I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but I can’t believe people are actually trying to debate if that phrase is racist or not. Because, in my mind, not only is it racist, it’s one of the oldest racist phrases out there.
I’m mean heck, I’m 49 and I can remember hearing that nonsense since I was a boy.
I wonder how far back that phrase goes? Post WW1 possibly?
This is surprisingly difficult google. Partly because there are so many hits relating to Trump - perhaps today just isn’t a good day to be trying.
In my mind, in the UK I would place it not long after the second world war - with workers from the Empire being begged to come here to help rebuild the Mother Country after the war, and then being shouted at to go home almost as they were stepping off the boat. I guess it was the first major modern wave of immigration, excepting the Irish, who at least had the good grace to look similar to “us”. Even then, the Irish still made it into our national mantra, No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish*.
That link suggests that full on racist abuse was rife by the start of the 1960s. (The Windrush arrivals from the West Indies date from 1948.) So for the OP’s question, I would guess early to mid fifties for the UK.
Obviously there’s a very different pattern of immigration into the US - I look forward to seeing what is said about that. But I bet it ties in with a wave of immigration.
j
I am sure it has been a racist mainstay as long as there were racists and immigrant populations. Persians probably told people to “Go back to Babylon!” in 1800 BC.
On the radio the other day Shaun King said the expression goes back 150 years ago. Don’t know what he was basing this on, but it makes sense as this coincides with black folks being granted citizenship.
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Relevant NPR story: 'Go Back Where You Came From': Trump's Racist Tweets Have Long Rhetorical Roots : NPR
They argue the sentiment, if not expressed in those exact words, goes back at least to the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, at least in terms of what historians can find actual documentation for. But probably farther, likely as long as there have been immigrants coming here. That’s putting it in terms of US history only; as others pointed out people probably said that in other places with immigrant populations before that.
“Go back to Russia!” used to be a common taunt back in the sixties. It didn’t mean that the person it was directed at was literally from Russia. It meant that they were a Communist sympathizer and should therefore move to the Soviet Union.
Not always racist, but certainly hateful. Were a white fellow with an identifiable accent to start up with me I could see myself saying, “Why don’t you just go back to Alabama/New York/Transylvania?” Not racist. Xenophobic probably.
Is being xenophobic any better than being racist though?
nm
Well, it’s more fair.
The EEOC ( US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ) specifically cites the use of the phrase “Go back where you came from” as an example of illegal discriminatory behavior.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5d2e815de4b085eda5a390cc/amp
I can remember reading books by Horatio Alger with that phrase. And you forgot the “and stay away from our woman” too boot 
You beat me to it! I just heard that on NPR.
I can find a “go back where you came from” in Australian newspapers as early as 1830 … which, considering this was only about forty years after there were any immigrants from anywhere, is pretty impressive. It’s clearly a natural sort of insult for a person to throw about.
Probably the people off the first boat were saying it to the people off the second boat the minute they set foot on dry land, never mind that ‘where they came from’ was the exact same place