Immigration Act of 1918
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| Other short titles | Dillingham-Hardwick Act |
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| Long title | An Act to exclude and expel from the United States aliens who are members of the anarchistic and similar classes. |
| Nicknames | Alien Anarchists Exclusion Act of 1918 |
| Enacted by | the 65th United States Congress |
| Effective | October 16, 1918 |
| Citations | |
| Public law | 65-221 |
| Statutes at Large | 40 Stat. 1012 |
| Legislative history | |
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The United States Immigration Act of 1918 (ch. 186, 40 Stat. 1012) was enacted on October 16, 1918. It is also known as the Dillingham-Hardwick Act.
During World War I, officials at the Department of Justice were frustrated in the attempts to suppress anarchist activity by their inability to convict even self-professed anarchists under current legislation, notably the Immigration Act of 1903 and the Immigration Act of 1917. U.S. authorities in the Wilson administration determined that their best opportunity to detain and remove foreign-born anarchists, antiwar protesters, and members of radical labor unions such as the Industrial Workers of the World from the United States lay in the authority of the Department of Immigration to deport individuals under an extremely broad definition of anarchism, this time using administrative procedures that did not require due process.
Working together, officials at the Department of Justice and the Bureau of Immigration drafted legislation designed to remedy the defects in current legislation by defining anarchism broadly enough to cover all forms activity related to its advocacy, including membership in or affiliation with any organization or group that advocated opposition to all forms of organized government. The new legislation removed the provision in prior law that aliens who had resided in the United States for more than 5 years were not subject to deportation. The bill passed the House of Representatives quickly. While waiting for the Senate, representatives of the two sponsoring government departments held meetings to develop a strategy for handling the "disposition of cases of alien anarchists, some of whom are Italian anarchists and others Industrial Workers of the World and Russian Union workers, now pending."
Senator Borah of Idaho was one of the few opposed, but he was not prepared to try to prevent a vote. When the bill passed, it included additional punishment for anyone deported who returned to the United States. The punishment for that was a prison term of 5 years followed by deportation once again.
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