Committee on Immigration and Naturalization

Committee on Immigration and Naturalization (1893-1946)

Jurisdiction and History

1. Congress did little before 1860 to regulate immigration, which had traditionally been controlled by the colonies and then the states. After the Civil War, when the issues of States rights had been clarified and the need for a uniform immigration and naturalization system had become more apparent, the Federal Government began to build a system to regulate these areas. By 1893 the regulation and restriction of immigration and naturalization had become complex, and the standing Committee on Immigration and Naturalization was created in the House after having been a select committee for 4 years.

2. Its jurisdiction included a variety of subjects: general revision of immigration and naturalization laws; supervision of the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization; sites and buildings of immigration stations at U.S. ports of entry; pay and provisions for immigration officers and personnel; and management of resident aliens, including residence, deportation, readmission, and ownership of property.

3. The jurisdiction included regulatory measures to restrict immigration, such as literacy tests, head taxes, racial and country-of-origin quotas, money-in-pocket tests, and professional and skills criteria. The committee reported legislation restricting immigration of certain classes of persons--such as Chinese, Japanese, contract laborers, anarchists, dependents, mental defectives, illiterates, and criminals--and naturalization legislation affecting classes of persons such as aliens who had served in the military during wartime, women married to U.S. citizens, and persons of particular nationalities. The complex regulatory system that was thus constructed was the source of a large number of requests for private legislation designed to provide relief for persons who begged personal exemption from the broad categories defined in the legislation.

4. More than half the petitions and memorials are from the earliest years of the committee, 1893-1907. Many petitions in the turn-of-the-century records favor restriction of