wave of immigration depicted in Figure 9-1; the persistence of these concerns ultimately helped to justify a closing off of this wave of immigration. A bill passed by Congress in 1891 barred immigrant carriers of contagious diseases and "immoral" people. Later, public perceptions of immigrant alcohol use and public drunkenness in association with fears of crime facilitated the passage of Prohibition. Congressional acts in 1921 and 1924 substantially reduced the numbers of immigrants admitted to the United States. Special attention was directed toward southern and eastern Europeans during this time, although statistical analyses usually compared native-born whites with the foreign born more generally.

Aside from highly questionable writings associated with the eugenics movement, the research of this earlier era provided little evidence of a causal association between immigration and crime. Homicide rates from this period in New York City, presented in Figure 9-1, reveal no systematic relationship, and McCord's (1995) assessment of the research literature from this period indicates that immigrants were not, as was often alleged, particularly prone to drunkenness or crime (Abbott, 1915; Powell, 1966; Taft, 1936; van Vechten, 1941; compare

FIGURE 9-1 Number and ratio of immigrants to population in the United States, 1820–1993 and New York City homicide rates, 1800–1993. Source: Isbister (1996:34) and Butterfield (1994).