Immigration Flashcards
Prejudice and Racism KU
The old immigrants were known as WASPS (white anglo-saxon protestants) and were predominantly from Western Europe (Britain and France etc) while the New Immigrants were from Eastern and southern Europe as well as Asia and South America
1882 Chinese Exclusion Act- limited Chinese Immigration by placing a 50% tax on each immigrant (thought the Chinese were too violent bc of gang associations)
1921 Emergancy Immigration Act- imposed annual limit of 3% the numbers of nationals from any country living in the USA
1924 National Origins Act- limited that further to 2%
1929 Immigration Act- 85% of places reserved for immigrants were for Northern and Western Europeans
Prejudice and Racism Analysis
A+ Shows that the WASPS thought that the new immigrants were racially inferior to then and thought that America should be left to the “native born Americans”
A- not the most important because the limits applied to all immigrants and was mostly done over the fear of running out of land or resources
Social/Economic fears KU
Immigrants would work more for less money
Many Lost jobs after WW1 ended because the industries the war created were no longer direly needed so unemployment doubled from 5.2% to 11.7% and many WASPS thought that new immigrants were stealing their jobs
Immigrants could only afford very cheap housing and had to cram large amounts of people in a small space which led to overcrowding and the deterioration of facilities which made the WASPS think that they were running down the housing and making life more difficult for the people who live around them
Landlords also put rent up to to high competition
New Immigrants often stuck to their own communities and cultures as well as having different religions to the WASPS which they thought threatened their way of life
Social/Economics fears Analysis
A+ competition for jobs caused a lot of animosity between the WASPS and the old immigrants leading to increasing hostility between them
A+ WASPS feared that foreign cultures and religion would threaten their way of life causing them to be hostile towards them
Isolationism KU
Pre WW1 America had an isolationist policy where they vowed to never get involved with any other countries wars because they were a mix of many nationalities snd tbey feared that people would support their origional countries over america
America joined the allied forces in 1917 when Germany sank a ship with American people on board
More than 10 million immigrants from the nations of the Central powers supported their mother country (Germany 8 mil and Italy)
After WW1 most Americans wanted to return to isolationism which can be shown by their refusal to join the league of nations which was proposed by the us president, there was also a growing demand to end mass immigration.
Isolationism Analysis
A+ their refusal to join the league if nations demonstrated their commitment to staying away from other countries arguments but it was rather difficult to to that when the American public urged them to help their home countries fight which led to devision between the different nationalities in america
A- immigrants in america wanted to be considered American and prioritised America over their home countries and supported isolationism as they liked that America remained neutral rather than supporting one side
Fear of revolution KU
America felt threatened after the Russian revolution because they were afraid of communism taking over in Capitalist America. Communism was the exact opposite of what most Americans believe in, communism is the belief that wealth should be distributed evenly between everyone while capitalism is the belief that everyone should keep their own wealth.
During this time strikers were labelled as communists including in 1919 when the Boston police force strike and were labelled as “agents of lenin”
Although many Americans feared communism this fear was irrational as the number of communists in the US were only 0.1% of the population, with one journalist saying “the whole lot of them were about as dangerous as a flea on an elephant”
Fear of Revolution
A+ Fear of communism was used to justify hatred towards immigrants especially Eastern European ones
A- Due to the small number of communists in the US its more likely that the fear of communism was used as an excuse for their existing racism towards new immigrants
Context (immigration)
America was supposed to be a melting pot of cultures but unfortunately they didn’t mix well and became more of a salad bowl
Originally America had an open door policy but by the early 1900s that open door policy began to close
