The Immigration Act of 1924, or Johnson–Reed Act, including the National Origins Act, Asian Exclusion Act (43 Statutes-at-Large 153), was a United States federal law that limited the number of immigrants who could be admitted from any country to 2% of the number of people from that country who were already living in the United States in 1890, down from the 3% cap set by the Immigration Restriction Act of 1921, according to the Census of 1890.
English Americans were still the majority of the population and they wanted the country to remain ethnically English.
The law gave preference to immigrants from Britain.
It was aimed at further restricting Italians and Jews who were immigrating in large numbers starting in the 1890s, as well as prohibiting the immigration of Asians.
Congressman Albert Johnson was the chief author of the Immigration Act of 1924, which in 1927 he justified as a bulwark against "a stream of alien blood, with all its inherited misconceptions respecting the relationships of the governing power to the governed."
The National Origins Quota of 1924, according to the Immigration Act, was the first permanent limitation on immigration into the United States and established the “national origins quota system.” In conjunction with the Immigration Act of 1917, it governed American immigration policy until 1952 (see the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952).
It contained two quota provisions:
1. Effective until June 30, 1927—set the annual quota of any quota nationality at two percent of the number of foreign-born persons of such nationality resident in the continental United States in 1890 (total quota - 164,667).
2. From July 1, 1927 (later postponed to July 1, 1929) to December 31, 1952—used the national origins quota system: the annual quota for any country or nationality had the same relation to 150,000 as the number of inhabitants in the continental United States in 1920 having that national origin had to the total number of inhabitants in the continental United States in 1920.
The Congressional Record reports Representative William N. Vaile of Colorado, one of the most prominent restrictionists:
“What we do claim is that the northern European and particularly Anglo-Saxons made this country. Oh, yes; the others helped. But… [t]hey came to this country because it was already made as an Anglo-Saxon commonwealth. They added to it, they often enriched it, but they did not make it, and they have not yet greatly changed it.
“We are determined that they shall not...It is a good country. It suits us. And what we assert is that we are not going to surrender it to somebody else or allow other people, no matter what their merits, to make it something different. If there is any changing to be done, we will do it ourselves.” [Cong. Rec., April 8, 1924, 5922]
"the Saxon chiefs from whom we claim the honor of being descended, and whose political principles and form of government we assumed." - Thomas Jefferson
