Eugenicists believed that most immigrants who entered the United States after 1890 were genetically undesirable (Black 2003). In the three decades after that year, over twenty million immigrants had entered the United States. These new immigrants were mainly from Europe, where economic and ethnic problems were causing upheavals. More than eight million of these had arrived from 1900 to 1909; more than a million arrived each year in 1910, 1913, and 1914 (Black 2003).
