example, American citizens of Italian origin could not resent a formula which insured that the proportion between the element of Italian origin and the elements of German or British origin in the existing composition of the American nation would remain unaltered. On the other hand, the formula would inevitably wear a different complexion in the eyes of intending immigrants from Italy at the time when the new law came into force, and in the eyes of the Italian Government and people.

To intending immigrants and their respective fellow-countrymen in countries which had been accustomed, during the years immediately preceding the War of 1914, to send large annual contingents of immigrants abroad, the sudden restriction of immigration into the United States under the Act of 1921 had already come as a heavy blow. At the same time, they could not, and did not, contest in principle the right of the United States to deal with immigration as an affair exclusively within her domestic jurisdiction; and they would have been left with a sense of hardship, perhaps, but hardly of injustice, if the quotas under the Act of 1924 had been kept as nearly as possible proportional to the actual contingents of immigrants sent by different countries to the United States during the years immediately preceding the War. This proportion had been substantially maintained under the Act of 1921. Under the 1921 formula the Italians, for example, could feel that, however great the dislocation which was being produced in the national economy of Italy by the sudden restriction of the field for Italian emigrants in the United States, the national economy of Germany and Great Britain was being dislocated by the same cause to an exactly proportionate extent; but the relative effect of the 1924 formula in restricting the field for Italian, German, and British immigrants was bound to be entirely different. The new formula took account of immigration since the arrival of the first colonists, and in this movement, taken as a whole, British and German immigrants had been preponderant, whereas the preponderance of annual immigration from Italy and other South-West European and East European countries, which had been so striking a fact on the eve of the War of 1914, was a phenomenon which only dated from 1899. Therefore, the formula of quotas based on national origins would not only restrict the contingents of Italian and other South-West and East European immigrants but would restrict them quite disproportionately to the British, German, and other North-West European contingents, as measured by the actual contingents of

the immediately preceding years. A similar differentiation would result from the provisional formula which was to be in force for the three years ending on the 30th June, 1927; and this formula was more wounding than the other, since the deliberate intention of differentiating against South-West and East European immigrants was more apparent on the surface in a scheme which substituted for the most recent census the obsolete census of 1890-i. e. the last census before the date at which immigration from South-Western and Eastern Europe became preponderant-than in a scheme which abandoned the most recent census in order to take into account the whole course of American history.

The deliberate intention to differentiate was not denied by Mr. Johnson, who had introduced the Bill in the House of Representatives and was responsible for the idea of taking the 1890 census as the basis for the provisional formula. On the other hand, the Senate were at first in favour of retaining the 1910 census,1 which had been the basis of the formula in the Act of 1921; and they did not yield on this point to the House until the Bill went into the conference stage. The 1890 basis was more resolutely opposed by the Secretary of State, Mr. Charles Evans Hughes, who had to consider the possible effect of the Bill upon the foreign relations of the country. While the Bill was before the House, Mr. Hughes remonstrated more than once in an open letter against the 1890 basis; argued that the Bill should be void of any discrimination of which just complaint can be made'; and forwarded to the House Committee on the Bill two protests which had been lodged with the State Department by the Italian and Rumanian Governments against a formula which they described as discriminating unwarrantably to the detriment of friendly nations.2 The last of these steps, like the forwarding of the protest against the exclusion clause which was received from the Japanese Ambassador,3 was probably a tactical error on Mr. Hughes's part, for it evidently increased the obstinacy of the House in insisting upon the 1890 basis and possibly assisted in inducing the Senate to give in to the House in this matter. American opinion at this period was peculiarly sensitive to any appearance of foreign interference in the internal affairs of the United States.

It remains to consider very briefly certain other features of the

1 See The Times, 1st March, 1924.

2 Ibid., 4th January and 22nd February, 1924.
3 See Section (vi), p. 151, below.

Act which were subsidiary to the two quota formulae..The definitions of United States' and 'alien' were identical with those in the Act of 1921, though in calculating the new formulae the population of Continental United States alone was to be taken into account. Out of the eight classes of persons who, under the Act of 1921, were rot to be counted in the quotas, the first four were exempted altogether from the provisions of the Act of 1924 as not being immigrants within the meaning of the Act; and in the same category were placed bona fide alien seamen and aliens

entitled to enter the United States solely to carry on trade under and in pursuance of the provisions of a present existing treaty of commerce and navigation—

an exception which was inserted at the instance of the Secretary of State and was evidently of great practical importance. On the other hand, the fifth and sixth classes exempted from the quota under the Act of 1921 were omitted in the Act of 1924 for reasons arising out of the special problem of Oriental immigration which will be discussed below in Section (vi). Finally, the seventh and eighth classes of the previous Act (immigrants entering the United States from other American countries and the alien children of citizens of the United States) were placed under the head of 'nonquota immigrants ',3 under certain fresh conditions which have been mentioned already. Under the same head, bona fide students, university teachers, ministers of religion, and aliens previously lawfully admitted who were returning from a temporary visit abroad were again placed in a privileged category, though this time the privilege was not extended, as it had been in the Act of 1921, to actors, artists, lecturers, singers, nurses, and domestic servants.

An important innovation in the Act of 1924 was the provision that, without prejudice to the right of the United States Immigration Service to refuse admittance to intending immigrants upon their arrival at the ports or land-frontiers of the United States, every intending immigrant should be required first to obtain a visa from a United States consular officer in the country from which he started. This provision was based, like many others in the new Act, upon the experiences of the past three years.

6

Under the 1921 Act a troublesome difficulty' was the enforcement of the numerical limitation', as that Act required the actual physical 1 Section 3.

See A. W. Parker, The Quota Provisions of the Immigration Act of 1924, American Journal of International Law, October 1924, p. 743.

3 Section 4.

counting of human beings arriving by ship', which was a task of magnitude, leading to mistakes, the racing of ships into ports, delays, disappointments, and hardships, and distressing appeals for relief in individual cases'. So Congress determined that the new law should contemplate the counting of certificates (visas), not persons'; that the law should provide for enforcement of the numerical limitation not by counting immigrants upon their arrival, but by counting "immigration certificates "2 issuable at American consulates overseas '.3 And it was also provided, in connexion with the visa system, that the consuls should not issue a visa to any immigrant if it should appear to him from the evidence presented that such immigrant was a member of any class excluded by the immigration laws.4

On the whole, this new arrangement was calculated to save much expense and hardship to intending immigrants who were in fact ineligible for admission, but it was pointed out by an American critic 5 that the powers thereby bestowed upon United States officials abroad were in some respects too narrow and in others too wide. On the one hand, no provision was made for the inspection of intending immigrants by United States medical officers prior to their application for a visa, so that they might still cross the ocean only to be turned back on medical grounds on their arrival at an American port. On the other hand, absolute authority to refuse the visa was invested in consular officers and no provision was made for an appeal.

This is the first time in the history of immigration legislation that subordinate officials have been allowed finally to determine the question of admissibility, in any other than technical medical cases, and, even in those, appeals to boards of surgeons have usually been possible. And the records of the Department of Labour contain numerous cases in which, had it not been for the right of appeal, most serious injustice would have been perpetrated; while the reports of the Federal courts contain many cases in which, even with the appeal to superior administrative officers, unfairness and arbitrariness prevailed.

However, this provision, like the Act as a whole, lay within the sole discretion of the legislative power in the United States. Individual applicants for visas and the Governments of the countries to which they belonged were alike powerless to secure any modifications of the momentous action which the United States had taken. For countries in the position of Italy, whose annual contingent of

1 H. R. 350 (68th Congress, 1st session), p. 12.

2 These, when the House and Senate Bills were finally merged and enacted into law, were called visas', not certificates'.

emigrants to the United States was cut down from 283,738 (the figure for 1914) to 3,845 (the Italian quota declared in President Coolidge's proclamation of the 30th June, 1924), the only recourse was to seek alternative fields for immigration in other underpopulated overseas countries suitable for settlement by Europeans, or else in under-populated countries nearer home, such as the French dependencies in North-West Africa or France itself.

(iii) The Immigration Policy of Overseas Countries
other than the United States.

Before the passage of the two Restriction of Immigration Acts of 1921 and 1924, the average annual volume of European immigration into the United States had immensely exceeded the aggregate figure for all the lesser overseas countries. Although the areas of several of these countries were as large as, or larger than, the area of the United States, only portions of them were suitable for European settlement. Vast territories--for example, the sub-arctic tundras of Northern Canada, the tropical forests and swamps of the Amazon Basin in Brazil, and the arid Central Desert of Australia-were virtually rendered uncolonizable by Nature, so that the total area which was effectively open to colonization in the overseas countries other than the United States was considerably smaller than would appear from a first glance at the map. At the same time, owing to the fact that the main current of European emigration had been directed, for a century past, towards the United States, a larger proportion of the land available for settlement had actually been occupied in the United States than in the lesser overseas countries by the time when the stream of European emigration began to flow again after the termination of the War of 1914–18; and this difference in the density of settlement up to date was reflected in a difference of outlook upon the immigration question. While the United States was restricting immigration, most of the lesser overseas countries were still welcoming it, and some of them were taking active steps to promote it, in the same spirit in which the United States had welcomed and promoted immigration during the period when her own reserves of undeveloped agricultural and pastoral land and of other natural resources had still seemed inexhaustible. It was natural, therefore, that, from the moment when the United States began to check the flow of immigration into her