The U.S. Congress overrode President Woodrow Wilson's veto to pass the Immigration Act of 1917, establishing new restrictions on immigrants, including the wholesale ban of people from much of Asia.

The United States Congress is the legislative branch of the federal government of the United States. It is a bicameral legislature, including a lower body, the U.S. House of Representatives, and an upper body, the U.S. Senate. They both meet in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C.

Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th president of the United States, serving from 1913 to 1921. He was the only Democrat to serve as president during the Progressive Era when Republicans dominated the presidency and legislative branches. As president, Wilson changed the nation's economic policies and led the United States into World War I. He was the leading architect of the League of Nations, and his stance on foreign policy came to be known as Wilsonianism.

The Immigration Act of 1917 was a United States Act that aimed to restrict immigration by imposing literacy tests on immigrants, creating new categories of inadmissible persons, and barring immigration from the Asia–Pacific region. The most sweeping immigration act the United States had passed until then was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 in marking a turn toward nativism. The 1917 act governed immigration policy until it was amended by the Immigration Act of 1924; both acts were revised by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952.