This is the second of four entries on Presidents and Immigration Policies, covering the years 1861-1921, from Abraham Lincoln through the administration of Woodrow Wilson.
Under Abraham Lincoln, immigration was encouraged, with many immigrants, particularly German nationals, participating in Civil War military battles, and the Homestead Act of 1862 actively recruited immigrants.
The same pro immigration policies were pursued with the growth of industrial expansion, under Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, and James A. Garfield.
Sadly, however in the Presidency of Chester Alan Arthur, anti Chinese hatreds led to the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, the first major racial immigration restriction in American history, legislation that was renewed and continued as policy until American participation in World War II in 1943.
Grover Cleveland continued a similar policy and under Benjamin Harrison, the US Government established federal control of immigration, under the Immigration Act of 1891.
Similar restrictive policies toward Chinese and other Asian immigration continued under William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, and William Howard Taft with talk about “True Americanism” under Roosevelt.
Under Woodrow Wilson, restrictive immigration legislation on literacy tests was passed over his veto, amid growing fear of Catholic and Jewish immigration being perceived as a danger to America. And Wilson was very much a denier of basic civil liberties, and his open racism was made clear as promoting restrictions.
Tragically, massive restrictions on immigration and open anti Catholic and anti semitic beliefs would become dominant starting in the 1920s through 1965, the subject of the next entry on Presidents and Immigration Policies.