As can be seen in documents A-H, from 1880 to 1925, immigration went from being the staple of the American culture to the common enemy of “native” Americans.
In 1880 and before, immigrants were welcome to the United States with open arms, which is shown in document A with all of the foreigners flooding into the wide open gate of America. The purpose of document A was to advertise the acceptance of immigrants into the United States and all of the great things they would find when they arrived here. Document B displays that even until 1888, immigrants were viewed by the established Americans as a “double advantage”: helpful to the economy when needed and conveniently out of the way when unnecessary. The purpose of Document B seemed to be to
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People began to realize that many of the immigrants were not of the highest class or did not have many values. They also noticed that this less than stellar crowd was beginning to cost domestic Americans jobs-- as mentioned in document C. The point of view of this author seems to be of the working class whose jobs are being taken by the foreigners willing to work for cheap. This is similar to the current debate on illegal immigration and the number of jobs being occupied by illegal aliens. By 1895, even the African Americans had began a political fight against immigrants (Document D). Booker T. Washington demands that jobs in the south not be given to immigrants when the recently freed African Americans had already more than earned those jobs and had proved their loyalty to the south time and time again; the intended audience of this speech was, of course, the white men who controlled the southern …show more content…
This author’s point of view was that of a high ranking, white, “native” American who was trying to acknowledge that other races weren’t necessarily bad, just inferior to the traditional blonde hair, blue eyed American. As seen in Document H, by 1921 it was being demanded that the only way to keep these immigrants under control is to put stiff limits on the number that can be let in at a 3% admission rate. The purpose of that cartoon was to convince anyone who could vote that even stricter admission rates were necessary in order to keep out the