Immigration levels in the first two decades of the 20th century soared to over 14 million. The Dillingham Commission Report of 1911 fueled racial prejudice toward immigrants from southeastern Europe, discriminating against the "New Immigrants" rather than the "Old Immigrants" of northwestern Europe. The 1919 recession, its high levels of unemployment and associated strikes and violence triggered the Red Scare, a wave of anti-radical hysteria caused by the Russian Revolution and the impact of the Great War. The Eugenics Movement, Nativism, and xenophobia exacerbated anti-immigration sentiment and racism in the 1910s and 1920s.
Immigration to America in the 1920s saw the establishment of the United States Border Patrol and the Immigration Act (Johnson-Reed Act) of 1924. The act restricted the immigration quota, lowering it from 350,000 to 165,000. The quota system was reduced from 3% to 2% permitted from each country as the number of residents of that country living in the United States. The percentages were highly biased toward "Old Immigrants" over "New Immigrants." No quotas were imposed on Latin Americans, while countries in Asia that had previously been allowed to immigrate were no longer permitted to do so. As a result of this legislation, 87% of visas went to immigrants from Britain, Ireland, Germany, and Scandinavia.
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