The USA prided itself on a nation of immigrant, heck even the Statue of Liberty says it. When did immigrants (US citizens from the old world) become anti immigrant and why?
A large majority of 'anti-immigrant' people wouldn't care if say, a French person immigrated into their country. When these people say immigrants, most of the time they mean people of color.
Yes. It's a polite way of being racist with most. And if they are asked, they say "I can't be racist [so and so] is my friend and they are black" or some dumb shit.
Historically, I'm quite certain that the "small" people (e.g. peasants, and such) had always had incredibly right-wing views, including tribalism (we're better than anyone else, for no reason, we just are), "hard-work" ethics, who doesn't work doesn't deserve to eat, and such.
The landlords couldn't care less about immigration. As long as the immigrants pay their taxes, the landlord is happy. Why would they bother?
It's the peasants who see their land occupied (sothat their own land's relative share decreases) who get furious at the foreigners who take their jobs and eat their food, while also possibly bringing infectious diseases and an inferior way of life.
They have always been anti-immigrant. Gor the longest time they simply tolerated it, but no more.
As for the the statue of liberty, a, it was built by the French not Americans, b, I can also happily say that I pride myself on being a great person, while in truth being a terrible peraon.
People hated immigrants DURING the time period you're thinking of. And it wasn't always a skin color thing either, the Irish were one of the big targets for a long time.
Italians were also targeted. Being from a Catholic country was sometimes enough to get targeted. Always found it funny (Woody Allen marriage funny, not Woody Allen film funny) that the Protestants who came to what is now Massachusetts seeking “religious freedom” meant it only for themselves and drove out anyone who didn’t subscribe to their views.
The concept of the white "race" was created by the acceptance of new nationalities into the fold in America and then dividing "us vs them" in a new way.
It bears some similarity to "Judeo-Christianity" so that we can draw the line between white people religion and everyone else.
And it wasn’t always a skin color thing either, the Irish were one of the big targets for a long time.
Irish, Slavs and Italians were not considered white, so ... it's still a "where is the migration from" kinda thing
There was a reason businesses would put a sign out front that said "NINA". No Irish Need Apply.
It was always racism at it's core.
European immigrants accepted immigrants as long as they were other European immigrants. At the same time they were encouraging immigrants, they were systematically eliminating the original inhabitants or forcing them to assimilate to European culture.
It's always been a variation of white nationalism ..... they don't mind the world becoming more open and inclusive ... as long as it only includes other white European people and cultures.
European immigrants accepted immigrants as long as they were other European immigrants.
This is just not the case. Read again
Because their lives are shit and they need somebody to blame.
The right will accept a boot on their face as long as they've got a face on which to rest their own boot.
The US is not anti immigrant.
There's a few greedy white people with lots of money who bought the media and the elections who are anti-immigrant.
Don't confuse policy with popular sentiment.
The vast majority of people who lean right are not individually as hateful as youtube and social media and most of the content algorithmically fed to us would have us believe.
Do they say horrible things around each other? Yes, they ramp up the rhetoric and make it seem like they're absolute super-villains at times... but what we really miss in all this is how shallow their values are. They are not complicated people. They go with the popular sentiment but are so comfortable living in a state of cognitive dissonance that they will work all day with a team of black and hispanic coworkers, get along great, consider them true, best friends... then go home and upvote the most racist shit you've ever seen on facebook because it makes them laugh. They simply cannot make comparisons or connections the way the other ~66% of the population does, so they don't see things like hypocrisy or inconsistency. They don't see larger pictures. They don't understand the concept of punching down.
As a group, they are our country's biggest problem, a menace, a scourge upon the Earth who are enabling the worst, most malicious people to engage in plans of oppression we haven't seen in a century.
But as individuals, we could reach almost each of them. They're stupid enough to believe whatever we tell them and we're afraid of them. The math is broken.
We have to get more social, we have to get more confrontational, we have to get less isolated.
I will get some rando lefties screaming at me that they don't want to "compromise with their oppressors" and that's fine. Don't. I'm not making you personally, and if you get that insinuation that I'm telling you personally to do something traumatic, you're part of the problem. For everyone else, I've changed the hearts of people with apparently "set in" bigotry simply by listening and talking to them. It's not jedi mind magic, it's just a skill that comes from engaging with people in real life.
I get what you’re going for, but it’s hard to believe that when said billionaires’ propaganda campaign was so easily and eagerly adopted by the majority of one of our political party bases. Including some of our own family members who had never openly expressed such sentiments before.
Propaganda is powerful, but can it make you suddenly, deeply believe something you weren’t already secretly feeling?
That is pretty much the point of propaganda. It takes advantage of people's psychology to manipulate them.
Maybe. Fictional stories can make you feel things, even though these stories aren't real. Just look at (fiction) movies, tv shows, books. If people can watch scary movies and get scared of fiction, maybe people can be made to be scared of other, real life people. Or worried, or whatever. Especially if maybe one doesn't know or doesn't have experience enough on the matter at hand.
There are a few greedy people who figure out that no one will notice them picking folks pockets if they distract them with racism.
"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
Lyndon B. Johnson
I mean they blare "brown man make your life bad" 24/7 on state tv
Everything can be summarized in one Chinese idiom (成语):
过河拆桥
Aka: Crossing the river, then dismantle the bridge.
You're already crossed it, why care about the bridge, you wont be using it anymore.
They pull up the ladder behind them
The US as a country does it to the rest of the world too, not just the immigrants.
So like burning your bridges in English? Although I guess that's more for people. Maybe more like pulling up the ladder behind you.
I love Chinese four letter aphorisms and I'm glad you shared this one but i dont think this really answers the when or the why 😛
Perhaps along with de-industrialization; as more labour is outsourced, less labourers are needed.
Once we stopped needing cheap labor to build the railroads and mine ore and occupy native lands and farm crops and roof houses and paint walls and run the cash register at the gas station. Actually we still need immigrants for some of that in order to sustain the level of growth required to fund our retirement plans and do the jobs that we would rather not do for wages that we would rather not work for. It looks like Republicans are hoping to fuel that growth internally through reproduction among existing citizens (under the theory that kids will work for lower wages), while the democrats want to rely on immigrants. That's my theory anyway.
The interesting thing is that the US economy (in fact, even the economy worldwide) is probably gonna face a steep decline in demand of human labor in the next few decades.
The reasons include the limits to growth (i.e. the economy can't grow anymore due to natural constraints, but growth is what causes the majority of demand for human labor) and automation and AI.
Having a higher number of people in the country when there's a low demand for human labor (a.k.a. few jobs) means higher unemployment numbers, and that in turn is more expensive for the country, because the people still need resources so the country has to pay out unemployment money if it wants to avoid revolts. Now, companies face higher taxation, and everyone is worse off. If people make fewer children today and there's less immigration, both companies and citizens will be better off in 20 years from now, because they face lower unemployment rates. This insight is relatively new (because until now, supply of human labor was the constraining factor for economic growth), but interesting.
General population was always anti immigrant but the ruling class was smart enough to understand they needed immigration to sustain the growth. What changed is that everyone got so dumb they don't know what's in their best interest anymore.
Within a single generation. My grandfather showed up here at 11 from Romania. Never became a US citizen. His son, my father, is a rabid anti-immigrant racist Fox News fan boy. It's disgusting. Ironically my mother's great-great grandmother lost her birthright citizenship by marrying a Finnish immigrant before the 14th amendment existed and had to reapply for her own citizenship along with her husband because women's status was tied to the male head of household at the time, and now he rants about how birthright citizenship is wrong, despite being the exact person who benefits from it.
His son, my father, is a rabid anti-immigrant racist Fox News fan boy.
Ding!
Ask not for whom the right-wing propaganda tolls, rest-of-the-world, it tolls for thee
Oh we've been fighting about this for centuries
The "fuck you, I got mine" mindset aka FYIGM or getting first dibs.
That is, kicking out the ladder or destroying bridges or cutting off reach so that no one else is getting what one has achieved. Like, "I got first, you're getting nothing!"
America was never accommodating. The only thing immigrants had in common was hating black people.
And the Irish.
And how do you think the Irish became accepted?
Here's a wiki article about the topic, because it would be a bit much to list it all out in a lemmy comment:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nativism_in_United_States_politics#History
The TLDR is though that its existed since before the country even became independent.
Its called "ladder pulling".
One way the wealthy and powerful stay that way is by constantly promoting the narrative that it's those poorer than you who are your enemy, not the bosses who starve you both.
There are two ways to deal with one's position in the Social Ladder: one can either concentrate one's efforts in climbing up or one can concentrate one's efforts into keeping the ones below down.
IMHO, the US used to have mainly the former, but not anymore, whilst the UK (at least by the time I got there, in the 00s, and since) has mostly the latter (and judging by this traditional idea that "people should know their place" reflected in British Theatre and Humour, it has been so for a long time).
Mostly personal opinion incoming, with a few facts mixed in: I think the message on the Statue of Liberty was what the best of us at the time wanted the majority of us to be. I'm not sure we ever were.
First we get the Puritans, wiping out Native Americans, and trying to push their religion on everyone.
Then you get the slave trade, which is not immigration, but a large influx of a new population regardless, that was suddenly a problem for some when those people were free and citizens.
Then you get the Ellis Island years. Immigrants would get here, get sucked into "the American dream" of capitalism (which can help only very specific people), then want to close the door behind them. That way none of the new, filthy immigrants from (insert ethnic/religious group of your choice) could get the same advantages. But everyone kept coming.
Now, in power due to the way everything got handled (badly) after our civil war, you have a combination of the religious right, who want christianity to continue to be number one, and the racists, who want to make sure their daughter doesn't sleep with anyone who's the wrong color. They were always here, festering in the background, but now they've gained power, and they're louder than before.
The rest of us are still here, suffering, watching the country we were told was great reveal its ugliest population to everyone. I'm left wondering if we were ever a country who actually wanted immigrants. Or if it was merely aspirational.
Yeah, sorry OP.
Racism has always and will always be a part of America's identity. I'd go so far as to say I think it's part of human nature, given how pervasive and common it's been throughout all of human history.
So it turns out that the Statue of Liberty never represented the opinions of all Americans to begin with
Whenever hate can be used to divide the masses. We must be divided lest we decide that a system that protects unethically gained wealth is unethical, even if it protects ethically gained wealth.
As soon as they settled down and thought, now they have got something to loose.
When stupid and hateful took over all three branches of government and runs unopposed...
When immigrants from the "wrong" country started applying.
What is the wrong country? What ever the media says it currently is.
Blaming immigrants is classic political trope.
Right along with blaming the poor.
Even when the nation was welcoming immigrants, handing them a weapon, and shoving them to the front line. They were being denigrated and demonized by other Americans.
See the 1947 US Army video: “Don’t be a Sucker”:
https://archive.org/details/DontBeaS1947
It’s always been a hypocritical ideal. Even the US Military acknowledged our xenophobic tendencies, and the constant struggle against them. And slowly doing better. That’s the point.
…But I think the radical shift of the “attention economy” is what makes it feel like the ideal is finally collapsing. The population is sucked into doomscrolling Fox News (for example) at such scale that makes this US Army video feel quaint.
If they published the same thing today, no one would even notice. There’s too much noise. And that is unprecedented.
Easier communication. Thousands of people each living far apart had no way to amplify each other. Immigrants were mostly centered around cities, thus the rural divide.
Anti-immigrant sentiment in the US has been a thing for hundreds of years. It was commonly called "nativism". Consider watching Scorcese's "Gangs of New York" for a (fictionally dramatized) depiction of it in times past.
As for why mass deportations are possible today - - until the late 1800s, immigration to the US was essentially unregulated. The Chinese Exclusion Act and later systems of quotas and literacy tests introduced around the turn of the 20th century instituted the first national immigration policies.
I frankly don't find it unfair or unreasonable that the US government's executive branch has chosen to enforce existing immigration laws for political gain. Americans should change their immigration laws if they get upset when they're actually enforced. If anything, the executive branch was utterly failing to enforce laws that representatives had placed and kept on the books for a long time. If you want more immigrants, make it easy and legal to receive more immigrants without tests, long wait periods, or country of origin quotas.
You don't care that this administration is using immigration law to drive a wedge in society and needlessly ruin people's lives?
You think it is fair and reasonable because the law as written was not universally enforced according to X interpretation?
If the government decides to apply some random law that was never enforced in that way before to ruin your life to get extra votes then that is just okay. Sounds pretty corrupt to me.
Perhaps you misspoke, or perhaps your just some lawful evil motherfucker.
Lead and propaganda.
This was done to keep our Catholic roots in check. I'm no longer a Catholic-aligned guy as a result. My producer was Catholic-aligned and Jesuit-associated for his entire life until he started making changes he felt was right with his higher power.
The Statue of Liberty wasn't something commissioned by the USA. It was just how one French guy saw us. The New Colossus is not law, it's a poem.
We've never really been proud of immigration. The only President with a reasonable take on immigrants was Teddy Roosevelt - and his belief was that the only path forward is full assimilation.
They became anti-immigrant once they had kids and saw other people arriving to the boat. My sister in law's family are refugees from El Salvador. Now they are all raging Trumpers, despite half of them not being naturalized yet.
When said immigration switched from primarily being Europeans emigrating from a post WW2 Europe, and instead became primarily brown folk coming from all the countries that the U.S. itself bombed to shit.
It's not immigration that they hate. It's brown immigration.
Never forget that.
The Irish would like to have a word with you
The US didn't welcome Irish and Italian
Once we took everything from the natives fully to the west coast we stopped being keen on it.
Because immigrants don’t participate in politics. They are too busy to do actual work that creates value for the country instead of voting or being social butterflies and running campaigns.
Somewhere after the Great War. No idea why though.
There have been resentiments against different groups of immigrants even before, e.g. Italians, Irish, or Chinese.
There's a great fictional movie called Gangs of New York that covers the real life anti immigration riots that happened in New York City during the civil war.
Daniel Day Lewis is so good in it
When the rich figured out that our innate tribalism could be weaponized to distract us from their abuse, lawlessness, and greed.