In the early days of Japanese-American immigration there were a lot of problems with racial discrimination and after a lot of pressure on those in government positions the Immigration Act of 1924, also known as the Johnson-Reed Act, effectively ended any and all immigration from Japan. This bill became a federal law that restricted the amount of immigration from any certain country by a percentage that went from the listed nationality numbers in the 1890 census and it completely disallowed any immigration from Asians.

This bill in combination with the preexisting Immigration Act of 1917 was the standard for all immigrations until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 was passed. A particular stab to the Japanese who already lived in the United States was present in the bill with the provision that banned any person who would have been considered ineligible to become a citizen from any attempt at establishing themselves as immigrants. The Act of 1924 also specifically banned any further arrival of people from the countries of Japan, China, Laos, Thailand, Korea, Vietnam, and several other countries in Asia.

Surprisingly the bill was highly favored by both the House of Representatives and the Senate and passed with only a few dissenting votes. One of the large reasons for such an extreme outlook on immigration and race originated from a movement known as eugenics, or racial hygiene theory. This was a theory that was greatly propagated by the lawyer and writier Madison Grant which stated that it was a government’s responsibility to chose the best specimens to be allowed to raise children.. The idea was that each generation would succeed the one before it in intelligence, morality, and physical prowess. One of the ways many politicians who subscribed to this theory dealt with the genetic improvement of a race through the exclusion of other possibilities. This is where the idea of enacting an immigration ban came into play.