The Klan-sponsored Immigration Act of 1924, which sharply restricted the number of Jews, Catholics, southern and eastern Europeans, Asians, and Africans who could come to the United States, stayed on the books for forty-one years. During World War II, a limited number of Jewish refugees from Germany who’d been allowed into the country—as an exception to the law—formed an elite American intelligence unit, the Ritchie Boys, and helped to win the war against Hitler. The US Army estimated that nearly 60 percent of the credible intelligence gathered in Europe came from this unit of immigrants.
