The immigration issue then and now are totally unrelated. First, immigrants then came overwhelmingly from Europe and had completely different cultural and work-ethic values than many today. Second, and most important, labor for the rapidly growing industrial and manufacturing base of the nation was in fact desperately needed. The reality today when the declining manufacturing base has been eclipsed by information-processing and high-tech cyberntics is a different world ENTIRELY than the 1920’s. No serious comparison can be made.
Wasn't just a "white preference" either ~ the 1875 act was aimed at "undesirables" ~ a choice term, but it usually meant any East Asian person arriving as a contract laborer or to be a prostitute, or just about anybody else Customs clerks didn't like.
At the same time there was agitation to slow down immigrants from Southern Europe and Eastern Europe.
BTW, whatever each of us claims about any of our immigrant ancestors it is always "immigrants then weren't like those today ~ they all wanted to become Americans". Which, of course, is total nonsense.
Many of mine arrived as Swedish captives ~ kidnapped for the purpose of settling a new commercial venture called New Sweden.
That failed, they all escaped and moved to Pennsylvania. Their job was to cut trees for the Swedish and British navies. Many of them figured out it was more lucrative to cut trees off more distant land to prep it for sale to new settlers ~ they became "The Cutting Edge".
They hadn't intended to come to America, and when they got here they had no idea where it was, nor did they even really know where they'd come from. No one spoke their language, nor did they speak theirs, and they despised Swedes and English people.
No, immigrants in the good old days were different ~ they wanted to survive.