Immigration In America

3 Pages 649 Words

Halting Immigration


Since the beginning of time, many of the world’s problems have been blamed on immigration because many refuse to customize themselves to their way of life. Kraut says, “Nativists were those Americans who believed that the immigrants posed an imminent danger to their way of life (25).” They believed that immigration was a threat to their society because immigrants took away jobs, had political and religious differences, and brought diseases back with them. These factors are what caused the formation of many chauvinistic groups, whose main purpose is to put a stop on the flow of immigrants so it would be a safer place to live. One can see the argument where halting immigration would cause a mass improvement in America’s society by making valuable resources more abundant and causing less prejudice in the streets. However, by taking away the chance of freedom and opportunity to these people is not only unjust but will cause strong acts of violence and rebellion against our nation causing Americans to live in fear.
Nativists despised change, so when people of different cultures pushed their way into America, with their different clothing and odd skin tones, racism was the immediate reaction of the nativists. Groups such as the Ku Klux Klan or the KKK would walk the streets burning down churches in black neighborhoods. Anti-Semitism, which started with the holocaust, caused people to look at Jews as inferior to the society so they sent them away to concentration camps. John Higham’s study shows “Three strains of anti-immigrant venom—racial nativism, anti-Catholicism, and anti-radical nativism (27).” When Charles Darwin came up with “survival of the fittest” many nativists used this theory to claim they were superior to other races because they were born of the Anglo-Saxon race and others were incompetent because of their heredity. Many immigrants were placed with specific crimes depending on what ...