Nativism is a form of xenophobia usually targetting immigrants who are scapegoated as undermining the core essence of a nation or society. Xenophobia is an intense and/or irrational dislike and sometimes fear of people from other countries

Nativism in the United States

In the United States, anti-immigration views have a long history. The United States of America —commonly referred to as the U. S. nativism appeared in the late 1790s in reaction to an influx of political refugees from France and Ireland. After passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798 it receded. The Alien and Sedition Acts were four bills passed in 1798 by the Federalists in the United States Congress —who were waging an undeclared naval war with France

Nativism first gained a name and affected politics in mid-19th century United States because of the large inflows of immigrants from cultures that were markedly different from the existing American culture. Thus, nativists objected primarily to Roman Catholics (especially Irish American) because of their loyalty to the Pope and supposed rejection of American ideals. Irish Americans (Gael-Mheiriceánach are citizens of the United States who can claim ancestry originating in Ireland.

Nativist movements included the American Party of the mid-19th Century (formed by members of the Know Nothing movement), the Immigration Restriction League of the early 20th Century, and the anti-Asian movements in the West, resulting in the Chinese Exclusion Act and the so-called "Gentlemen's Agreement" aimed at the Japanese. The Know Nothing movement was a Nativist American political movement of the 1850s The 19th century of the Common Era began on January 1, 1801 and ended on December 31, 1900, according to the Gregorian calendar The Know Nothing movement was a Nativist American political movement of the 1850s The twentieth century of the Common Era began on The Chinese Exclusion Act was a United States federal law passed on May 6 1882 following revisions made in 1880 to the Burlingame Treaty of 1868 The was an informal agreement between the United States and the Empire of Japan whereby the U

Anti-Catholic nativism in the 19th century

Nativist outbursts occurred in the Northeast from the 1830s to the 1850s, primarily in response to a surge of Irish Catholic immigration. In 1836, Samuel F. B. Morse ran unsuccessfully for Mayor of New York City on a Nativist ticket, receiving 1,496 votes. Samuel Finley Breese Morse ( April 27, 1791 &ndash April 2, 1872) was an American painter of portraits and historic The Mayor of New York City is the head of the executive branch of the Government of New York City. In New York City, an Order of United Americans was founded as a nativist fraternity, following the Philadelphia Nativist Riots of the preceding spring and summer, in December, 1844. The City of New York The Philadelphia Nativist Riots (also known as the Philadelphia Prayer Riots, the Bible Riots and the Native American Riots) were a series of riots that

In 1849–50 Charles B. Allen founded a secret nativist society called the Order of the Star Spangled Banner in New York City. The Order of the Star Spangled Banner (OSSB was an oath-bound Secret society in New York City. In order to join the Order, a man had to be twenty-one, a Protestant, a believer in God, and willing to obey without question the dictates of the order. God is the principal or sole Deity in Religions and other belief systems that worship one deity. Members of the Order became known as the Know Nothings (a label applied to them because if asked they said they "know nothing about" the secret society). The Know Nothing movement was a Nativist American political movement of the 1850s

The Nativists went public in 1854 when they formed the 'American Party', which was anti-Irish Catholic and campaigned for laws to require longer wait time between immigration and naturalization. Irish Catholics is a term used to describe people of Roman Catholic background who are Irish or of Irish descent. (The laws never passed. ) It was at this time that the term "nativist" first appears, opponents denounced them as "bigoted nativists. " Former President Millard Fillmore ran on the American Party ticket for the Presidency in 1856. The President of the United States is the Head of state and Head of government of the United States and is the highest political official in United States by Millard Fillmore ( January 7 1800 &ndash March 8 1874 was the thirteenth President of the United States, serving from 1850 until 1853 and the last member of the Whig The American Party also included many ex-Whigs who ignored nativism, and included (in the South) a few Catholics whose families had long lived in America. Conversely, much of the opposition to Catholics came from Protestant Irish immigrants and German Lutheran immigrants who can hardly be called "nativists. "

This form of nationalism is often identified with xenophobia and anti-Catholic sentiment (anti-Papism). The term nationalism can refer to an Ideology, a sentiment, a form of Culture, or a Social movement that focuses on the Nation Xenophobia is an intense and/or irrational dislike and sometimes fear of people from other countries Anti-Catholicism is a generic term for Discrimination, hostility or Prejudice directed at the Roman Catholic Church or its followers In the 1840s, small scale riots between Catholics and nativists took place in several American cities. In Philadelphia in 1844, for example, a series of nativist assaults on Catholic churches and community centers resulted in the loss of lives and the professionalization of the police force.

Nativist sentiment experienced a revival in the 1880s, led by Protestant Irish immigrants hostile to Catholic immigration. The Orange Order was the center of nativism in Canada from the 1860s to 1950s. The Orange Institution, more commonly known as the Orange Order or the Orange Lodge, is a Protestant fraternal organisation based predominantly ^[1]

Anti-German nativism

From the 1840s to 1920 German Americans were distrusted because of their separatist social structure, their opposition to prohibition, their attachment to their native tongue over English, and their neutrality in World War I. German Americans ( German: Deutschamerikaner) are citizens of the United States of Ethnic German ancestry Prohibition of alcohol, often referred to simply as prohibition, also known as Noble Experiment, refers to a Sumptuary law which prohibits Alcohol

(See also: World_War_I_Anti-German_Sentiment)

Anti-Chinese nativism

In the 1870s Irish American immigrants attacked Chinese immigrants in the western states, driving them out of smaller towns. German Americans ( German: Deutschamerikaner) are citizens of the United States of Ethnic German ancestry Irish Americans (Gael-Mheiriceánach are citizens of the United States who can claim ancestry originating in Ireland. Dennis Kearney led a mass movement in San Francisco in 1877 that threatened to harm railroad owners if they hired any people who were Chinese. Dennis Kearney (1847&ndash1907 was a California Populist political leader in the late 19th century known for his nativist and Racist views ^[2][3] The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was the first of many nativist acts of Congress to limit the flow of immigrants into the U. The Chinese Exclusion Act was a United States federal law passed on May 6 1882 following revisions made in 1880 to the Burlingame Treaty of 1868 S. The Chinese responded with false claims of American birth, enabling thousands to immigrate to California. ^[4] Ironically, the exclusion of the Chinese caused the western railroads to begin importing Mexican railroad workers in greater numbers ("traqueros"). A traquero is a Railroad track worker especially a Mexican or Mexican American railroad track worker (" Gandy dancer " in American ^[5]

20th and 21st century anti-immigration movements

Fear of low-skilled immigrants flooding the labor market was an issue in the 1920s (focused on immigrants from Italy and Poland), and in the 2000s (focused on immigrants from Mexico and Central America). Italy (Italia officially the Italian Republic, (Repubblica Italiana is located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe, and on the two largest Poland (Polska officially the Republic of Poland

The second Ku Klux Klan, which flourished in the U. Ku Klux Klan ( KKK) is the name of several past and present secret domestic terrorist organizations in the United States, generally in the southern states that are S. in the 1920s, used strong nativist rhetoric.

After the fall of South Vietnam in 1975, the resulting influx of Vietnamese refugees caused some racial tension to flare up as host communities struggled to adapt to the cultural differences between the new arrivals and the existing American culture.

When Fidel Castro opened the doors to Cuban emigration, a number of communities in the southeastern U. S. struggled to accommodate the sudden inflow of Cuban immigrants ("Marielitos"), many of whom were mentally ill or criminal elements.

An immigration reductionism movement formed in the 1970s and continues to the present day. Immigration reduction refers to movements that advocate a reduction in the amount of Immigration allowed into their country This article is about the Decade 1970-1979 For the Year 1970 see 1970. Prominent members often press for massive, sometimes total, reductions in immigration levels.

However, as most Americans are themselves descended from immigrants, many feel that it is hypocritical to criticize those who enter the country through legal means, and neither of the two major parties has proposed curtailing the number of visas given out annually.

American nativist sentiment experienced a resurgence in the late 20th century, this time directed at illegal aliens, largely Mexican resulting in the passage of new penalties against illegal immigration in 1996. Illegal immigration refers to Immigration across National Borders in a way that violates the Immigration laws of the destination Country The United Mexican States ( or commonly Mexico (ˈmɛksɪkoʊ () is a federal constitutional Republic in North America.

Illegal immigration, principally from across the United States-Mexico border, is the more pressing concern for most immigration reductionists. Illegal immigration refers to Immigration across National Borders in a way that violates the Immigration laws of the destination Country Authors such as Samuel Huntington (famous for the "Clash of Civilizations" thesis) have also seen recent Hispanic immigration as creating a national identity crises and presenting insurmountable problems for US social institutions. Samuel Phillips Huntington (born April 18, 1927) is an American political scientist who gained prominence through his " Clash of Civilizations The Clash of Civilizations is a Theory, proposed by Political scientist Samuel P In the May 2005 Spanish edition of Foreign Affairs magazine, he lists the size, illegality, cultural roots, and poverty of this recent wave of migration as most problematic. Foreign Affairs is an influential American Journal on International relations published by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR

Language

Language was a political and an emotional issue as early as the 1750s, when British settlers in Pennsylvania began to fear and resent the fact that a third of their fellow Pennsylvanians were German speakers. The German language (de ''Deutsch'') is a West Germanic language and one of the world's major languages. Since that time, American nativists have sought to eradicate minority languages and discourage bilingualism wherever it could be found. Complaints about non-English-speakers became common in the last quarter of the 19th century, and again during and after World War I, when the immigrants and their non-English languages prompted protective English-only legislation. Many Americans deemed non-Anglophones to be subhuman. In 1904, a railroad president told a Congressional hearing on the mistreatment of immigrant workers, "These workers don't suffer--they don't even speak English. "(Shanahan, 1989. ) Today, there is still opposition to nonanglophones and bilinguals. The result is the proposed English Language Amendment (ELA), a Constitutional amendment making English the official language of the United States.

Limitation on elgibility to be elected as President

The one aspect of Nativism which is enshrined in the United States Constitution is the requierment for the President to be a native-born American, excluding immigrants from attaining the highest office. On numerous occasions it has been argued that this limitation is discriminatory and unreasonable - most recently in connection with the Austrian-born Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor of California, whose supporters believe he deserves a chance to contest the Presidential elections. Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger ( German ˌaɐnɔlt aloʏs ˈʃvaɐtsənɛɡɐ born July 30 1947 is an Austrian American Bodybuilder, Actor Still, given the long and complicated process necessary to amend the Constitution, the chances of having this requirement eliminated are not high.

Nativism in Taiwan

Nativism flourished in Taiwan in the 1970s as a reaction against the influx of mainland Chinese to the island after the Kuomintang's defeat in 1949. Taiwan ( Taiwanese: Tâi-oân/Tāi-oân (historically 大灣/台員/大員/台圓/大圓/台窩灣 is an Island in East Asia. Mainlanders (also called Inlanders) are people who live in a region considered a "mainland" The term Chinese people may refer to any of the following A person who resides in and holds citizenship of the People's Republic of China (including Hong Year 1949 ( MCMXLIX) was a Common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. Nativists felt that the political influence of mainland Chinese was disproportionately large. The term is especially found in the field of literature, where nativist literature was more traditionally minded than the modernist literature written largely by mainland Chinese. Literature is the Art of written works Literally translated the word means "acquaintance with letters" (from Latin littera letter Modernist literature is the literary form of Modernism and especially High modernism; it should not be confused with modern literature, which is the history

Nativism in Europe

Regarding the Irish in Great Britain, Lucassen (2005) argues the deep religious divide between the Protestants and Catholics was at the core of the ongoing estrangement of the Irish in British society. In the case of the Poles in the mining districts of western Germany before 1914, it was nationalism (on both the German and the Polish sides), which kept Polish workers, who had established an associational structure approaching institutional completeness (churches, voluntary associations, press, even unions), separate from the host German society. Lucassen find that religiosity and nationalism were more fundamental in generating nativism and inter-group hostility than the labor antagonism. Once Italian workers in France had understood the benefit of unionism and French unions were willing to overcome their fear of Italians as scabs, integration was open for most Italian immigrants. The French state, always more of an immigration state than Prussia/Germany or historical Great Britain, fostered and supported family-based immigration and thus helped Italians on their immigration trajectory with minimal nativism. (Lucassen 2005)

Many observers see the post-1950s wave of immigration in Europe was fundamentally different from the pre-1914 patterns. They debate the role of cultural differences, ghettos, race, Muslim fundamentalism, poor education and poverty play in creating nativism among the hosts and a caste-type underclass, more similar to white-black tensions in the U. S. (Lucassen 2005) Algerian migration to France has generated nativism, characterized by the prominence of Jean-Marie Le Pen and his National Front. Jean-Marie Le Pen (born June 20, 1928, La Trinité-sur-Mer, Brittany, France) is a French far-right Nationalist The National Front ( FN, Front national is a French Far right, Nationalist Political party, founded in 1972 by Jean-Marie (Lucassen 2005)

References

• Allerfeldt, Kristofer. Race, Radicalism, Religion, and Restriction: Immigration in the Pacific Northwest, 1890-1924. Praeger, 2003. 235 pp.
• Barkan, Elliott R. "Return of the Nativists? California Public Opinion and Immigration in the 1980s and 1990s. " Social Science History 2003 27(2): 229-283. Issn: 0145-5532 Fulltext: in Project Muse, Swetswiseesting that such pride can be accompanied by a full in the United States, France, and Germany. Cambridge U. Press, 2000. 253 pp
• Franchot, Jenny. Roads to Rome: The Antebellum Protestant Encounter with Catholicism (1994),
• Higham, John, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925 (1955).
• Hueston, Robert Francis. The Catholic Press and Nativism, 1840-1860 (1976)
• Houston, Cecil J. and Smyth, William J. The Sash Canada Wore: A Historical Geography of the Orange Order in Canada. U. of Toronto Press, 1980.
• Lucassen, Leo. The Immigrant Threat: The Integration of Old and New Migrants in Western Europe since 1850. University of Illinois Press, 2005. 280 pp; ISBN 0-252-07294-4. Examines Irish immigrants in Britain, Polish immigrants in Germany, Italian immigrants in France (before 1940), and (since 1950), Caribbeans in Britain, Turks in Germany, and Algerians in France
• Melton, Tracy Matthew, Hanging Henry Gambrill: The Violent Career of Baltimore's Plug Uglies, 1854-1860 (2005)
• Mclean, Lorna. "'To Become Part of Us': Ethnicity, Race, Literacy and the Canadian Immigration Act of 1919". Canadian Ethnic Studies 2004 36(2): 1-28. ISSN 0008-3496

Notes

See also

• Anti-Catholicism
• Illegal immigration to the United States
• Immigration to the United States
• Immigration reduction
• Immigration reform
• National conservatism
• Rivers of Blood speech
• Xenophobia

External links

• Kearney
• Henry A. Rhodes, "Nativist and Racist Movements in the U.S. and their Aftermath"
• Kearney, President, and H. L. Knight, Secretary, “Appeal from California. The Chinese Invasion. Workingmen’s Address,” Indianapolis Times, 28 February 1878.
• PoliticosLatinos.com Videos of 2008 US Presidential Election Candidates' Positions regarding Immigration
• "In Defense of Nativism". Anti-Catholicism is a generic term for Discrimination, hostility or Prejudice directed at the Roman Catholic Church or its followers Illegal immigration to the United States refers to the act of foreign nationals voluntarily resettling in the United States in violation of U American immigration ( emigration to the United States of America) refers to the movement of non-residents to the United States. Immigration reduction refers to movements that advocate a reduction in the amount of Immigration allowed into their country Immigration reform is the common term used in political discussions regarding changes to Immigration policy. National conservatism is a political term used to describe a variant of Conservatism which concentrates more on "national interests and traditional social/ethical The Rivers of Blood speech was a speech about Immigration and anti- Discrimination legislation in the United Kingdom made on 20 April, 1968 Xenophobia is an intense and/or irrational dislike and sometimes fear of people from other countries A conservative defense of nativism.
• "Anti - Immigration Groups and the Masks of False Diversity". False Diversity in Anti-Immigration organizations.