Lets say this is 1930. The The Immigration Act(The Johnson-Reed Act) was passed in 1924 which limited the number of immigrants allowed entry into the United States through a national origins quota. The quota provided immigration visas to two percent of the total number of people of each nationality in the United States as of the 1890 national census. It completely excluded immigrants from Asia. Before in 1917, there was an Act that required that required immigrants over 16 years old to demonstrate basic reading comprehension. That comprehension was to be determined in a test given at Ellis Island. A tax was exerted from each immigrant upon arrival and new requirements had to be met before one was allowed in. The total number of visas available each year to new immigrants was set at 350,000. The screening process was in full effect. Of course, the Johnson-Reed Act was racist. It caused an increase in illegal immigration. It was also anti-Catholic and the KKK rose up to eliminate Catholic immigrants. It became the law of the land until the quotas were eased in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 and replaced in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.
But imagine it is 1930. Suppose fifty ships filled to the max with Irish Catholics left Ireland’s Dublin Harbor and headed to New York Harbor. Instead of landing at Ellis Island, they unloaded en-mass in New York Harbor. What do you think would have happened then? It was a time of the Great Depression. Herbert Hoover was President. Illegal immigration was increasing. Increasing unemployment was at a crisis. Hoover reacted by launching a wave of raids and deportations affecting as many as 1.8 million men, women and children. The idealized notion that immigration in our past was a humane bright spot in our nation’s history is a myth.
About the same thing that happened to the Bonus Army.