What Impact Did Nativism Have On America

1423 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Nativism and migration in the USA

What is Nativism and what impact did it have on American society? Between the 1800s and early 1900s, favoritism towards “native-born” American residents sparked a rivalry between them and America’s new immigrants. This rivalry caused immigrants to have a hard time with jobs and adapting to the new culture and language. This was known as nativism. Immigrants came from different parts of Europe and Asia and flocked to urban city areas where they lived in poor, congested neighborhoods (ghettos) created due to the rapid and unexpected urbanization in America. Nativism in America strongly impacted US immigration. New Immigrants Due to the growth of rural to …show more content…

The league was founded by Harvard graduates lawyer Charles Warren, climatologist Robert DeCourcy Ward, and attorney Prescott Farnsworth Hall, as a way to limit the number of new immigrants coming into the country by implementing literacy requirements and rejecting those who did not meet the requirements. This resulted from people believing that Anglo-Saxons were racially superior to immigrants from southern Europe and threatened the ‘American way of life”. They also worried that immigrants would bring poverty and organized crime into the United States. Though the league was founded in Boston, it had branches in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. It attracted the attention of many scholars and philanthropist, most of which were part of the New England social and academic elite. In 1896 the National Association of Immigration Restriction Leagues was created as an umbrella group, and Prescott F. Hall served as its general secretary from, 1896 to 1921. The League utilized resources such as books, pamphlets, newspapers, journal articles, etc… to spread the word about the dangers of new immigration. The League even went to the extent of employing lobbyists in Washington and built an anti-immigration coalition. The Leagues ended in 1921 following the death of Prescott F. …show more content…

After the 1848 discovery of gold, word quickly got out to China. Pamphlets were used by opportunistic ship owners to spread the word in order to fill their passenger vessels to America. The summer of 1848 marked the beginning of Chinese Immigration. By 1851 2,716 had immigrated to California. However, as the gold started to run out anti-immigrant sentiment began. "In April 1850, as a result of the depleting amount of gold, the California legislature passed the Foreign Miners Tax which charged foreign nationals $20 a month for the right to work their gold claims. Because of this many Chinese immigrants were forced to leave the area. In 1854 the California Supreme Court limited the rights of racial minorities but by 1855 the California Gold Rush was all but over and the last of the Chinese miners sought different forms of employment, this time as shopkeepers and farmers” (Alchin, Linda

Show More
Related

  • Analysis Of Michael Omi And Howard Winant's Racial Formation In The United States

    1161 Words  | 3 Pages

    Many came for gold and job opportunities, believing that their stay would be temporary but it became permanent. The Chinese were originally welcomed to California being thought of as exclaimed by Leland Stanford, president of Central Pacific Railroad, “quiet, peaceable, industrious, economical-ready and apt to learn all the different kinds of work” (Takaki 181). It did not take long for nativism and white resentment to settle in though. The Chinese, who started as miners, were taxed heavily; and as profits declined, went to work the railroad under dangerous conditions; and then when that was done, work as farm laborers at low wages, open as laundry as it took little capital and little English, to self-employment. Something to note is that the “Chinese laundryman” was an American phenomenon as laundry work was a women’s occupation in China and one of few occupations open to the Chinese (Takaki 185). Chinese immigrants were barred from naturalized citizenship, put under a status of racial inferiority like blacks and Indians as with “Like blacks, Chinese men were viewed as threats to white racial purity” (188). Then in 1882, due to economic contraction and racism Chinese were banned from entering the U.S. through the Chinese Exclusion Act. The Chinese were targets of racial attacks, even with the enactment of the 1870 Civil Rights Act meaning equal protection under federal law thanks to Chinese merchants lobbying Congress. Chinese tradition and culture as well as U.S. condition and laws limited the migration of women. Due to all of this, Chinese found strength in ethnic solidarity as through the Chinese Six Companies, which is considered a racial project. Thanks to the earthquake of 1906 in San Francisco, the Chinese fought the discriminatory laws by claiming citizenship by birth since the fires

    Read More

  • Maggie Holmes And Dave Bender's Perceptions Of Work By Studs Terkel

    834 Words  | 2 Pages

    Studs Terkel published a nonfiction Working which consists many interviews among different people’s descriptions of their jobs. Through this book, Terkel demonstrates the meaning of work to different people and how their work experiences shape their attitudes about their lives. Among these interviewers, Maggie Holmes is a domestic while Dave Bender is a factory owner. Although their wages are different, Maggie Holmes and Dave Bender’s attitudes about their works are contradictory. People who love their works are passionate and happy about their lives and express less complain than those people who do not like their jobs.

    Read More

  • Ronald Kaki's A Different Mirror By Ronald Takaki

    1069 Words  | 3 Pages

    One particular ethnic group that suffered severe discrimination was the Chinese people. They first came to America for several reasons. One of them was the gold rush in California in 1849, in which they were included in a group of immigrants called the “Forty-Niners” (179). From gold mining, they switched to other jobs with resulted in the rise of anti-Chinese sentiments. People felt that Chinese people were taking the jobs away from them, because Chinese people worked for much smaller salaries that businesses preferred. This mindset gave way to the creation of The Chinese Exclusion Act passed in 1882, which prohibits more Chinese immigrants from coming to America. In addition, the act states “no State or court of the United States shall admit Chinese to citizenship”. Like the Naturalization Act, the Chinese Exclusion Act was created to hinder Chinese people from becoming citizens so that America could remain homogenously white (186). It also aimed to stop Chinese people from establishing a bigger community in the country in hopes of eliminating the threat of competition to their white counterparts (186). Like African-Americans, Chinese people were considered racially inferior and have struggled to prove that they were worthy to be called true Americans, rather than

    Read More

  • Jane Addams and Hull House

    1560 Words  | 4 Pages

    In the years from 1860 through 1890, the prospect of a better life attracted nearly ten million immigrants who settled in cities around the United States. The growing number of industries produced demands for thousands of new workers and immigrants were seeking more economic opportunities. Most immigrants settled near each other’s own nationality and/or original village when in America.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Not Like Us

    989 Words  | 2 Pages

    Daniel, Roger is a highly respected author and professor who has majored in the study of immigration in history and more specifically the progressive ear. He’s written remarkable works over the history of immigration in America, in his book Not like Us he opens a lenses about the hostile and violent conditions immigrants faced in the 1890’s through the 1924’s. Emphasizing that during the progressive area many immigrants felt as they were living in a regressing period of their life. While diversity of ethnicity and race gradually grew during this time it also sparked as a trigger for whites creating the flare up of nativism. Daniel’s underlines the different types of racial and ethnical discrimination that was given to individual immigrant

    Read More

  • Racism In The 1920s Essay

    967 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the early 1920's, many generational Americans had moderately racist views on the "new immigrants," those being predominantly from Southern and Eastern Europe. Americans showed hatred for different races, incompatibility with religion, fear of race mixing, and fear of a revolution from other races. At the time, people believed the Nordic race was supreme.

    Read More

  • Gold Rush 1849 Immigration

    639 Words  | 2 Pages

    Gold Rush 1849 was the reason for such a frenzy. It caused people to migrate to California from near and far too dig for gold from the river. According to the film, The Chinese Exclusion Act Explained: US History Review, “This attracted Chinese entrepreneurs to try to make it rich”. The Chinese was one of the cultures that was one of the cultures that left their home to find a better life for their families. However, after being greeted in the United States, they were discriminated against them since they were feared by the Europeans. Racism towards the Chinese immigrant caused a lot of hardship on them in the Western civilization, enabling them to enter or exit without returning to the States.

    Read More

  • The Impact Of Chinese Immigration In California

    2494 Words  | 5 Pages

    As gold discoveries slowed down and the Civil War gradually came to an end, the First Transcontinental Railroad was finally completed between Omaha and Sacramento. Over time, unemployment began rising across the country, especially in California, where a vast majority of Chinese immigrants resided in. The welcoming of Chinese immigrants slowly began to wear off as the white working class perceived a threat to their livelihood that these immigrants could potentially cause, leading to an increase in racial tensions. These growing tensions culminated in the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 and eventually closed U.S. borders to all Chinese laborers, with the exception of ethnic Chinese individuals. This paper highlights the significant impact of large-scale Chinese immigration to California during the Gold Rush, the lasting contributions made by the Chinese towards Western ...

    Read More

  • Nativism: Its Evolution throughout American History

    1811 Words  | 4 Pages

    The aspects that nativism focuses on the change throughout time. Nativism is the extreme opposition of a minority based on the majority’s perception of the minority being foreign and endangering their way of life. (Hingham, 2002) Nativism is based on the fears that the majority population has. If we were able to look into the future it is reasonable to believe that issues that Americans hold dearest and seek to protect would be much more different than the ones that we care about currently. It is important then to keep in mind these fears are often focused on minority groups that very rarely have anything to do with the issue and more importantly a way to protect themselves. As we look at nativism’s progress through American history we will

    Read More

  • Anti-Chinese Sentiment in 19th Century American Society

    1716 Words  | 4 Pages

    The first Chinese immigrants to arrive in America came in the early 1800s. Chinese sailors visited New York City in the 1830s (“The Chinese Experience”); others came as servants to Europeans (“Chinese Americans”). However, these immigrants were few in number, and usually didn’t even st...

    Read More

  • Immigration Helps America

    1203 Words  | 3 Pages

    Immigration can be defined as passing foreigners to a country and making it their permanent residence. Reasons ranging from politics, economy, natural disasters, wish to change ones surroundings and poverty are in the list of the major causes of immigration in both history and today. In untied states, immigration comes with complexities in its demographic nature. A lot of cultural and population growth changes have been witnessed as a result of immigration. In the following paper, I will focus on how immigration helps United States as compared to the mostly held view that it hurts America.

    Read More

  • The Chinese Exclusion Act

    1940 Words  | 4 Pages

    After the first wave of Chinese immigrants arrived in the United States in the early 1840s during the California Gold Rush, many Chinese people continued to travel across the Pacific escaping poor conditions in China with hopes and ambitions for a better life in America. Soon after the first wave, many more Chinese immigrants began to arrive into the 1860s on the Pacific coast for work in other areas such as the railroad industry. The immigrants noticed an increasing demand for their labor because of their readiness to work for low wages. Many of those who arrived wanted to go home at some point, and therefore there was no push for naturalization...

    Read More

  • Industrialization and Immigration

    2270 Words  | 5 Pages

    ... middle of paper ... ... With the startling growth of immigration, in what seemed like overnight, immigrants were met with hostility as they were the target of religious differences as well as labor unrest, the promoted sentiment was termed, nativism. As the continuation of industrialization and urbanization sparked an increasing demand for a larger and cheaper labor force; an influx in immigrants from all over Europe, migrated in pursuit of higher wages.

    Read More

  • Race in A Different Mirror’ by Ronald Takaki

    1413 Words  | 3 Pages

    The English immigrants are given a brief introduction as the first ethnic group to settle in America. The group has defined the culture and society throughout centuries of American history. The African Americans are viewed as a minority group that were introduced into the country as slaves. The author depicts the struggle endured by African Americans with special emphasis on the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement. The entry of Asian Americans evoked suspicion from other ethnic groups that started with the settlement of the Chinese. The Asian community faced several challenges such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, and the mistreatment of Americans of Japanese origin during World War II. The Chicanos were the largest group of Hispanic peoples to settle in the United States. They were perceived as a minority group. Initially they were inhabitants of Mexico, but after the Westward expansion found themselves being foreigners in their native land (...

    Read More

  • The Undeserved Discrimination and Exclusion of the Chinese Immigrants

    1057 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Chinese immigrants started flooding in through the West coast to California around the time of the Gold Rush, looking for economic opportunity. With the Chinese immigrants came a whole new cultural group and a whole lot of laborers that were eager to work. The Chinese quickly became involved in all kinds of labor from gold mining and building railroads to agriculture and fishing skills. The new Asian population just kept growing and growing as immigrants spread word of their good fortune in California and swayed more and more of their family to come over to the states. With their growing population they created their own large communities and the first ever Chinatown ...

    Read More

More about What Impact Did Nativism Have On America

Open Document