Able to Be American

Epilepsy. Heart disease. Varicose veins. Feeble-mindedness. In 1891, Congress unambiguously codified the popular sentiment that defects like these should preclude admission to the United States. Expanding the eugenics-rooted restrictions of the 1882 Immigration Act, the new law conflated illness, poverty, and disability with criminality and moral turpitude, starkly revealing Congresss vision of th...