Not that he was a mealy-mouthed wishy-washy make a deal politician but he was still a politician ~ simply one that kept his mouth closed.
Well then I guess he was a politician since his rhetoric and words also explicitly supported restricitive immigration.
From what I’ve read the only reservation he had about signing the 1924 Reform Act was its exclusion of Japanese immigrants, but he didn’t let that stop him from doing what was best for the country and signing on the cut off of mass immigration.
Mass immigration only resumed after the 1965 Reform Act, even though its sponsors promised that it would do no such thing. The effects really weren’t evident until the 70s. If presented with a bill reestablishing caps on immigration levels, and undoing the 1964 act had been presented to Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush II, or Obama, do you think any of them would have signed it?
The answer is no. Coolidge did sign when presented with a restrictive bill, so that makes him the best President on immigration. I fully grant you that attaining such an honor isn’t hard seeing as how all those others I just mentioned were quite bad.
It should be noted, however, that Clinton initially supported the findings of the late Congresswoman Barbara Jordan’s commission on immigration reform in the mid 90s which called for cutting legal immigration by at least one-third. Would he have actually signed had it reached him? Who knows? It never made it that far, in part due to Republican supporters of mass immigration like former Senator Spencer Abraham who helped sabotage the bill. My guess is that Clinton would not have signed it, as he has since become a typcial and ardent supporter of mass immigration.