The Immigration Act of 1917 (The Asiatic Barred Zone Act)
This law implemented a literacy test intended to reduce European immigration. It also restricted immigration of people from most Asian countries as well as that of homosexuals, criminals, alcoholics, and other categories of “undesirable aliens”.
The Immigration Act of 1917 codified anti-immigrant sentiments in two main ways: by prohibiting immigration from a designated “barred zone” that spanned between the Middle East and Southeast Asia, and by instituting a literacy test that was designed to target European immigrants. The literacy test required immigrants over the age of 16 to demonstrate basic literacy in any language.
It had taken Congress two decades to enact a literacy test, after repeated vetoes by the White House. It was successful in 1917 amid heightened fears that immigration was leading to the fragmentation of American cultural identity and the fear of radicalism during World War I and the Russian Revolution.
