The Immigration Act of 1907 doubled the federal head tax on arriving immigrants from $2 to $4, expanded the medical and moral grounds for excluding people at the border, gave the President new authority to block foreign laborers who tried to enter the mainland through third countries, and created a nine-member investigative body known as the Dillingham Commission. Signed on February 20, 1907, the law built on the Immigration Acts of 1882 and 1903 and pushed federal screening at ports of entry to its most elaborate form yet.1Government Printing Office. 34 U.S. Statutes at Large 898 – Immigration Act of 1907
Who Was Barred From Entry
Section 2 widened the categories of people turned away at the border. Earlier statutes had already barred those labeled “idiots” and “lunatics.” The 1907 law added people classified as “imbeciles” and “feeble-minded,” along with epileptics and anyone who had been institutionalized for mental illness within the previous five years.1Government Printing Office. 34 U.S. Statutes at Large 898 – Immigration Act of 1907 The classifications reflected imprecise medical terminology of the era, and the calls often came down to the judgment of the inspecting physician at the arrival station.
The Act also created a catch-all medical exclusion: anyone certified by an examining surgeon as having a physical or mental condition that could impair their ability to earn a living. Tuberculosis received a specific mention, and the older prohibition on “loathsome or dangerous contagious” diseases stayed in force.1Government Printing Office. 34 U.S. Statutes at Large 898 – Immigration Act of 1907
Two other new restrictions mattered. Unaccompanied children under 16 could be excluded at the discretion of the Secretary of Commerce and Labor unless traveling with at least one parent.1Government Printing Office. 34 U.S. Statutes at Large 898 – Immigration Act of 1907 And women found to be practicing prostitution within three years of arrival could be arrested and deported under a warrant from the Secretary of Commerce and Labor.2Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization. Immigration Laws and Regulations of July 1 1907
The $4 Head Tax and the Immigrant Fund
The 1903 Act had set the head tax at $2. The 1907 Act doubled it to $4 on nearly every foreign-born person entering the country, with limited exceptions carried over for residents of Canada, Cuba, and Mexico.1Government Printing Office. 34 U.S. Statutes at Large 898 – Immigration Act of 1907 Steamship companies and other carriers collected the fee from passengers and turned it over to the customs collector at the port of arrival.
The revenue flowed into a dedicated “immigrant fund” in the Treasury, administered by the Department of Commerce and Labor. It paid inspector salaries, ran the detention facilities, and covered the cost of deporting excluded individuals. Tying enforcement to the tax rather than to annual appropriations made the immigration system largely self-financing.1Government Printing Office. 34 U.S. Statutes at Large 898 – Immigration Act of 1907
Fines on Steamship Companies
The Act pressed carriers hard. Deliver a passenger who fell into one of the named excludable categories and the company owed a $100 fine per violation. Customs officials could refuse clearance papers to any vessel while the fine was pending, and unpaid fines remained enforceable as a lien against the ship itself.1Government Printing Office. 34 U.S. Statutes at Large 898 – Immigration Act of 1907
Allowing passengers to land at unauthorized locations carried heavier consequences: a misdemeanor punishable by $100 to $1,000 in fines, up to a year in prison, or both. Carriers also had to take excluded immigrants back to their port of origin at company expense. The effect was to push a first layer of screening onto private shipping lines before their vessels ever left Europe.1Government Printing Office. 34 U.S. Statutes at Large 898 – Immigration Act of 1907
How Exclusion Decisions Were Made
When an arriving immigrant was flagged for possible exclusion, the case went to a Board of Special Inquiry rather than to a single officer. Section 25 required each board to consist of three immigration inspectors appointed by the commissioner of immigration at the port of arrival.1Government Printing Office. 34 U.S. Statutes at Large 898 – Immigration Act of 1907 At smaller ports without three inspectors on staff, the Secretary of Commerce and Labor could designate other federal officials to fill the panel.
Hearings were closed to the public, but the board kept a permanent record of proceedings and testimony. The immigrant could present evidence and explain why admission should be granted. A two-of-three majority was enough to admit.1Government Printing Office. 34 U.S. Statutes at Large 898 – Immigration Act of 1907
If the board voted against admission, the immigrant, or any dissenting board member, could appeal to the Commissioner-General of Immigration and ultimately to the Secretary of Commerce and Labor. Filing an appeal paused deportation until the final decision came back. If exclusion held through every level, the immigrant was deported.3National Archives. INS Boards of Special Inquiry (BSI) Records The structure was substantially more procedural than anything earlier statutes had offered, and the boards handled enormous caseloads at busy stations like Ellis Island.
Presidential Passport Authority and the Gentlemen’s Agreement
A proviso in Section 1 gave the President authority to block entry of foreign nationals whose passports had been issued for travel to a country other than the continental United States. If a person held a passport for Hawaii, Mexico, Canada, or the Canal Zone and then tried to enter the mainland, the President could refuse admission.1Government Printing Office. 34 U.S. Statutes at Large 898 – Immigration Act of 1907 The power activated only on a presidential finding that indirect entry was harming domestic labor conditions.
Its real purpose was to enforce an informal arrangement with Japan. President Theodore Roosevelt issued Executive Order 589 on March 14, 1907, declaring that Japanese passports for laborers bound for Mexico, Canada, or Hawaii were being used as a backdoor to the mainland, and ordering that such travelers be refused entry.4The American Presidency Project. Executive Order 10009 – Revoking in Part Executive Orders No 589 March 14 1907 and No 1712 The order worked in tandem with what became known as the Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1907–1908, under which Japan voluntarily stopped issuing passports to laborers headed for the American mainland, limiting them to former residents, family members of current residents, and certain property-owning farmers.5Office of the Historian. The Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1907-1908 The statute’s neutral wording about “passports issued by any foreign government” let Roosevelt achieve a race-based labor restriction through executive action without Congress passing a law naming Japanese nationals.
The Dillingham Commission
Section 39 created the United States Immigration Commission, better known by the name of its chairman, Senator William P. Dillingham of Vermont. It seated nine members: three Senators appointed by the President of the Senate, three Representatives appointed by the Speaker of the House, and three presidential appointees. Congress gave the commission subpoena power, authorized domestic and international travel, and drew its funding from the immigrant fund.1Government Printing Office. 34 U.S. Statutes at Large 898 – Immigration Act of 1907 The mandate was open-ended: a “full inquiry, examination, and investigation” into immigration, with conclusions and recommendations to Congress.
The commission published its findings in 1911 in a 41-volume report. Drawing on the eugenics theories then in circulation, the commissioners argued that immigrants from southern and eastern Europe were less assimilable than earlier waves from northern and western Europe. Its central legislative recommendation was a literacy test for adult immigrants, promoted as a way to reduce arrivals overall.
The recommendations proved enormously influential. Congress passed the literacy test requirement in the Immigration Act of 1917, overriding President Wilson’s veto. The commission’s national-origin framework then supplied the intellectual foundation for the Emergency Quota Act of 1921 and the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924, which together ended the era of mass immigration until the 1960s.
What Replaced It
Most of the 1907 Act’s specific provisions were superseded by the Immigration Act of 1917, which folded in the literacy test the Dillingham Commission had proposed, and then by the quota laws of the 1920s. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 consolidated the patchwork of earlier statutes into a single framework, and with major amendments in 1965 it forms the basis of modern immigration law.6Office of the Historian. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (The McCarran-Walter Act) The 1907 Act’s direct provisions are no longer in force, but its templates outlasted it: expanded medical grounds, self-financing enforcement through fees on arrivals, carrier liability for inadmissible passengers, and administrative boards deciding exclusion at the port. The Boards of Special Inquiry it formalized remained the primary adjudication mechanism at ports of entry for decades after the Act itself was gone.