EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This paper surveys the history of nativism in the United States from the late nineteenth century to the present. It compares a recent surge in nativism with earlier periods, particularly the decades leading up to the 1920s, when nativism directed against southern and eastern European, Asian, and Mexican migrants led to comprehensive legislative restrictions on immigration. It is based primarily on a review of historical literature, as well as contemporary immigration scholarship. Major findings include the following:
- There are many similarities between the nativism of the 1870-1930 period and today, particularly the focus on the purported inability of specific immigrant groups to assimilate, the misconception that they may therefore be dangerous to the native-born population, and fear that immigration threatens American workers.
- Mexican migrants in particular have been consistent targets of nativism, immigration restrictions, and deportations.
- There are also key differences between these two eras, most apparently in the targets of nativism, which today are undocumented and Muslim immigrants, and in President Trump’s consistent, highly public, and widely disseminated appeals to nativist sentiment.
- Historical studies of nativism suggest that nativism does not disappear completely, but rather subsides. Furthermore, immigrants themselves can and do adopt nativist attitudes, as well as their descendants.
- Politicians, government officials, civic leaders, scholars and journalists must do more to reach sectors of society that feel most threatened by immigration.
- While eradicating nativism may be impossible, a focus on avoiding or overturning nativist immigration legislation may prove more successful.
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Overview
In the 1920s, a backlash against immigrants and modernism led to the original culture wars. Many Americans celebrated the emergence of modern technologies and less restrictive social norms, while others strongly objected to the social changes.
City residents were more likely to accept cultural changes, whereas those who lived in rural towns lived by traditional norms.
The Sacco and Vanzetti trial in Massachusetts and the Scopes trial in Tennessee revealed many Americans’ fears of immigrants, radical politics, and the ways in which new scientific theories might challenge traditional Christian beliefs.
Transformation and backlash in the 1920s
Many middle-class Americans discovered a new era of leisure and consumerism. In contrast, other Americans—especially in rural areas—reacted to the rapid social changes by clinging to religious values. They often rejected the concepts of cultural diversity and equality.
Nativism in the early twentieth century
From the late nineteenth century, immigration into the United States exploded. Many of these new immigrants were coming from eastern and southern Europe. English-speaking immigrants and native-born Americans reacted to the growing cultural diversity with growing racism and suspicion.
Some Anglos embraced nativism, which valued white Americans with roots in the United States over more recent immigrants. Nativists promoted a sense of fear over a perceived foreign threat. Following the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917, the United States was swept by a growing sense of an inevitable foreign or communist threat, especially among people who already distrusted immigrants.
One 1920 trial best illustrates nativists’ fears. Sacco and Vanzetti were Italian immigrants who were accused of participating in a robbery and murder in Braintree, Massachusetts. There was no direct evidence linking them to the crime. They were suspects because both men were immigrants and anarchists who favored the destruction of the American market-based, capitalistic society through violence. The district attorney emphasized Sacco and Vanzetti’s radical views, and the jury found them guilty. Some evidence in their defense was not allowed. Both men were executed in 1927. Public reaction to the trial tended to divide along nativist-immigrant lines.
The Emergency Immigration Act of 1921 and the National Origins Act of 1924 placed numerical limits on European immigration to the United States. These acts significantly reduced the number of eligible southern and eastern European immigrants. Both labor unions and the Ku Klux Klan supported the bills. President Coolidge declared, “America must be kept American.”