July 4, 1864: Lincoln Signed the Act to Encourage Immigration

Statue of Liberty Under Construction 1883 in Paris

The U.S. has passed only one law to encourage immigration—and it was literally named the Act to Encourage Immigration. President Lincoln signed the law on July 4, 1864.

Why was the law passed? Lincoln, in his Annual Message to Congress on December 8, 1863, called for government support of immigration:

I again submit to your consideration the expediency of establishing a system for the encouragement of immigration. All though this source of national wealth and strength is again flowing with greater freedom than for several years before the insurrection occurred, there is still a great deficiency of laborers in every field of industry, especially in agriculture, and in our mines, as well as of iron and coal as of the precious metals.

Congress was persuaded. A short time after his speech, a bill was introduced to establish a formal Bureau of Immigration. Sen. John Sherman (Ohio) chaired the Committee on Agriculture.  His committee agreed that immigration was necessary. 

Their report stated that “labor has special wants in every department of industry; vacancies caused by recruiting calls for a large increase in foreign immigration to make up the deficiency at home. Furthermore, the South, after the war is over, will present a wide field for voluntary white labor and it must look to the immigrant for its supply.”

The law provided for payment of passage by withholding portions of wages over 12 months after an immigrant’s arrival. This was essentially a deferred payment plan paid by immigrants for their passage to America.

The law was short-lived. Prejudice against immigrants intensified. Opponents pointed to California’s law, called the “Act to Protect Free White Labor Against Competition with Chinese Coolie Labor, And to Discourage the Immigration of the Chinese into the State of California” [also known as the “Anti-Coolie Act of 1862”]. This law was proposed as a federal bill.

It did not pass until 1882, in a law called the Chinese Exclusion Act.

But the damage was done. Shortly after Lincoln was assassinated, Congress repealed the pro-immigration law on July 23, 1865.

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Credit: Jason H. Silverman, Ellison Capers Palmer, Jr. Professor of History, Winthrop University, and author of Lincoln and the Immigrant.