The State Department and the Japanese Exclusion Act of 1924

In l924, Congress passed, as part of a general immigration bill, an amendment that barred Japanese immigrants from the United States. . It had voted in favor of exclusion even though the Department of State and Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes had strongly opposed such a measure. Hughes had warned the Senate that the amendment would be taken as a racial insult by Japan, and would, therefore, harm relations with that country.

This study of the exclusion act examines the efforts of the State Department to stop its passage. The Secretary of State tried to defeat the exclusionists in Congress by making an appeal to reason. He argued that aside from damaging American foreign policy in Asia, banning Japanese immigrants by federal statute would not be the most effective and practical method to stop Japanese immigration. If Japan were allowed a small immigration quota, fewer Japanese would enter the country illegally. Hughes's explanation was that under the Gentlemen's Agreement, which had regulated Japanese immigration since l908, Japan had voluntarily restricted emigration. Abrogation of the agreement by an exclusion act would end that cooperation and therefore the number of Japanese emigrants to the United States would increase. Since the Mexican and Canadian borders were inadequately patrolled, illegal immigration could then be expected to rise sharply. Thus a quota and the Gentlemen's Agreement, Hughes maintained, would be a more effective way to cut off immigration from Japan.

The Secretary of State, however, was not able to convince the Senate that his method was preferable to exclusion. Keeping the iii

Gentlemen's Agreement would have required Congress to turn over part of its power to regulate immigration to the State Department, which it would not do. Hughes's major mistake was his failure to negotiate earlier a substitute for the Gentlemen's Agreement that was acceptable to the exclusionists. . The secretary had hesitated to face the issue until l924, because he was afraid that open discussion of it would stir up anti-Japanese sentiment and only make matters worse. But by the . time he did take action, it was too late to bargain, and Congress would not listen to his arguments.