A provision in the 1924 law barred entry to those ineligible for citizenship — effectively ending the immigration of all Asians into the United States and undermining the earlier "Gentlemen`s Agreement" with Japan. Efforts by Secretary of State Hughes to change this provision were not successful and actually inflamed the passions of the anti-Japanese press, which was especially strong on the West Coast. Heated protests were issued by the Japanese government and a citizen committed seppuku outside the American embassy in Tokyo. May 26, the effective date of the legislation, was declared a day of national humiliation in Japan, adding another in a growing list of grievances against the U.S. Louis Marshall, chairman of the American Jewish Relief Committee, wrote a letter to Coolidge on May 22, 1924, urging him not to sign the National Origins bill. In addition to making salient comments about the general defects of regulating immigration by race and nationality, he made the following prescient remarks about its impact on Japanese-American relations:
. this bill, in the most offensive manner and in total disregard of the natural feelings of a sister nation, whom we have regarded as a political equal, inflicts a deep insult upon the national and racial consciousness of a highly civilized and progressive country. Such a wound will never case to rankle. It will give rise to hostility which, even when not apparent on the surface, will prove most serious. It cannot fail to be reflected upon our commerce, and in days of stress will be likely to occasion unspeakable concern.
In 1965, the Hart-Cellar Act abolished the national origins quota system that had structured America`s immigration policy since the 1920`s, replacing it with a preference system that emphasized immigrants` skills and family relationships with citizens or residents of the United States. See other domestic activities during the Coolidge administration.
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