Jewish Immigration and The World Wars

Written by Parker McElroy. Edited by Harini Akurathi, Neve Walker, Taruni Manam. Layout by Karen He. Art by Juee Deshmukh. Blogged by Asic.

After World War 1, the United States saw a substantial decrease in the number of immigrants coming into the country. The government took advantage of this period by introducing new immigration laws, ones that would preserve the good name of America by stopping certain people from coming into the country.

These groups included people of color and Jewish people. These policies were further enforced when The Great Depression hit, as the president did not want “economic burdens” coming into the United States. Once Adolf Hitler became the chancellor of Germany, many German citizens applied for US visas only to be turned down due to lack of money for them. Of the 82,787 Germans who applied, only 1,241 received visas (despite 25,957 visas being available). This gross unfulfillment of the visa quota only worsened as Hitler’s reign continued. Approximately 100,000 German citizens were on the waitlist for a US visa, but from 1934-1937 only an average of 7,053 were ever issued.

After the German invasion of Austria, approximately 140,000 people were put on the waiting list, but only 19,000 visas were issued. After World War 2 ended, the visa quota system was upheld and postwar racism was as prominent as it was after World War 1.

As different events happened that affected the need for immigration visas for different countries, policies were put in place to allow exceptions to the quotas.

The Civil Rights movement saw the annihilation of the quota system, which ended up emphasizing different preferences, like family reunification. It took many years, but the US immigration system was finally amended into something that took into account the reason for immigrating rather than who.

The system is still far from perfect, but the changes made in the aftermath of the Second World War provided drastic improvements to what once was there.

Although the system is better, it is important to understand the racist and antisemitic principles that the system was originally based upon so that we never repeat our mistakes.