Nativism

Nativism

All so called "Native Americans," were once immigrants. There were two waves of immigration between the early 1800’s through the early 1900’s. The first wave of immigrants called the "old immigrants" came to America between 1890-1897. They were primarily from Northern Europe: Great Britain, Germany, and Scandinavia. The second wave of immigrants called the "new immigrants" came to America from 1897-1924. The "new immigrants" primarily came from Southern and Eastern Europe countries such as Poland, Russia, and Italy. Nativist parties, like the Know-Nothings and the Order of the Star Spangled Banner verbalized their distaste and disapproval of immigrants. Actions and regulations against immigration did not begin until near the end of the "old immigration" and the beginning of the "new immigration." Nativists had many fears and concerns regarding immigrants. These concerns included being socially ill-suited to live with the older stock Americans, stealing jobs from the native work force, and bringing new, radical ideas to the country. These fears and concerns caused nativists to come up with schemes to keep immigrants out of the country. These strategies had a great impact on immigration in our country.

Nativists had many concerns regarding immigrants. They feared that immigrants would take the jobs of "native Americans" because they were willing to work for very low wages.

When the native work force went on strike many workers feared that many immigrants would displace them in the workplace. Another concern was that immigrants were hard to "Americanize." These people came to American with their own culture, traditions, and language; many of them didn’t even know English. Many nativists resented immigrants because they permeated the city and made it unsafe and dirty. Their slums were breeding grounds for disease and violence. Nativists regarded immigrants as an inferior class of people. One of the theories to support this dispute was eugenics. Eugenics is the study of human heredity, aimed at "improving" the genetic quality of the human stock. The eugenics movement was an effort to grade races and ethnic groups according to their genetic qualities. Eugenicists claimed that immigrants were inferior to Anglo-Saxons and were polluting the "pure" American bloodstream. The sheer number of immigrants entering the country also scared many people. A. P...

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...ch made it so intelligent immigrants were allowed into the country. In 1921, the Emergency Immigration Act was passed. This act made it so the number of aliens of any nationality admitted to the U.S. in a year could not exceed 3 percent of the number of foreign-born residents of that nationality living in the U.S. in 1910. Even though this heavily cut down the number of immigrants entering the country, the majority of the immigrants were "new immigrants." This led to the National Origins Act in 1924. This act was harsher than the act of 1921 because it decreased the percentage of immigrants from 3% to 2%, and pushed the year from 1910 to 1890, thus making the majority of immigrants "old immigrants."

It is quite ironic that these "nativists" came to America for the same reasons as the immigrants who came in the time period of 1880-1925; however, they do not accept the immigrants who came in that period, just as they had once wanted to be accepted. Emma Lazarus’ "The New Colossus", which is on the Statue of Liberty, reads "Give me you tired, your poor, Your huddled mass yearning to breathe free," but in fact, many Americans, nativists, did not want these poor, huddled mass at all.