ABSTRACT
Americana, wrote Jacob H. Schiff, “must do nothing which renders emigration to this country more difficult to those of the people persecuted and oppressed co-religionists who wish to improve their lot.” Now, many people in Progressive America followed the example of the Immigration Bureau, defining each ethnic and national group as a racial group and perpetuating the use of social stereotypes that were degrading for the new immigrants themselves. The combination of religious and ethnic origins, poverty, and illiteracy proved to many Americans that the new innigrants could never be assimilated into American life. But from 1906 through 1917 the NLIL was an organization that mainly issued anti-restrictionist bulletins and petitions to ethnic organizations which in turn sent them to Congress and the White House as part of a public campaign against restrictive legislation. Marshall and the American Jewish Committee soon began to “agitate” on the passport issue.
