national-origins system

The national-origins system was a method of U.S. immigration policy that characterized immigration for approximately 40 years. Established by the Immigration Act of 1924, it set annual quotas for each country based on the number of people of that national origin living in the U.S. in 1920.1

This system drastically reduced immigration from southeastern Europe, favoring immigrants from northwestern Europe. The first quota law in May 1921 limited immigrants to 3 percent of the foreign-born population from the 1910 census, favoring Protestant northwestern Europeans and excluding most Catholic southern and eastern Europeans. The quota system was later abolished in 1965, replaced by a first-come, first-served policy.12