The Trump administration has reinstated a policy of racial exclusion in US immigration not seen for decades, according to a leading academic. On 14 January, it announced a halt on issuing immigrant visas to applicants from 85 countries across Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and Eastern Europe.
A Century-Old Blueprint for Exclusion
The Department of Homeland Security justified the move by claiming immigrants from these nations posed a high risk of becoming a public charge. Immigration scholar Heba Gowayed immediately identified this as a false economic pretext. She points out that most immigrants have been barred from cash welfare since 1996 and use benefits like SNAP at lower rates than non-immigrants, while being net contributors through taxes.
More strikingly, Gowayed noted the list of restricted countries almost perfectly mirrors those targeted by the 1924 Immigration Act, also known as the Johnson-Reed Act. That law, abolished in 1965 due to the civil rights movement, established racial quotas for four decades, severely limiting immigration on the basis of national origin to keep America white.
Eerie Historical Parallels in Rhetoric and Policy
The architect of the 1924 act was Representative Albert Johnson, a eugenicist and Ku Klux Klan sympathiser who wanted to stop the dilution of American institutions by alien blood. The law slashed total immigration, reserving nearly 90% of slots for northern and western Europeans, totally barring most Asians, and capping African admissions at just 1,200 people per year.
The parallels with modern rhetoric are jarring. Former President Donald Trump has similarly claimed immigrants are poisoning the nation's blood and expressed preference for immigrants from Nordic countries over filthy, dirty, disgusting nations. The policy mechanisms also echo the past: the 1917 precursor to Johnson's act excluded public charges and required literacy tests, much like the current administration's emphasis on welfare reliance and English-language interviews.
The Enduring Goal: A Whiter America
The 1924 Act was wildly popular, passing with over 80% congressional support and signed by President Calvin Coolidge, who believed America must be kept American. It succeeded dramatically: the foreign-born population plummeted from 13% in the 1920s to under 5% by 1970, when the US was 87.5% white. Today, with the foreign-born at 15% and white population at 57.8%, demographic anxiety is seen as a driver for policies like Project 2025's mass deportation plans.
Stephen Miller, a key architect of Trump's immigration policy, has publicly praised Coolidge and the low-immigration era the 1924 Act created. The administration has shown there is no price tag on achieving its demographic goals, Gowayed argues, noting that $410bn has been spent on border security alone in 20 years.
The human cost of such exclusion has been profound. In 1939, the US turned away the SS St Louis, forcing over 900 Jewish refugees back to Europe; nearly a quarter later died in Nazi camps. Adolf Hitler himself praised the 1924 Act in Mein Kampf.
Gowayed concludes that the latest ban, like the mass deportation agenda, is not about economics or crime, but about whitening the nation. However, she finds hope in the resistance that eventually overturned the 1924 quotas—the multiracial civil rights coalition that insisted on equality under the law. Their fight, she asserts, continues today against the same enduring white supremacy.
