s dispute was eugenics. Eugenics is the study of human heredity, aimed at "improving" the genetic quality of the human stock. The eugenics movement was an effort to grade races and ethnic groups according to their genetic qualities. Eugenicists claimed that immigrants were inferior to Anglo-Saxons and were polluting the "pure" American bloodstream. The sheer number of immigrants entering the country also scared many people. A. Piatt Andrew noted this in the North American Review in 1914, " we have still to ask whether there is not a menace in the very numbers of the immigrants now coming in." Nativists were also greatly concerned with religion. The majority of the Anglo-Saxon, Protestant population feared the incoming Catholicism and Judaism. Many Irish immigrants were becoming active in urban politics, and being Roman Catholic, many "native Americans" feared that the Church of Rome was gaining a foothold in American government. With the constant flow of immigrants coming into the country, nativists during this time period began coming up with strategies to stop these people from entering the country.There were multiple regulations passes between 1880 and 1925 which regulated the number of immigrants entering the country. In 1882, the Immigration Act only allowed for people of "good stock" to enter the country. This act passed by Congress provided for the examination of immigrants and for the exclusion from the U.S. of convicts, prostitutes, persons suffering from diseases, and persons liable to become public charges. This act, along with the Chinese Exclusion Act, which disallowed immigrants from China to enter the country, was responsible for a precipitous decline in immigration. In 1885, The Alien Contract Labor Laws were created. They prohibited the immigration to the U.S. of persons entering the country to work under contracts made before their arrival. In 1887 the American Protective Association was created by Henry Bowers. It was...
