How many Jews immigrated to the USA before 1939?

How many Jews immigrated to the USA between 1924 and 1939?

The official answer to the question in the topic is that very few because the USA imposed quotas in 1924 in order to limit immigration from Eastern Europe. Despite this clear answer, the question must be considered open since according to Walter N. Sanning there was a mass immigration of Eastern European Jews to the USA before the Second World War. This immigration avoided the quota limitations.

How could it avoid quota lilitations? A small number, some tens of thousands, came to the USA illegally through the land borders with Canada or Mexico, or through the sea e.g. from Cuba. Still, illegal immigration most probably cannot account for hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants. The main way to avoid quotas was to be included in the quota of such nations, which had a bigger allowance. Thus, Jews from Eastern Europe could first move to Germany, England, Mexico, or any other country. They would stay in the intermediate country for a few months in order to learn the local language on an elementary level. In the immigration entry examination they would try to pass as locals, which might not have been so difficult if they had some help from people in powerful positions.

This then is the proposed scenario of how a large number of Eastern European Jews might have immigrated to the USA during a time when quotas tried to make it impossible. Let us see of there is any basis for such a scenario. We cannot look at the immigration figures, since Jews would not have immigrated as Jews but as other nationalities, or illegally. Instead, like Sanning, let us look at the growth of the Jewish population in the USA. I found the following numbers from a (Jewish) Holocaust site:

Year          Jewish population

1880          230,000-280,000

1890          400,000-475,000

1900          937,800-1,058,135

1910          1,308,000-2,349,754

1920          3,300,000-3,604,580

1927          4,228,029

1937          4,641,000-4,831,180

1940          4,770,000-4,975,000

1950          4,500,000-5,000,000

These numbers are odd to say the least. There is a huge range of uncertainty of a million in 1910, yet the upper bound is given in the precision of a person. The figure for 1930 is not given, instead there are figures for 1927 and 1937, and the one in 1927 is precise. Not much confidence can be given to such odd figures, but let us assume that they are more or less correct and that in 1880 there were some 250,000 Jews in the USA and in 1940 the number had grown to some 4.8 million. According to the official explanation this growth was mainly a result of natural growth and the immigration of about 2 million Jews between the years 1880 and 1924, between 1924 and 1940 Jewish immigration to the USA was small.

First we should select a reasonable figure for the natural population growth for American Jews for this period. We can try to estimate it from two cases of historical data. The first case is that the population of Eastern European Jews is said to have grown from 360 around the year 1100 to 9 million around the year 1900. That is an increase of 25000 in 800 years. It means about 14.5 doublings in 800 years, i.e. one doubling in 55 years. The second case is that in the year 1764 the Jewish population of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was 750,000 and in 1897 the Russian Empire Census found 5.2 million Jews. Not all Commonwealth was taken by Russia, parts went to Austria and Prussia, but there were Jews in Russia before the time, e.g., in the Crimea. We get round numbers by assuming that 650,000 Commonwealth Jews were in the Russian part. Thus, 650,000 grew to 5.2 million in 129 years. That means three doublings in 129 years, the doubling time is 43 years. Based on these two cases I select the doubling time as 50 years. Then the natural population growth is 1.386% per year. Per decade the population grows 14.9%. This estimate cannot be very much off. We can use it in a rough calculation how many Jews must have immigrated to the USA.

Let us start from the population of 1880 and assign it to 250,000. I write the natural growth of 14.9% per decade to the second column:

1880  250,000

1890  287,000     163,000

1900  330,000     187,000       453,000

1910   379,000      215,000       520,000    786,000

1920   435,000     247,000      598,000     903,000     1,267,000

1930   500,000     284,000     687,000    1,038,000   1,456,000

1940  575,000      326,000     789,000    1,193,000     1,673,000

Comparing the second column to the real numbers, we see that there had to be some 450,000-287,000=163,000 immigration in 1890ies. This I wrote to the third column and again calculated the natural growth of 14.9%. The real figure for 1900 is about 970,000. This means that there had to be immigration of 453,000. I write this to the fourth column and again calculate the natural growth by 14.9%. The real figure for 1910 is about 1.9 million. Thus, there had to be immigration of 786,000. I add this as the fifth column and count the natural growth. The sum of the figures for 1920 is 2.183 million. The real figure is about 3.45 million. Thus, immigration in 1920ies was 1,267,000. I add this to the table and count the natural growth. The sum for 1930 is 3,965,000 and the sum for 1940 is 4,556,000. The data does not tell what the real figure was for 1930, but for 1927 there is the figure 4,228,029, which is 263,000 larger than the calculated one. We may estimate that the figure for 1930 may be 300,000 larger. The real figure for 1940 is 4.85 million, some 300,000 larger than the calculated one. The interesting thing is that the sum of immigrated Jews from 1890 to 1930 is 2,671,000. Accepting that we would need immigration of about 300,000 in order to have the numbers match for 1930 and 1940, the conclusion is that the Jewish immigration to the USA was about 2.9 million, not 2 million, in the time period 1890-1939.

Immigration statistics explain 2 million of this estimated 2.9 million. The remaining about one million must have immigrated in ways that do not get registered in immigration statistics.

This calculation depends on the estimation of the natural population growth for Eastern European Jews (EEJs) during this time period.  EEJs had for centuries much higher growth rate than other European populations. Before 1890ies the population growth rate was under 1% practically everywhere. In the early 20^th Century European natural growth rates were reaching 1% and the world population growth rate peaked in 1962 at 2.1%. It is not at all likely that the EEJ natural growth rate in America would be higher than the selected figure 1.386%, more probably it was lower. If the natural growth rate was close to 1%, it means that there were about 3.5 million Jewish immigrants to the USA from 1890 to 1939. That would agree with Sanning´s estimations. I cannot fully verify the figure of 3.5 million, but it does seem that in addition to the officially known 2 million, there were 1-1.5 million unregistered Jewish immigrants.

There is a phenomenon that may support the claim that about 1.5 million Jews immigrated during the time 1921-1939 when immigrants to the USA were screened with an IQ test. An official IQ test was introduced in 1924, but from 1921 to 1924 immigrants had to complete a puzzle, which served the purpose of screening candidates much below the average IQ. The IQ of American Jews has been tested in many IQ tests. The first ones did not find any significant intelligence advantage from Jews, later tests showed an IQ about 0.75 to 1 standard deviations (SD) above the white average. From the early tests, Terman´s study of highly gifted may be the best guide here. In his test the gifted children had an average IQ of 150 (with SD=15) and he found twice as many Jewish highly gifted children than was expected by the Jewish population size. This implies that the average IQ of American Jews was 103 in 1916 when Terman made the tests. The result is natural, Russia employed suppressive methods which encouraged Jews to leave the country, and educated Jews would have left Russia more easily than uneducated ones. The selective pressure explains well why American Jews should have been 3 point above the white average, but the difference of 0.75 to 1 SD is unlikely to be explained by willingness to migrate. It is much easily explained as a result of screening immigrants by IQ tests. The normal distribution with SD=15 just happens to be so that 25% of population is between 100 and 110 and 25% have IQ at least 110. The average IQ of the population, which has IQ at least 100, is 110.  If the immigration office screens out all, who get below 100 in the IQ test, then the accepted population has the average IQ 110.

IQ 110 is exactly what is measured for American Jews. If 1.5 million Jews immigrated to the USA and where screened by IQ tests, we would expect that the average IQ of US Jews is:

(1.5/4.9)*110+(3.4/4.9)*103=105.

Here 4.9 million is the US Jewish population in 1940, 1.5 million is the number of Jewish immigrants from 1921-1939, 3.4 million is immigrants from 1890 to 1921, 103 is the Jewish IQ in 1916 from Terman´s test, 110 is the IQ for a population screened from below 100 IQs. The figure 105 agrees well with Richard Lynn´s own measurement of American Jewish IQ. He obtained a verbal IQ of 107.5, which gives full IQ of about 105, as Jews have higher verbal IQ and lower spatial IQ. (Lynn later wrote a book of Jewish IQ and there accepts American Jewish IQ as 110, but this is because he for methodological purposes must accept IQ tests done by other researches, his own estimate is 107.5 verbal IQ. If the explanation given by me here is correct, we can find American Jewish communities with average IQ 110, they are those who immigrated when the IQ tests were used, but we can also find communities with average IQ 103.)

The result agrees with the estimated IQ of Ashkenazi Jews in Israel. Lynn estimates it to be 103.5, which is natural and explained by the same phenomenon than why Terman´s highly talented Jews came out of a population with average IQ 103, that is, the more intelligent were more willing to immigrate to Israel. If we do not accept this explanation, it is extremely difficult to see why American Ashkenazi Jews should have average IQ 110 and Israeli Ashkenazi Jews should have average 103.5. Clearly, American Jews must have been selected in some stricter way.