"At the beginning of the federal period in American immigration history, Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1891, which enabled federal inspectors to examine people on arrival and to reject entry to those who were diseased, morally objectionable, or whose fares had been paid by others. The year after that, Congress renewed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which had banned new Chinese immigration and Chinese eligibility for citizenship. Thus, federal legislative responses to immigration from the beginning were guided by the idea of keeping out undesirable immigrants and by the idea that some national origin groups were less desirable than others. The Immigration Act of 1903 not only consolidated earlier legislation, it also barred those who were politically objectionable, such as anarchists. Extending this line of action, a new immigration act in 1907 added more categories of people to the list of those to be excluded, and it restricted immigration from Japan. The Immigration Act of 1917 expanded exclusions still more by identifying illiterates, people entering for immoral purposes, alcoholics, and vagrants as classes that would not be allowed into the country."
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Immigration to the United States
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