Answer: In the early 1920s*, over a million foreigners entered the United States. Workers feared competition for jobs, and isolationists wanted minimal contact with Europe and feared that immigrants might foment revolution. In response to public demands for restrictive legislation, Congress acted quickly. It passed two laws that severely limited immigration by setting quotas on nationality, namely, the quota act of 1921 and the quota act of 1924.
The quota act of 1921 limited immigration to 3 percent of the number of foreign-born persons from a given nation counted in the 1910 Census.
The quota act of 1924 set quotas of 2 percent based on the Census of 1890 to reduce the number of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe.
*This answer is based off the assumption that the question is specifically referring to the surge of nativism in America following World War I.
