Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (The McCarran-Walter Act)

Analysis

Analysis of the McCarran-Walter Act by F. Odo:

This legislation eliminated all restrictions on naturalization, finally allowing Japanese immigrants to become American citizens. It followed earlier legislation permitting Chinese, Filipinos, and Asian Indians to naturalize . . .  Its major limitations was the retention of the quota system that severely limited immigration from Asian and Pacific nations. The act also broadened definition of deportable and excludable aliens and those of potentially subversive intent, creating language to validate possible mass detention. And while the elimination of the 1917 “barred zone” was positive, a new term, “the Asia-Pacific triangle,” permitted a maximum of only 2,000 immigrants from the nineteen countries included . . . President Harry Truman, feeling that the act did not go far enough to remove objectionable elements, vetoed the bill, but he was overridden by Congress. In later years, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson worked to eliminate the racially restrictive quota system (p. 335).

Excerpt from:
Odo, F. (Ed.) (2002). The Columbia documentary history of the Asian American experience. New York, NY: Columbia University Press

Analysis of the McCarran-Walter Act by M. Ngai:

In 1947, in the midst of debate over war-refugee policy and in large measure in response to that crisis, the Senate authorized a subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee to conduct a comprehensive study of the nation’s immigration policy, the first time since the Dillingham Commission of 1907-1910 . . . after the 1948 elections Senator Pat McCarran took over the chair a . . . McCarran, a conservative and devout Catholic from Nevada, was a dedicated anti-Communist and Cold War warrior . . . [The]  250-page draft omnibus bill introduced by McCarran in 1950-and the legislation that Congress ultimately passed in 1952-have been considered most notable for their preservation of the national origins quota system. But preserving the national origins quotas was not the central motivation . . . Rather, McCarran saw revision of the nation’s immigration laws as a tool in the United States’ urgent battle against Communism.

McCarran viewed immigration policy a matter of “internal security.” The Senate subcommittee’s report rehearsed the well-worn charge that “the Communist movement in the United States is an alien movement, sustained, augmented, and controlled by European Communists and the Soviet Union.” McCarran stressed the need to “bring our immigration system into line with the realities of Communist tactics…”

In 1952 Congress passed the omnibus Immigration and Naturalization Act, also known as the McCarran-Walter Act. In typical Cold War language, McCarran described the law as a necessary weapon to preserve “this Nation, the last hope of Western Civilization.” He added, “If this oasis of the world shall be overrun, perverted, contaminated, or destroyed, then the last flickering light of humanity will be extinguished.”

The McCarran-Walter Act replaced the Immigration Act of 1917 as the nation’s foundational immigration law (and it remains so today, as amended)… The law retained the numerical ceiling of 155,000 quota-immigrants per year based on the national origins formula of 1924, which was numerically more restrictive than previous policy in light of increase in the nation’s population since 1924. There was no specific provisions for admitting refugees. The law’s sponsors stated there was no claim to “any theory of Nordic superiority,” only concern for “similarity of cultural background.” But the retention of the national origins quotas reflected that logic which cast the native-born as the most loyal Americans, especially whites of British and north European descent, and the foreign-born as subversive, especially Jews, who were imagined as Bolsheviks, and Italians, who were viewed as anarchists.

While also preserving nonquota immigration from countries of the Western Hemisphere, it imposed quotas on the former British colonies in the Caribbean, a move that was designed to limit the migration of black people into the United States. The law’s Asiatic policy contained both progressive and reactionary elements. The law eliminated the racial bar to citizenship, which finally ended Japanese and Korean exclusion and made policy consistent with the recent repeals of Chinese, Indian, and Filipino exclusion. It was arguably the most important reform of the McCarran-Walter Act, as it established, for the first time, the general principle of color-blind citizenship. But the law also created an “Asia Pacific Triangle,” which was a global race quota aimed at restricting Asian immigration into the United States..

Excerpt from:
Ngai, M. M. (2004). Impossible subjects: Illegal aliens and the making of modern America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.