Anarchist Exclusion Act

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Passed in 1903, it had a very limited impact. Advocates for using the immigration laws to combat radicalism campaigned to expand the law's definitions of those who could be excluded or deported, and the Immigration Act of 1918 did that. The Anarchist Exclusion Act, officially "An Act To regulate the immigration of aliens into the United States", ch. 1012, 32 Stat. 1222,2 was passed by the 57th United States Congress on its last day of its session, March 3, 1903 and re-enacted on June 29, 1906,3 following the September 1901 assassination of U.S. President William McKinley by Leon Czolgosz, an American-born son of Polish immigrants. President Theodore Roosevelt requested the legislation from Congress, which was the first legislation in the U.S. since the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 that permitted those attempting to enter the country to be questioned about their political beliefs.4 The act specifically barred anyone:5 "who disbelieves in or who is opposed to all organized government, or who is a member of or affiliated with any organization entertaining or teaching such disbelief in or opposition to all organized government." Immediately following a speech given by a Scottish anarchist named John Turner at the Murray Hill Lyceum, Bureau of Immigration officials arrested Turner and found a copy of Johann Most's Free Society and Turner's speaking schedule, which included a memorial to the Haymarket Martyrs. This was enough evidence to deport him. Immediately following, Emma Goldman organized a Free Speech League to contest the deportation. She recruited Clarence Darrow and Edgar Lee Masters to defend him.6 After Goldman organized a meeting at Cooper Union of those opposing the deportation, a New York Times editorial argued in favor of the act and the deportation of Turner. It referred to the people at the meeting as "ignorant and half-crazy dreamers" and declared that it was the country's "right - in the belief of Congress and of many, probably of most, Americans', it makes it our duty - to exclude him."5 Darrow and Masters presented their defense of Turner before the U.S. Supreme Court. They argued that the law was unconstitutional and that Turner was merely a "philosophical anarchist" and therefore not a threat to the government. The Court ruled against Turner, with Chief Justice Melville Fuller writing the majority opinion. Fuller held that the Bill of Rights did not apply to aliens and that Congress had the right to deny entry to anyone they deemed a threat to the country. Turner became the first person deported under the act.6 The law also limited the deportation of non-citizen anarchists to the first three years of their residency in the United States, a feature that drew complaints from immigration officials: "The anarchist of foreign birth...remains very quiet, as a rule, until the time limit protects him from deportation and then he is loud and boisterous and begins his maniac cry against all forms of organized government....There should be no time limit to the deportation of these criminals...and should one remain in hiding sufficiently long to become naturalized he should, at the first symptoms, be shorn of his cloak and forthwith deported."7 The impact of the law was slight. The Commissioner-General of Immigration reported that from the time the law took effect in 1903 until June 30, 1914, a total of 15 anarchists were denied entry to the U.S. He reported that four anarchists were expelled in 1913 and three in 1914.8 The 1903 act was amended by the Immigration Act of 1918, which expanded and elaborated the brief definition found in the Anarchist Exclusion Act seventeen years earlier and enhanced the government's ability to deport adherents of anarchism.9 References ^ Paul Avrich, Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 130 ^ Van Dyne, Frederick (1904/1980). Citizenship of the United States. Wm. S. Hein Publishing. p. 93. ISBN 0837712297. http://books.google.com/books?id=2XWHKuYL-MUC&pg=PA93&.  ^ Greeley, Horace (1909). The Tribune Almanac and Political Register. The Tribune Association. p. 131. http://books.google.com/books?id=n4w3AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA131&.  ^ Sarah Vowell, Assassination Vacation (NY: Simon and Schuster, 1999), 220, ISBN074326004X ^ a b "In Defense of Anarchy" (newspaper). New York Times (New York, New York: The New York Times): p. 8. December 5, 1903. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9D04E4D71039E333A25756C0A9649D946297D6CF. Retrieved 2007-07-12.  ^ a b Chalberg, John (1991). Emma Goldman: American Individualist. Harper Collins. pp. 85–86. ISBN 0673521028.  ^ Report of the Commissioner-General of Immigration to the Secretary of Labor for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1913 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1914), 227, 259 ^ Report of the Commissioner-General of Immigration to the Secretary of Labor for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1914 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1914), 7, 104-7, 110. The years 1913 and 1914 refer to fiscal years ending on June 30. ^ Paul Avrich, Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 133