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During 1907, 1.25 million people were processed on Ellis Island. As the number of immigrants increased, some Americans began to doubt the government's Open Door policy.

Traditionally, the immigrants had tended to come from northern and western Europe – Britain, Ireland, Germany - and were White Anglo Saxon Protestants (WASPs). Between 1900 and 1914, 13 million arrived, mainly from southern and eastern Europe – Italy, Austria-Hungary, Russia, Western Poland and Greece.

People started feeling angry towards these 'new' immigrants because:

• they were often poor
• many were illiterate and could not speak English
• many were Roman Catholics or Jews, therefore from a different cultural and religious background
• the fear of communism spread following the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, and the trauma of World War One, worried many Americans and contributed to the Red Scare in 1919

As a result, the US Congress passed laws to restrict immigration and each law in turn was more severe than the previous one.

The government did not believe that the new immigrants enriched the life and culture of the USA, and as a result the open door began to close and fear of immigrants/xenophobia increased.

1. Literacy Test, 1917 – Immigrants had to pass a series of reading and writing tests. Many of the poorer immigrants, especially those from eastern Europe, had received no education and therefore failed the tests and were refused entry.
2. The Emergency Quota Act, 1921 – A law which restricted the number of immigrants to 357,000 per year, and also set down a quota - only 3 per cent of the total population of any overseas group already in the USA in 1910 could come in after 1921.
3. The National Origins Act, 1924 – This law cut the quota of immigrants to 2 per cent of its population in the USA in 1890. The act was aimed at restricting southern and eastern Europeans immigrants. It also prohibited immigration from Asia and this angered the Chinese and Japanese communities that were already in the USA.
4. Immigration Act, 1929 – This made the quotas of the 1924 act permanent and restricted immigration to 150,000 per year.