Immigration Restriction League

The Immigration Restriction League was an American nativist and anti-immigration organization founded by Charles Warren, Robert DeCourcy Ward, and Prescott F. Hall in 1894.

According to Erika Lee, in 1894 the old stock Yankee upper-class founders of the League were, "convinced that Anglo-Saxon traditions, peoples, and culture were being drowned in a flood of racially inferior foreigners from Southern and Eastern Europe.

Among other things, the funds obtained from the increase in duty would be used for: With this bill, the League also hoped to diminish the immigration of people from the poorer countries, who were considered less beneficial for the United States.

The National Conference on Immigration, held in New York, proposed to add imbeciles, feeble-minded persons, and epileptics to the excluded classes.

The IRL made common cause with blue collar workers in labor unions[6] in advocating a literacy requirement as a means to limit poorly-educated immigrants who would lower the wage scale.

Congress passed the literacy bill for the first time in 1896, which set the ability to read at least 40 words in any language as a requirement for admission to the United States.