Dbq Essay On Immigration Analysis

Throughout time diverse regions have considered other societies to be barbaric, causing them to have the desire of “civilizing” them. Likewise, During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the American nativist groups, possessed a similar perspective towards immigration. Nativist’s opposed immigration, as they believed that it would negatively impact the United States socially, morally, politically, and economically. Socially and morally, the nativists feared that foreigners were a threat to the American society, as they were culturally inferior, possessed many ailments, and committed crimes. Politically, the ethnocentric nativists believed that immigrants would corrupt the government and negatively influence American politics.

Here, Grant portrays the general perspective towards immigrants, as nativists considered them to be a threat to the superiority and purity of the United States. Grant describes them as being physically and mentally deteriorated, in order to convey how the inferior immigrants would impede the American civilization socially, morally, and politically. Reverend Josiah Strong further elaborates on the negative impacts of immigration when he states, “…immigration not only furnishes the greater portion of our criminals, it is also seriously affecting the morals of the native population. It is disease and not health which is contagious. Most foreigners bring with them continental ideas of the Sabbat, and the result is sadly manifest in all our cities…debauching [corrupting] popular morals is the liquor traffic, and this is chiefly carried on by the foreigners…” (Document 2). One is able to identify that Strong castigates the immigrants for crime, disease, corrupting morals, sullying the Sabbath, and promoting the exchange of liquor, in order to emphasize that their presence was a peril to the well-being of America. Additionally, the