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The International Consequences of American National Origins Quotas: The Australian Case

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2016

DAVID C. ATKINSON Open the ORCID record for DAVID C. ATKINSON [Opens in a new window]
DAVID C. ATKINSON*
Affiliation:
History Department, Purdue University. Email: atkinsod@purdue.edu.
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Abstract

This article examines Australian responses to the imposition of stringent national origins quotas in the United States during the 1920s. Following the introduction of the American quota system, many Australians worried that large numbers of undesirable southern and eastern European migrants would make their way toward Australian ports. Widespread calls for preemptive restrictions forced the Australian government to finally implement a range of measures designed to limit immigration from Italy, Greece, Albania, Yugoslavia, and Malta. More broadly, this article argues that American quotas often inadvertently engendered a wide range of indirect and unintentional consequences around the world that scholars of migration and American foreign relations might explore in greater depth. It concludes by suggesting some opportunities for individual and collaborative research into the international effects of the United States’ notorious national origins quota system.

Type
Immigration Forum
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 50 , Issue 2 , May 2016 , pp. 377 - 396
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and British Association for American Studies 2016 

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References

1 “A World Problem at the Capitol,” The Times, 16 May 1924, 15; “Conference Opens on Immigration,” New York Times, 16 May 1924, 2.

2 “Sources of Emigration,” New York Times, 18 May 1924, E4.

3 See, for example, Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998); Mae M. Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 17–55; David R. Roediger, Working toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White: The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs (New York: Basic Books, 2005); Aristide Zolberg, A Nation by Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009).

4 For the period before the Cold War see Madeline Y. Hsu, Dreaming of Gold, Dreaming of Home: Transnationalism and Migration between the United States and South China, 1882–1943 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000); Ian McKeown, Chinese Migration Networks and Cultural Change: Peru, Chicago, Hawaii, 1900–1936 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2001); Dorothy B. Fujita-Rony, American Workers, Colonial Power: Philippine Seattle and the Transpacific West, 1919–1941 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); Andrea Geiger, Subverting Exclusion: Transpacific Encounters with Race, Caste, and Borders, 1885–1928 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011). For studies that center on the Cold War see Charlotte Brooks, Alien Neighbors, Foreign Friends: Asian Americans, Housing, and the Transformation of Urban California (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2012); Journal of American Ethnic History, 31, 4, Ethnic History and the Cold War, Part II: Refashioning Asian Immigration during the Cold War (Summer 2012), 6–55. Ellen D. Wu, The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014); Charlotte Brooks, Between Mao and McCarthy: Chinese American Politics in the Cold War Years (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2015); Madeline Y. Hsu, The Good Immigrants: How the Yellow Peril Became the Model Minority (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015); Hsu, Madeline Y. and Wu, Ellen D., “‘Smoke and Mirrors’: Conditional Inclusion, Model Minorities, and the Pre-1965 Dismantling of Asian Exclusion,” Journal of American Ethnic History, 34, 4 (Summer 2015), 43–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Arissa Oh, To Save the Children of Korea: The Cold War Origins of International Adoption (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015); Meredith Oyen, The Diplomacy of Migration: Transnational Lives and the Making of U.S.–Chinese Relations in the Cold War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015). These newer studies join an established literature that includes Erika Lee, At America's Gates: Chinese Exclusion during the Exclusion Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003); Ngai; Eiichiro Azuma, Between Two Empires: Race, History, and Transnationalism in Japanese America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).

5 Charles A. Price, The Great White Walls Are Built: Restrictive Immigration to North America and Australasia, 1836–1888 (Canberra: Australian Institute of International Affairs), 1974); Robert A. Huttenback, Racism and Empire: White Settlers and Colored Immigrants in the British Self-Governing Colonies, 1830–1910 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1976); Andrew Markus, Fear and Hatred: Purifying Australia and California, 1850–1901 (Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, 1979); and Sean Brawley, The White Peril: Foreign Relations and Asian Immigration to Australasia and North America, 1919–1978 (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 1995). More recently see Lee, Erika, “The ‘Yellow Peril’ and Asian Exclusion in the Americas,” Pacific Historical Review, 76, 4 (2007), 537–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men's Countries and the International Challenge of Racial Equality (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Adam McKeown, Melancholy Order: Asian Migration and the Globalization of Borders (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008); Kornel Chang, Pacific Connections: The Making of the U.S.–Canadian Borderlands (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012); David Fitzgerald and David Cook-Martin, Culling the Masses: The Democratic Origins of Racist Immigration Policy in the Americas (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014).

6 Donna Gabaccia, Foreign Relations: American Immigration in Global Perspective (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012). See also Matthew Frye Jacobson, Barbarian Virtues: The United States Encounters Foreign People at Home and Abroad (New York: Hill and Wang, 2000); Journal of American Ethnic History, 31, 2, Ethnic History and the Cold War, Part I: Ethnic Groups and the Cold War (Winter 2012): 5–103.

7 The Immigration Restriction Act constituted the core of the Commonwealth's “White Australia Policy,” which imposed a literacy-test requirement on all prospective immigrants. In practice, that test was applied only to those deemed unsuitable for admission (i.e. nonwhite immigrants). There is a rich literature on this policy. See, for example, Myra Willard, History of the White Australia Policy to 1920 (New York: Routledge, 1968), 119–25; Herbert I. London, Non-white Immigration and the “White Australia” Policy (New York: New York University Press, 1970); Jane Carey and Claire McLisky, eds., Creating White Australia (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 2009).

8 Langfield, Michele, “‘White Aliens’: The Control of European Immigration to Australia, 1920–1930,” Journal of Intercultural Studies, 12, 2 (1991), 1–14Google Scholar, 3–4. See also Langfield, “Attitudes to European Immigration to Australia in the Early Twentieth Century,” Journal of Intercultural Studies, 12, 1 (1991), 1–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Warwick Anderson, The Cultivation of Whiteness: Science, Health, and Racial Destiny in Australia (New York: Basic Books, 2003), 158–62; Eric Richards, “Migrations: The Career of British White Australia,” in Deryck M. Schreuder and Stuart Ward, eds., Australia's Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 163–85; Marjory Harper and Stephen Constantine, Migration and Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 41–74; Dewhirst, Catherine, “The ‘Southern Question’ in Australia: The 1925 Royal Commission's Racialisation of Southern Italians,” Queensland Historical Journal, 22, 4 (Feb. 2014), 316–32Google Scholar, 320–22.

9 “A White England Movement,” The Bulletin, 3 July 1919, 7. See also “The Dago Must Go,” Daily Telegraph (Tasmania), 19 Aug. 1919, 6; “Greeks Resent Unmerited Slur,” Brisbane Courier, 21 Dec. 1920, 6.

10 Extract from the Sydney Bulletin, 10 Aug. 1922.

11 “Defence,” Sydney Morning Herald, 16 Aug. 1920, 9. See also “Bolshevism and Its Horrors,” Bathurst Times, 28 Feb. 1920, 1; “Germ of Bolshevism,” The Argus, 26 Jan. 1920, 9; “Forces Attacking the Empire,” Northern Star, 26 July 1920, 4.

12 David Day, Claiming a Continent: A New History of Australia, 4th edn (Sydney: HarperPerennial, 2005), 216–18; Frank Welsh, Great Southern Land: A New History of Australia (London: Penguin Books, 2005), 386–88.

13 Zolberg, A Nation By Design, 253. By the end of 1921, the Commonwealth Statistician estimated that 8,537 Italians resided in Australia. This compared to 3,668 Greeks, and 1,132 Spaniards. Revealingly, no other national groups from southern or eastern Europe made it onto the statistician's list, since according to him “it is impracticable to furnish details in respect of those nationalities which are represented in Australia by very small numbers.” Ironically, 8,806 Americans constituted the second-largest non-British “white” immigrant group in Australia after the Germans (who numbered approximately 24,617). Charles Henry Wickens to the Acting Superintendent of Immigration, 24 Aug. 1922, Immigration from European Countries, undated [1925], National Archives Australia (hereafter NAA), CA 7, Department of External Affairs [I] Melbourne; A1, Correspondence files, annual single number series; 1936/13639, Immigration from Countries other than United Kingdom. The other nationalities that registered on the list were predominately located in northern and western Europe.

14 “Migration,” West Australian, 19 Dec. 1922, 8; “The Berrima's Voyage,” West Australian, 5 Feb. 1923, 7; “Italian Migrants,” Western Mail, 25 Dec. 1924, 13.

15 “Pioneer Italians,” The Argus, 23 Dec. 1922, 9; “Developing the North,” The Recorder, 1 March 1922, 1. For a superb explication of Australian debates about whiteness, climate, and public health during this period see Anderson.

16 “Quality in Immigrants,” The Truth, 20 Aug. 1922, 1.

17 “Mr. Pease on Alien Immigration,” Cairns Post, 18 July 1922, 4; “Italian Immigrants,” Daily Standard, 7 April 1922, 6; “4 R. S. Labor League Protest against Italian Immigrants,” Daily Standard, 17 April 1922, 5.

18 “Southern European Immigrants,” Kalgoorlie Miner, 27 Feb. 1922, 4.

19 “Immigrants,” The Advocate, 27 Feb. 1922, 3.

20 Alexandra Stern, Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 140; Jonathan Peter Spiro, Defending the Master Race: Conservation, Eugenics, and the Legacy of Madison Grant (Lebanon, NH: University of Vermont Press, 2008), 349–50.

21 The Immigration Commission, Brief Statement of the Conclusions and Recommendations of the Immigration Commission (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1910), 15–29; Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race, or The Racial Basis of European History (New York: Scribner & Sons, 1916). See also Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998); Ngai, Impossible Subjects, 17–55.

22 “A British Australia,” The Advertiser, 11 Dec. 1922, 8.

23 “From Mediterranean: Influx of Immigrants,” The World, 21 Dec. 1922, 4; “Italian Immigrants,” The World, 16 March 1922, 5.

24 Immigration from European Countries, undated [1925], NAA: CA 7, Department of External Affairs [I] Melbourne, A1, Correspondence files, annual single number series, 1936/13639, Immigration from Countries other than United Kingdom.

25 Henry S. Gullett to Percy Hunter, 20 Jan. 1922, Immigration from European Countries, undated [1925], NAA: CA 7, Department of External Affairs [I] Melbourne, A1, Correspondence files, annual single number series; 1936/13639, Immigration from Countries other than United Kingdom.

26 Henry S. Gullett to the Official Secretary to the Commissioner for Australia in the United States of America, 24 Jan. 1922, Immigration from European Countries, undated [1925], NAA: CA 7, Department of External Affairs [I] Melbourne, A1, Correspondence files, annual single number series; 1936/13639, Immigration from Countries other than United Kingdom.

27 D. B. Edward to Henry S. Gullett, 10 March 1922, Absorption of Continental Peoples, NAA: CA 12, Prime Minister's Department, A457; K400/2, Immigration Encouragement-Absorption of Continental People-1922, 4.

28 “Immigration,” Sydney Morning Herald, 3 March 1922, 9.

29 The policy further restricted this system to only those close relatives who were engaged in agriculture, so as to avoid overcrowding in the cities or in the industrial economy. Memorandum for the Acting Superintendent, 12 July 1922, Immigration from European Countries, undated [1925], NAA: CA 7, Department of External Affairs [I] Melbourne, A1, Correspondence files, annual single number series, 1936/13639, Immigration from Countries other than United Kingdom.

30 Deputy Director, Immigration Bureau, to Prime Minister's Secretary, 18 June 1924, Immigration from European Countries, undated [1925], NAA: CA 7, Department of External Affairs [I] Melbourne, A1, Correspondence files, annual single number series, 1936/13639, Immigration from Countries other than United Kingdom.

31 “Herded Like Cattle,” Daily Standard, 7 Aug. 1923, 5.

32 “Foreigners in North,” The Argus, 21 Jan. 1924, 11.

33 “Australia to Let,” The Mail, 12 April 1924, 1.

34 Roger Daniels, Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life, 2nd edn (New York: HarperPerennial, 2002), 282–83; Desmond King, Making Americans: Immigration, Race, and the Origins of the Diverse Democracy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2000), 206–7.

35 “Plain English: A Trickle that May Become a Flood,” The Bulletin, 11 Sept. 1924. 11.

36 “Balkan Immigrants,” The Bulletin, 16 Oct. 1924, 12.

37 R. R. Wise to P. S. Coleman, 16 June 1924, NAA: CA 12, Prime Minister's Department, A458, Correspondence files, multiple number series, second system, P156/1 PART 2, Immigration Restrictions Later Papers in Action.

38 Australian Natives Association, South Australia Branch, to Bruce, 4 Sept. 1924. Ibid.

39 J. A. Newton to Bruce, 23 Sept. 1924. Ibid.

40 Western Australian Board of Directors, Australian Natives’ Association, to Bruce, 6 Oct. 1924. Ibid.

41 George Fuller to Bruce, 10 July 1924, NAA: CA 12, Prime Minister's Department, A458, Correspondence files, multiple number series, second system, B156/1 Part 1, Immigration Restrictions, Australian Policy – Correspondence with States.

42 John Gunn to Bruce, 5 Sept. 1924. Ibid.

43 Philip Collier to Bruce, 8 Dec. 1924. Ibid.

44 Bruce to Collier, 20 Dec. 1924, NAA, A458, B156/1 Part 1.

45 Prime Minister's Office to the General Secretary, R.S.S.I.L. A., 3 Jan. 1924, NAA, A458, P156/1 part 2.

46 “Question of Fixing Quotas for Foreign Migrants to Australia,” 26 July 1924, Immigration from European Countries, undated [1925], NAA: CA 7, Department of External Affairs [I] Melbourne, A1, Correspondence files, annual single number series, 1936/13639, Immigration from Countries other than United Kingdom.

47 Ibid. The notion of the American National Origins regime as a remote control regime comes from Zolberg, A Nation by Design.

48 Prime Minister's Secretary to the Secretary, Port Pirie Combined Union's Council, 23 Sept. 1924. Ibid. See also Caroline Alcorso, “Early Italian Migration and the Construction of European Australia, 1788–1939,” in Stephen Castles, Caroline Alcorso, Gaetano Rando, and Ellie Vasta, eds., Australia's Italians: Culture and Community in a Changing Society (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1992), 1–18. For a discussion of Greeks migration to and settlement in Australia see Anastasios Myrodis Tamis, The Greeks in Australia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

49 “Alien Migrants,” The Age, 8 Jan. 1925, NAA, A458, P156/1 part 2.

50 “Immigration Restricted,” The Age, 5 Dec. 1924, 9.

51 “Alien Migrants,” The Age, 8 Jan. 1925, NAA, A458, P156/1 part 2. See also Langfield, “White Aliens,” 8–9.

52 Copy of Reply Sent to High Commissioner's Office, 5 Feb. 1925, NAA, A458, P156/1 part 2.

53 “Italians in Queensland, The Olive Peril,” Translation Copy, E. Graham to Austen Chamberlain, 14 July 1925, NAA: CA 7, Department of External Affairs [I] Melbourne, A1, Correspondence files, annual single number series, 1925/22431, Corrie D'America (USA) and Corrie de la Sera (Italy). Newspaper articles re Italians in Queensland.

54 “Italians in Queensland,” June 1925. Ibid.

55 Secretary of the Commonwealth Commissioner in the United States of America to the Minister for Home and Territories, 11 Aug. 1925. Ibid.

56 Letter to the Prime Minister, 14 Jan. 1925. Ibid.

57 James A. M. Elder to Stanley Bruce, 6 March 1925, NAA, CA 18, Department of External Affairs [II] Central Office, A461, Correspondence files, multiple number series (third system), A349/3/1 PART 1A, Immigration restriction-Australian policy-Main file, 1924–1928.

58 Anderson, The Cultivation of Whiteness, 160; Daniels, Coming to America, 294–95.