Nativism Research Paper

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Describe and account for the rise of nativism in American society from 1900 to 1930. How did this impact immigration?
Nativists viewed new immigrants as racially inferior and feared that the superior stock would be outnumbered and outvoted. New immigrants came from southern and Eastern Europe versus earlier immigrants that came from northern Europe. Many were Catholic, Jewish and eastern orthodox. Immigrants were willing to work for lower wages creating job competition, natives didn’t like that. One of the ways that immigrants received training in Americanization through the consumer society, particularly through efforts that encouraged foreigners to own, furnish, and maintain and inhabit homes in keeping with American ideas cleanliness, decoration, …show more content…

Prominent members often press for massive, sometimes total, reductions in immigration levels. American nativist sentiment experienced a resurgence in the late 20th century, this time directed at illegal aliens, largely Mexican resulting in the passage of new penalties against illegal immigration in 1996. “Noting the large-scale Mexican immigration in the Southwest, the famous diplomat George F. Kennan saw unmistakable evidences of a growing differentiation between the cultures, respectively, of large southern and southwestern regions of this country, on the one hand”, and those of “some northern regions” “In the former, he warned:” “The very culture of the bulk of the population of these regions will tend to be primarily Latin- American in nature rather than what is inherited from earlier American traditions.” “Could it really be that there was so little of merit in American that it deserves to be recklessly trashed in favor of a polyglot mix-mash?” Meyers argues that Kennan represented or even exceeded the Know Nothings of the 1850s. Mayers adds that Kennan also believed American women had too much power. The New York Times reported about the nativism today “ What started five years ago as a groundswell of conservatives committed to curtailing the reach of the federal government, cutting the deficit

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