 1920s, American Federation of Labor founder Samuel Gompers, himself an immigrant, was a strong voice for cutting back on immigration.

I stumbled upon the following passage in the 1978 autobiography, In Search of History, by the famous reporter Theodore H. White, author of The Making of the President series. Around 1925, when he was ten or eleven, he was asked by his teacher to do a special presentation to her night school seminar to show what a child was capable of. A half century later, White recalled his discussions with his father, who was an Orthodox Jew and a socialist:

My assignment was to study immigration, and then to speak to the seminar about whether immigrants were good or bad for America. Her seminar mates would question me to find out how well I had mastered the subject. The Immigration Act of 1924 -- the "Closing of the Gates" -- had just been passed; there was much to read in both papers and magazines about the controversy, but my guide was my father. He put it both ways: the country had been built by immigrants, so immigrants were not bad. He had been an immigrant himself. On the other hand, as a strong labor man, he followed the A. F. of L. line of those days. The National Association of Manufacturers (the capitalists) wanted to continue unrestricted immigration so they could sweat cheap labor. But the American Federation of Labor wanted to keep the wages of American workingmen from being undercut by foreigners. This was a conundrum for my father: he was an immigrant himself, as were all our friends and neighbors. He helped me get all the facts, and I made a speech on the platform of a classroom at Boston University Teachers College at nine one night, explaining both sides of the story and taking no position. I enjoyed it all, especially when the teachers began asking me questions; I had all the dates and facts, and an attentive audience, but no answers then just as I have none now.

In the long run, class proves less powerful than race (in the sense of family and ancestry) in shaping the imagination. Today, most of Jewish opinion believes that immigration restriction was bad for the Jews, so therefore they are against it now. That it was good for the working class, which included much of the Jewish population at the time, is forgotten.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer