The Chinese and the Japanese were already excluded. They wanted more.
February 5, 1917: The U.S. Senate passed the Immigration Act of 1917 — also known as the Asiatic Barred Zone Act — expanding earlier exclusion laws and overriding a presidential veto.
This was not the beginning of race-based immigration policy in the United States. It was an escalation.
With the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, Chinese immigrants had already been barred for decades. Japanese immigration was heavily restricted through diplomatic pressure and informal agreements, including the Gentlemen’s Agreement.
Asian exclusion was established policy. But it wasn’t enough. One of the most influential advocates behind the Immigration Act of 1917 was Prescott F. Hall, a Harvard-educated lawyer and co-founder of the Immigration Restriction League. Hall openly promoted eugenics and racial hierarchy, arguing that immigration should preserve America’s so-called “racial stock.”
The Immigration Act of 1917 turned that ideology into law. It created a vast “barred zone” stretching from the Middle East through South and Southeast Asia to the Pacific Islands. Anyone born in that region was prohibited from immigrating to the United States.
Courtesy of British Columbia Archives
An anti-Chinese poster announcing the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act, May 6, 1882. It read, “Hip! Hurrah! The White Man is on Top.”
As co-founder of the Immigration Restriction League, the nation’s first anti-immigrant think tank, Prescott F. Hall's ideas helped shape the Immigration Act of 1917.
Map showing Asiatic zone prescribed in section three of Immigration Act, the natives of which are excluded from the United State, with certain exceptions.
Photo by Harris & Ewing
Alabama congressman and key architect of the Immigration Act of 1917. Burnett estimated the law would exclude nearly all Indian and non-white immigrants.
Courtesy of Library of Congress
A 1916 political cartoon from Puck magazine mocking the literacy test. Labeled “The Americanese Wall as Congressman Burnett Would Build It.”
Discrimination Was Already Law. This Was Step Two.
The law did not rely on quotas or case-by-case scrutiny. It relied on geography, race, and fear.
One of the bill’s authors, Alabama Congressman John Burnett, estimated that it would exclude approximately 40% of Mediterranean immigrants, 90% of those from Mexico, and all Indian and non-Caucasian immigrants.
Literacy tests were added as another gatekeeping tool, designed to appear neutral while disproportionately excluding people from colonized or impoverished regions. Medical exclusions were broadened. Moral exclusions were expanded.
And for those not explicitly barred, entry was made far more expensive. The immigrant head tax was raised from roughly 50 cents to $8 per person — a steep sum at the time, equivalent to several days’ wages. Exclusion was enforced not only through law, but through cost. This was exclusion by design.
Expansion of Exclusion
While Asians were the primary target, others weren’t forgotten.
Immigrants from the Middle East were newly barred. So were many people from Central and South Asia. Mexicans were not explicitly banned, but were newly subjected to harsher screening, fees, and deportations.
The law also excluded people deemed “undesirable,” including those labeled as having mental disabilities, physical impairments, or “immoral behavior.” These categories were deliberately vague. Terms such as “mentally defective” and “persons with constitutional psychopathic inferiority” were used to justify the exclusion of homosexual immigrants.
Race, class, health, and sexuality were folded into a single filtering system.
A political cartoon by Herbert Johnson depicting immigration restriction as a literal dam. Immigrants are reduced to a faceless “flood,” labeled alien undesirables.
Courtesy of Imperial Household Agency
A political cartoon by Clifford K. Berryman depicts Pancho Villa fleeing across the U.S.–Mexico border as Uncle Sam gives chase with a rifle.
Photo by Harris & Ewing
Congress overrode President Woodrow Wilson. The vote made one thing clear: anti-Asian exclusion no longer depended on presidential approval.
Strict anti-Asian immigration laws limited who Asian men could marry. Many turned to Mexican and Mexican American women. This is a Punjabi Mexican couple, 1917.
Hate More Powerful than the President
President Woodrow Wilson vetoed the bill — not because he opposed exclusion outright, but because he objected to the literacy test and feared diplomatic fallout.
Congress overrode his veto.
The Immigration Act of 1917 passed with overwhelming support in the 64th United States Congress, signaling how deeply entrenched exclusionary ideology had become. Even limited presidential resistance no longer mattered.
This was the height of “Yellow Peril” thinking: the belief that Asian societies posed a civilizational threat to American identity.
The policy had momentum of its own.
A Blueprint for Even More
The Immigration Act of 1917 laid the groundwork for what followed: the National Origins Act of 1924, near-total Asian exclusion, and a racial hierarchy written directly into immigration law.
It normalized the idea that America could define itself by who it refused to let in.
By the time Japanese Americans were incarcerated during World War II, the legal and cultural scaffolding was already in place.
This law helped build it. The Immigration Act of 1917 remained in force until it was revised by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 — a law that technically ended racial bans, while preserving many of their underlying assumptions.
In Japan, it was called the “Japanese Exclusion Act.” Some say it helped fuel the rise of Japanese militarism, by proving the U.S. would never see Japan as equal.
Courtesy of History.com
The 1952 McCarran-Walter Act revised U.S. immigration law, removing racial barriers that excluded Asian immigrants to the U.S., but there was more to it