Under the
Immigration Act of 1924, the
Bureau of the Census and
Department of Commerce were tasked with estimating the
National Origins of the White Population of the United States in 1920 in numbers, then calculating the percentage share each nationality made up as a fraction of the total. The National Origins Formula derived quotas by calculating the equivalent proportion of each nationality out of a total pool of 150,000 annual quota immigrants. This formula was used until the
Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 adopted a simplified formula limiting each country to a quota of one-sixth of one percent of that nationality's 1920 population count, with a minimum quota of 100. • 13.5% of the total: 12,071,282
immigrants classified by land of foreign-birth recorded in the
1920 Census • 19.7% of the total: 17,620,676
children of immigrants classified by land of foreign-birth, foreign parentage, or foreign mother tongue in the
1920 or
1910 Census • 21.8% of the total: 19,490,200
grandchildren and later generations of immigrants classified based on records of immigration and naturalization: persons of foreign-birth, parentage, or mother tongue in the Census counts of 1920 and 1910; foreign-birth or parentage in
1900 and
1890; foreign-born in the Census counts of
1850–1
880; and records of immigrants admitted 1820–1840. • 45.0% of the total: 40,324,400 descendants of
colonial stock, apportioned into the same ethnic proportional makeup as the population enumerated in the
1790 Census When CPG was produced in 1909, the concept of independent
Ireland did not even exist. CPG made no attempt to further classify its estimated 1.9% Irish population to distinguish
Celtic Irish Catholics of
Gaelic Ireland, who in 1922 formed the independent
Irish Free State, from the
Scotch-Irish descendants of
Ulster Scots and
Anglo-Irish of the
Plantation of Ulster, which became
Northern Ireland and remained part of the
United Kingdom. Unlike in 1909, the undercount of other
colonial stock populations like
German Americans and
Irish Americans would now have real contemporary policy consequences. In 1927, proposed immigration quotas based on CPG figures were rejected by the President's Committee chaired by the
Secretaries of State,
Commerce, and
Labor, with the President reporting to Congress "the statistical and historical information available raises grave doubts as to the whole value of these computations as the basis for the purposes intended."
White Americans by national origin in 1920 The National Origins Formula was a unique computation (not comparable with e.g. self-reported
ancestries in the decennial
U.S. Census or annual
American Community Survey), which sought to determine the degree of 'blood' each national origin had contributed to the total white American population (in scientific terms, the
genetic contribution of each nation), acknowledging the reality of centuries of intermarriage among
European Americans of different ethnicities from all corners of
Europe since the earliest settlements of the New World. The numbers do not purport to represent 'pure' discrete individuals of monoethnic backgrounds. Rather the figures reflect how the population would have naturally grown
if each succeeding generation from the 1790
colonial stock had only mated
endogamously among their own co-ethnics in the subsequent 130 years, estimating the diffusion of 'blood' among
white Americans as a collective whole. In reality,
exogamy was common with many white Americans being of mixed European ancestries (measuring 'blood' in modern parlance akin to
DNA test results measuring an individual's ancestral makeup, applied to a population.) == Quota calculation formula ==