N tracing the course of immigration law one finds a continual process of amendment. New problems of immigration arise from time to time to require new legislation, and administrative difficulties encountered in the enforcement of the existing law call for its modification. But the underlying immigration law and immigration policy are little affected. The pattern of regulation of immigration to the United States has been set by a few major acts, beginning with the original immigration act of 1882. Since that time there have been only four comprehensive immigration acts, those of 1891, 1903, 1907, and 1917, and for the most part these acts represented little marked change in immigration law and policy. Each succeeding act incorporated the substance of the preceding law, often with little or no change of wording, reaffirming and building on the earlier legislation rather than departing widely from it. Status at World War II. At the outbreak of World War II immigration to the United States was still largely controlled by legislation of the first world war period. The basic law regulating the admission of aliens was the Immigration Act of 1917. Superimposed on but not superseding the 1917 act was the Quota Act of 1924. The 1917 act, passed at a time of heightened concern over problems of immigration and alienage, contained the most severely restrictive controls of immigration that had yet been adopted by Congress. Included in the act were additions to the number of excludable classes, the many times vetoed literacy test, and the Asiatic barred zone provisions. The Quota Act of 1924, containing the national origins quota formula, can also be regarded as a product of the first world war period for it was directly motivated by fear of excessive immigration after the war. The literacy test contained in the 1917