In 1851 the Norwegian Parliament repealed the anti-Jewish paragraph of the 1814 Constitution and thus enabled Jewish immigration to Norway. By 1900 there were around 700 Jews living in Norway; twenty years later, the number had doubled. In 1927, the parliament passed an immigration act particularly designed to limit the immigration of Jews from Eastern Europe. Before 1938 Norway admitted no more than 20 Jewish refugees. Thanks to the intervention of the Norwegian Nansen relief organization, however, Norway accepted around 500 Jewish refugees in 1938 alone. On the eve of the Second World War the Jewish community in Norway comprised about 2,100 persons.