In his classic intellectual history of American nativism, Strangers in the Land (1955), John Higham posited that nativist feeling increased during times of economic downturn and crises of national confidence. As such, he argued that the 1924 Act was a victory of racial nativism, especially scientific racism and eugenics: the decades-long project to establish the biological superiority of “whites,” especially “Anglo-Saxons” and “Nordics.” The act, according to Higham, was a triumph of the “Tribal Twenties.”
Higham’s view—that the 1924 Act was a triumph of eugenics, and, more generally, the unemployment theory of nativism—have long been influential in both academic and popular writing. But that is not the whole story.
Certainly, scientific race theories of the late 19th century, including eugenics, were influential in the paving the way for the 1924 Act. Still, they were not the law’s sole cause. In the 1920s, it is true, a more modern bill was needed for regulating and restricting immigration, one based on countries and administered by states. The sublimation of eugenics into an immigration system of countries and national origins achieved two goals at once: the assimilation of European ethnics as white Americans; and the continued exclusion of Asians based on race.
As for the unemployment theory, a closer examination is called for. In fact, historically, nativist surges occur not during cyclical downturns, but, instead, in times of economic expansion and large-scale structural changes. These are times of both opportunity and precarity. New sectors of capital emerge, creating new jobs and stimulating immigration, while capital and jobs in older sectors decline. The pattern is manifest in the three great moments of structural economic change in modern US history:
- The agitation for Chinese exclusion on the Pacific coast arose after the Civil War. The unification of a national market and the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 brought both new migrants and cheap manufactured goods to California, undermining a previously protected market of high wages and high prices.
- Industrialization during the late 19th century brought about a consolidation of corporate capital, the de-skilling of craft work, and a demand for unskilled labor. This was the political-economic background that fed nativist agitation in the early 20 century and led to passage of the 1924 Immigration Act.
- In the late 20th century, the domestic economy became characterized by the rise of finance and service industries, while offshore production and automation diminished the number of manufacturing and industrial jobs.
In all three cases, workers in declining industries were susceptible to theories that blamed immigrants for “taking” their jobs. Over 150 years, then, the nativist playbook has been remarkably consistent: appeal to a grievance, offer a theory of difference, and weaponize for partisan gain.