This presidential election has me thinking about the immigrant experience in the past.
My mother came to this country in 1931. Was there a lot of talk back then about how immigrants were “taking all our jobs”? Given that unemployment in 1932 was 23%, I’m thinking there had to have been, but I don’t remember ever hearing about how the Depression impacted attitudes towards immigrants.
Mom was one of the most patriotic people I knew. It never occurred for me to ask her if her loyalties were at all divided by World War II – she came from Italy, and her sister and the sister’s family plus a bunch of other relatives still lived there. We know that Japanese-Americans were treated horribly during the war. How were German and Italian immigrants treated? How about Bulgarian, Romanian and other immigrants from minor-Axis-power countries treated?
The Immigration Act of 1924 was the last in a series of laws that hugely cut down on immigration. The 1924 Act was aimed specifically at ending immigration from southern and eastern Europe, people who were considered dark-skinned undesirables by the white elites. I’ve wondered what would have happened if immigration had continued, and I’m fairly sure the enmity would have been as Europe’s current problems with Muslims, and possibly much worse. We had native American fascists and demagogues as it was.
The reaction against Italians and Germans in WWII was complicated by their huge numbers. In practice, only nationals - essentially non-citizens and non-long-term residents - were interned and those in much smaller numbers than Japanese, most of whom were citizens.
Germans had engendered a large amount of prejudice during WWI, during which all things German were suspect. Some people go as far as to blame Prohibition partly on anti-German feelings, since they controlled the beer industry. In WWII people seemed to focus their hatred on Nazis rather than Germans as a nationality. (A huge generality, I know.) Neither they nor Italians were especially targeted. They had large and visible representation in the Northeast and Midwest, the most heavily populated areas of the country, and were increasingly assimilated by 1940 so that they didn’t stick out as much as Germans a generation earlier.
I’m sure some people in some places at some times made the ethnicity of people from every Axis country an issue. It doesn’t seem like a major problem in any of the history I’ve read. (A lot.)
When my Grandpa came over, from Italy, in 1903, aside from having to show he had $50 in his pocket, he had to check the box that guaranteed he wasn’t an anarchist. That seemed to be the bar at that time. People have always blamed their problems on the new folk messing up their pathetic lives. But loyalty issues are mostly made up. These people want to be here. My Uncle Art was in the army during the Big One. A first generation Italian-American. They sent him to fight at Salerno.
The Ku Klux Klan was probably at its strongest in the 1920s, and were instrumental in getting restrictions on immigration passed (It’s interesting the law was passed in 1924, the same year as the fiasco of the 103-ballot democratic convention, in which one major issue were the KKK delegates. Candidate William McAdoo actively courted the KKK.
But the Klan had fallen apart by the stock market crash. I think that by 1930, people were too busy dealing with their own economic insecurity to worry about immigrants, especially since the laws restricted immigration.