 Nonetheless, this fails to acknowledge that the immigration debate had been around for decades as well as early ideas of racial distinctions and these factors continued to influence commission members as much as economic ones.Historian Robert, F. Zeidel situated the Commission within the Progressive Era, with Nativism as the motivation for the legal enforcement of immigration in this period.But before World War One, most restrictions were exclusively directed to the Asian population, without classification of races; factors such as income and education came first.