Gompers, like most labor leaders, opposed unrestricted immigration from Europe because it lowered wages. He strongly opposed all immigration from Asia because it lowered wages and, in his judgement, represented an alien culture that could not be assimilated easily into that of the U.S. Gompers bragged that the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (FOTLU), later renamed the American Federation of Labor (AFL), "was the first national organization which demanded the exclusion of coolies from the United States". He and the AFL strongly supported the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 that banned the immigration of Chinese, and published a pamphlet entitled "Some reasons for Chinese exclusion. Meat vs. Rice. American Manhood against Asiatic Coolieism. Which shall survive?" in 1901. The AFL was instrumental in passing immigration restriction laws from the 1890s to the 1920s, such as the 1921 Emergency Quota Act and the Immigration Act of 1924, and seeing that they were strictly enforced. At least one study concludes that the link between the AFL and the Democratic Party rested in large part on immigration issues, as the owners of large corporations wanted more immigration and thus, supported the Republican Party. Other scholars have seriously questioned this conclusion, arguing it oversimplifies the politics and unity of labor leaders and the major parties. As one reviewer argued in "The Journal of American History", major Republican leaders, such as President William McKinley and Senator Mark Hanna, made pro-labor statements, many unions supported their own independent labor parties (or the Socialist Party), and unity within the AFL was never so extensive as claimed.