In 1895, Henry Cabot Lodge had introduced a bill to the United States Senate to impose a mandate for literacy for immigrants, using a test requiring them to read five lines from the Constitution.

[2][5] As early as 1882, previous immigration acts had levied head taxes on aliens entering the country to offset the cost of their care if they became indigent.

[10] After the assassination of President William McKinley by the anarchist Leon Czolgosz on September 6, 1901, several immigration Acts were passed which broadened the defined categories of "undesireables."

Exclusion of women aimed to cement a bachelor society, making Chinese men unable to form families and thus, transient, temporary immigrants.

[16] Barred categories expanded with the Page Act of 1875, which established that Chinese, Japanese, and oriental bonded labor, convicts, and prostitutes were forbidden entry to the US.

[18] On February 5, 1917, the Immigration Act of 1917 was passed by the 64th United States Congress with an overwhelming majority, overriding President Woodrow Wilson's December 14, 1916, veto.

[22] Legal interpretation on the terms "mentally defective" and "persons with constitutional psychopathic inferiority" effectively included a ban on homosexual immigrants who admitted their sexual orientation.

[21] The description of the zone is as follows: ...unless otherwise provided for by existing treaties, persons who are natives of islands not possessed by the United States adjacent to the continent of Asia, situated south of the twentieth parallel latitude north, west of the one hundred and sixtieth meridian of longitude east from Greenwich, and north of the tenth parallel of latitude south, or who are natives of any country, province, or dependency situated on the continent of Asia west of the one hundred and tenth meridian of longitude east from Greenwich and east of the fiftieth meridian of longitude east from Greenwich and south of the fiftieth parallel of latitude north, except that portion of said territory situate between the fiftieth and the sixth-fourth meridians of longitude east from Greenwich and the twenty-fourth and thirty-eight parallels of latitude north, and no alien now in any way excluded from, or prevented from entering, the United States shall be admitted to the United States.

US entry into World War I, a few months after the law's passage, prompted a waiver of the act's provisions on Mexican agricultural workers.