Title: What did native-born Americans fear about immigration? - eNotes.com
Headings: What did native-born Americans fear about immigration?
Immigration and Nativism in the 1920s
What did native-born Americans fear about immigration?
Expert Answers
Further Reading
We’ll help your grades soar

Content: Native-born Americans were afraid that the newcomers would radically change the very structure and nature of American civic institutions. In the popular mind, immigrants were also linked to the twin dangers of anarchism and communism. Some of the more violent agitators of both movements were indeed immigrants. However, the vast majority of newcomers wanted nothing to do with any form of violent extremism. Nevertheless, during the Red Scare of 1919, immigrants, especially Jewish ones, were disproportionately targeted by the authorities, and many of them were subsequently deported using draconian laws. Many immigrants were Roman Catholics, and native-born immigrants tended to belong to Protestant churches. Many of these people believed that Catholics owed their primary allegiance not to the United States, but to a foreign Pope in Rome. This was a long-standing prejudice among American Protestants, but one that gained added traction in the midst of mass immigration, particularly from southern Europe. Nativism has been an aspect of American political life almost from the start. However, it only started to develop as a significant force around the end of the nineteenth century and the turn of the twentieth.