People of Latin American descent (chiefly Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans) became the fastest-growing ethnic minority in the country.
With many Americans fearing that many immigrants were socialists, Communists, or anarchists, Congress passed laws to restrict immigration (The Emergency Immigration Act of 1921 and The Immigration Act of 1924). Whith the clear intention in restricting European arrivals and to tilt the
balance in favor of immigrants from northern and western Europe. The law completely excluded people from east Asia—a gratuitous insult to the Japanese, who were already kept out of the United States by their Gentlemen’s Agreement with Theodore Roosevelt.
On the other hand, the Immigration Act of 1924 left the gate open to new arrivals from countries in the Western Hemisphere, so that an ironic consequence of the new law was a substantial increase in the Hispanic Catholic population of the United States.
