Immigration Act of 1882
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| Long title | An Act to regulate Immigration. |
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| Enacted by | the 47th United States Congress |
| Effective | August 3, 1882 |
| Citations | |
| Statutes at Large | 22 Stat. 214 |
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The Immigration Act of 1882 was a United States federal law signed by President Chester A. Arthur on August 3, 1882. It imposed a head tax on noncitizens of the United States who came to American ports and restricted certain classes of people from immigrating to America, including criminals, the insane, or "any person unable to take care of him or herself." The act created what is recognized as the first federal immigration bureaucracy and laid the foundation for more regulations on immigration, such as the Immigration Act of 1891.
Prior to the passage of the Immigration Act of 1882, the United States Congress had passed two significant acts regarding immigration. The first was the Page Act of 1875, which restricted the immigration of forced laborers coming from Asia. This had a major effect on the immigration of Asian indentured workers and women; specifically women presumed to be immigrating to work as prostitutes. The second was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. This act halted all legal immigration of Chinese laborers and is considered by many to be the first major exclusionary immigration restriction on an entire nationality enacted by the United States. While both of these acts resulted from public fear of the Chinese influence in the labor market and the economy, they also derived from simple prejudice and the public perception of these immigrants’ inability to assimilate into American culture.
During the same time that America immigration was restricting Asian (specifically Chinese) immigration, many also criticized the influx of European immigrants – later referred to as the “Great Wave” – coming to the United States. As Europe’s urban industrialization was changing the demographic landscape of life in many European cities, millions looked to immigrate in order to find opportunity in America. Calling it the “most massive of all human migrations to date,” scholar Otis. L. Graham reported that almost “27 million immigrants settled in the United States between 1880 and 1930”. Furthermore, as explained in Debating American Immigration: 1882–Present, Roger Daniels explained how “great growth in the volume of immigration in the Gilded Age made some kind of organized administration necessary”. This need and call for an “organized administration” would later be somewhat realized in the administrative outcomes of the Immigration Act of 1882.
While the Immigration Act of 1882 shared the principle of immigration restriction with the two aforementioned acts, it was different in a fundamental way. Unlike the Chinese Exclusion act, the Immigration Act of 1882 would not limit all immigration from a certain country or region. Certain European immigrants were considered extremely desirable, so to limit by region would deny desirable immigrants as well. Instead, to limit immigration based on excluding certain kinds of people who were deemed “undesirable”, there needed to be a piece of legislation capable of adhering to a more comprehensive, exclusionary approach that would be administered through a federal government agency with federal policy.
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