Going back before Lincoln. The necessity of populating a continent sideled into the desire for cheap labor and immigrant votes. That was under way whatever Lincoln did or didn't do.
It was the Democrats who reformed immigration and stopped the wage-breakers' game in 1925
Not so much. Republicans controlled Congress. The sponsors of the bill were Republicans. A Republican president signed it. Republicans took the flak for it in later years. There weren't many dissenters, though (mostly Democrats), so you could say it was bipartisan.
There was a case for reforming the bill to take out the more prejudicial aspects. That had already largely been done by the 1960s. But the Democrats -- Kennedy and Johnson -- chose a radical overhaul, rather than continue with gradual, piecemeal reform, and they had all kinds of offensive quotes from the act's supporters back in the 1920s to push their case through.
As it was, though, they got enough support from Republicans. That was also a bipartisan measure. The Immigration and Naturalization Act was the dark obverse of the Civil and Voting Rights Acts. Republicans were more supportive of the latter than Democrats because they had little presence in the South. For the same reason, though, they were also more supportive of the former.
“The sponsors of the bill were Republicans.”
I stand corrected ...... The original 1921 Emergency Quota Act legislation had a Republican sponsor, a single Democrat objector in the Senate (from Mississippi, note), and Jewish policy objects — or so Wiki likes to tell us.
(Getting harder and harder to quote Wiki with a straight face.)
A Democratic President signed the interim 1917 Immigration Act; Pubbies its successors.
Rundown here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Quota_Act