United States Congressional Joint Immigration Commission

rdf:langString United States Congressional Joint Immigration Commission

rdf:langString The United States Immigration Commission (also known as the Dillingham Commission after its chairman, Republican Senator William P. Dillingham of Vermont) was a bipartisan special committee formed in February 1907 by the United States Congress, President of the United States and Speaker of the House of Representatives, to study the origins and consequences of recent immigration to the United States. This was in response to increasing political concerns about the effects of immigration in the United States and its brief was to report on the social, economic and moral state of the nation. During its time in action the Commission employed a staff of more than 300 people for over 3 years, spent better than a million dollars and accumulated mass data. It was a joint committee composed of members of both the House and Senate. The Commission published its findings in 1911, concluding that immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe was a serious threat to American society and culture and should be greatly reduced in the future, as well as continued restrictions on immigration from China, Korea, and Japan. The report highly influenced public opinion around the introduction of legislation to limit immigration and can be seen to have played an integral part in the adoption of the 1921 Emergency Quota Act and subsequent Johnson Reed Act of 1924.