In 1921, Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act, which further limited the number of immigrants. One congressman arguing in favor of the bill said, “The issue…is simply this: shall we preserve this country, handed down to us by a noble and illustrious ancestry, for Americans, and transmit it to our posterity as our forefathers intended; or shall we permit it to be overrun and submerged by a heterogeneous, hodgepodge, polyglot, aggregation of aliens, most of whom are the scum, the offal, and the excrescence of the earth.” The year before the Emergency Quota Act passed, about 800,000 immigrants entered the United States; the year after it passed, that number was reduced to 300,000.