The Immigration Act of 1917 celebrates its centennial today - now that was a ban

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On February 5, 1917, the United States Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1917 with an overwhelming majority, overriding President Woodrow Wilson's December 14, 1916, veto.[2] This act added to and consolidated the list of undesirables banned from entering the country, including: "alcoholics", "anarchists", "contract laborers", "criminals and convicts", "epileptics", "feebleminded persons", "idiots", "illiterates", "imbeciles", "insane persons", "paupers", "persons afflicted with contagious disease", "persons being mentally or physically defective", "persons with constitutional psychopathic inferiority", "political radicals", "polygamists", "prostitutes" and "vagrants".[16]

For the first time, an immigration law of the U.S. impacted European immigration with the provision barring all immigrants over the age of sixteen who were illiterate. Literacy was defined by being able to read 30-40 words of their own language from an ordinary text.

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Legal interpretation on the terms "mentally defective" and "persons with constitutional psychopathic inferiority" effectively included a ban on homosexual immigrants who admitted their orientation.[18] One section of the law designated an "Asiatic Barred Zone", from which people could not immigrate, and included much of Asia and the Pacific Islands. The zone was described on longitudinal and latitudinal lines, excluding immigrants from Afghanistan, the Arabian Peninsula, Asiatic Russia, India, Malaysia, Myanmar, and the Polynesian Islands.

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