Before Hart-Celler, immigration into the United States operated under the National Origins Act, a seemingly simple system that doled out up to 150,000 visas a year, distributed among different quotas for each nationality, calculated according to the 1920 census. The more people of your kind you had in the United States, the more people could immigrate from your country of origin. As a result, countries like Ireland, Germany and England would receive far more visas than those in Eastern Europe, Asia or Africa. (African Americans and African immigrants were excluded from the calculation of quotas. While white Americans were classified by nation of origin, all Black Americans were classified by race, and as a result African countries were held to the minimum number of slots.)在《哈特—塞勒法》之前，移民进入美国依据的是《国家起源法案》(National Origins Act)，这是一个看似简单的制度，每年发放15万个签证，根据1920年的人口普查计算，每个国籍分到数量不等的配额。
This decision, which came down in 1922, set off a fight in Congress between lawmakers who saw an opening to create a fully racialized immigration system — one that kept out not only the Japanese, Chinese and Koreans but Jews as well — and a group of lawmakers, who, along with President Calvin Coolidge, believed new restrictions on immigration would destroy any hope of diplomatic relations with Japan.1922年做出的这一决定在国会引发了一场斗争，他们看到了创建一个完全种族化的移民制度的机会——不仅日本人、中国人和朝鲜人，而且犹太人也被排除在外——还有一群议员，他们和卡尔文·柯立芝(Calvin Coolidge)总统一样，认为对移民的新限制会摧毁与日本建立外交关系的希望。
Buck and her allies had put forth a vision of strength through pluralism — a nation whose diplomatic and economic ties to Asia could be deepened by liberal immigration laws that proved the United States did indeed consider the Chinese to be potential contributors to American society as opposed to inscrutable outsiders. In 1942, a poll commissioned by the Office of War Information found that over 80 percent of Americans considered China to be a strong ally of the United States.赛珍珠和她的盟友提出了通过多元主义增强实力的愿景——自由的移民法可以加深这个国家与亚洲的外交和经济联系，以证明美国确实认为中国人是美国社会的潜在贡献者，而不是不可理喻的外人 ... 阅读全文
This decision, which came down in 1922, set off a fight in Congress between lawmakers who saw an opening to create a fully racialized immigration system — one that kept out not only the Japanese, Chinese and Koreans but Jews as well — and a group of lawmakers, who, along with President Calvin Coolidge, believed new restrictions on immigration would destroy any hope of diplomatic relations with Japan.1922年做出的这一决定在国会引发了一场斗争，他们看到了创建一个完全种族化的移民制度的机会——不仅日本人、中国人和朝鲜人，而且犹太人也被排除在外——还有一群议员，他们和卡尔文·柯立芝(Calvin Coolidge)总统一样，认为对移民的新限制会摧毁与日本建立外交关系的希望。
Buck and her allies had put forth a vision of strength through pluralism — a nation whose diplomatic and economic ties to Asia could be deepened by liberal immigration laws that proved the United States did indeed consider the Chinese to be potential contributors to American society as opposed to inscrutable outsiders. In 1942, a poll commissioned by the Office of War Information found that over 80 percent of Americans considered China to be a strong ally of the United States.赛珍珠和她的盟友提出了通过多元主义增强实力的愿景——自由的移民法可以加深这个国家与亚洲的外交和经济联系，以证明美国确实认为中国人是美国社会的潜在贡献者，而不是不可理喻的外人 ... 阅读全文