Door Immigrant Era

During its first hundred years, the United States had a laissez-faire policy toward immigration-no limits. Federal, state, and local governments, private employers, shipping companies and railroads, and churches promoted immigration to the United States. For example, subsidizing railroad construction led to the recruitment of immigrant workers by private railroad companies. High tariffs kept out European manufactured goods and thus created a demand for more workers in American factories. The federal government relied on immigrants to staff the army-immigrants were about a third of the regular soldiers in the 1840s, and an even higher proportion of many state militias.
The Door-Ajar era approach began in 1870s. There were popular movements to

restrict the immigration of particular groups perceived as threatening. Congress barred the entry of convicts and prostitutes in 1875, and the Immigration Act of 1882 for the first time prohibited immigration from a particular country- China-at the behest of urban workers in California who felt threatened by "unfair competition." ( ) Immigration from China was illegal for most of the next 60 yearsEven though a weak economy and increasing immigration led to restrictions on immigration, foreign policy considerations delayed the implementation of these restrictions. The Door-Ajar policy started to gain momentum after 1890. Restrictions and attempts to impose restrictions were the product of a fluctuating economy. But the major reason for the growing opposition to immigration was its composition. Whereas the majority of the old immigrant came from Western Europe, most of the new immigrants came from Eastern and Southern Europe. The German, British and the other Western Europe immigrants who were Protestant overall, were replaces by Russians, Polish and Italian immigrants, the majority of whom were Greek-Orthodox, Catholic or Jewish. One of the most important aspects of this era was the attempt to block immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe. Most of the efforts were totally unsuccessful.
The shift to the more restrictive Pet-door era started in 1917, when, after numerous attempts, Congress finally passed the literacy test bill and in addition to the literacy test, the immigration act of 1917 added excludable classes, raised the head tax, and introduced the power to deport aliens convicted of certain offenses. A couple of years later, Congress imposed the first quantitative restrictions on immigration, limiting arrivals to 3 percent of the foreign-born persons of each nationality present in the United States in 1910. The base year was soon pushed back to 1890, before most third-wave immigrants had arrived, when northern and western Europeans made up a larger proportion of the population.