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?
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Nativists, as they were called, were profoundly hostile to immigration. They thought that immigrants constituted a threat to the way of life they valued and cherished. To them, immigrants were strange people speaking strange languages which they could not understand. They came from different cultures with radically different political and legal systems. 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.