Golden door not shut in the 20s

In the early 1920s the US passed very restrictive immigration laws.

Is there any way such laws could have been blocked.

I see several good consequences for America if it continued to have large scale immigration. I think that the US economy would be rather more dynamic and suffer less in the slump.

Of course some hundreds of thousands of German Jewish people would have had a possible destination.
 

mowque

Banned
Would have been an interesting idea. Any ideas for a POD? Might see an angrier KKK or other such groups/parties. No Prohibition/repealed sooner?
 
This stuff got started with anti-Chinese laws back in the 1800s. I'm not sure how you could engineer around this, perhaps if the Chinese were much more powerful so the US didn't feel like antagonizing them and consequently this sort of sentiment wore off? But, especially given modern views and the racism of the time, I think it is inevitable that immigration restriction laws will be passed eventually.
 

FDW

Banned
Well, one thing I can see is a much more heavily populated US, having it, say 350 million by 2000 could be a real possibility.
 
If you want to keep the masses coming, you'd have to butterfly the Emergency Quote Act and then the Immigration Act. The main reason they came around was isolationist sentiment, mainly caused by the destruction of WWI. So, keep the US out of WWI, and you may not get these acts, which keeps the doors open. As for the Chinese issue, Have the guys who fought against the Chinese Exclusion Act compare it to the slavery of blacks in the South, and say that this is codifying racial discrimination. Now, many people of the time WERE racist, but they wouldn't want to be seen as being racist, hence, the laws would probably be overturned or ignored altogether. So, you allow more Asians to come to the country, and the doors don't close on the waves of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe in the 1920s. Conceivably, you'd also allow Jews to leave Europe for America starting in 1933. That, if anything, just makes the US economy bigger and stronger in the decades to come, though racial discrimination will still be a problem in the years ahead.
 

Hendryk

Banned
As for the Chinese issue, Have the guys who fought against the Chinese Exclusion Act compare it to the slavery of blacks in the South, and say that this is codifying racial discrimination. Now, many people of the time WERE racist, but they wouldn't want to be seen as being racist, hence, the laws would probably be overturned or ignored altogether.
I'm not sure--being seen as racist was no big deal in the 1920s. A generation later the racists had to start sugarcoating their prejudices in acceptable vocabulary, such as talking of "states' rights" rather than segregation, but before WW2 it was socially and politically inconsequential to openly talk of racial preference and whatnot.

Not an American example, but something that comes to mind is the comment by the Australian delegate to the Evian Conference in 1938, which attempted to find a solution to the plight of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution. "We don't have a race problem in Australia," he said, "and don't wish to import one."
 
Not an American example, but something that comes to mind is the comment by the Australian delegate to the Evian Conference in 1938, which attempted to find a solution to the plight of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution. "We don't have a race problem in Australia," he said, "and don't wish to import one."

Probably even more explicit is the whole "White Australia" thing, which is approximately the most racist policy ever advocated by a government that didn't fall into outright apartheid or slavery.
 
Now, many people of the time WERE racist, but they wouldn't want to be seen as being racist, hence, the laws would probably be overturned or ignored altogether. So, you allow more Asians to come to the country, and the doors don't close on the waves of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe in the 1920s. Conceivably, you'd also allow Jews to leave Europe for America starting in 1933. That, if anything, just makes the US economy bigger and stronger in the decades to come, though racial discrimination will still be a problem in the years ahead.

Racism was alive and well and not at all hidden in the pre-WWII era. Even afterwards, for that matter. (Ever see the movie "Gentleman's Agreement" with Gregory Peck?)

No need to make this too complicated. European immigration didn't face nearly the racial/cultural/political roadblocks that Asian immigration did. And there were some influential Jewish members of FDR's "kitchen cabinet," such as Oscar Cox. All you need is a reason for FDR and Congress to adopt a more open Euro-immigrant policy, perhaps as an extension of a Wilson/Coolidge post-WWI refugee resettlement program.

Hmmmm. How about this: A small but significant number of Russian refugees came to the United States after the Revolution. Increase that flow with a law that encourages White Russian immigration as refugees from the chaos of Eastern Europe and combine it with tacit approval from Lenin, who sees it as a way of getting future troublemakers out of the country. He might reason that they'll be less able to cause him mischief in the US rather than France or elsewhere in Europe. Then expand the program to include other European countries later in the decade.
 
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