Examples Of Anti Immigrant Sentiment In The 1920s

Anti-Immigrant sentiment in the 1920s

The 1920s saw a growth in prejudice towards the influx of Central and Eastern Europeans, as well as Asians that had been immigrating to the United States since the 1800s.. As the economy grew after the Great War, a demand for cheap labor rose, in which many immigrants, penniless, were exploited into accepting low paying, long hour factory jobs as there were not many other options. Although urbanization increased with the economy and more and more people began to inhabit these massive cities, the migrants made up the majority of the poor and impoverished. Many shanty neighborhoods and slums sprang up to accommodate them. They were viewed as bums and also a threat to American-born citizens for supposedly

Especially after the Great War, nativism became a huge movement. That is, the rejection of anything considered to be Un-American. ("After the Great War: Nativism and the Ku Klux Klan." American Decades, edited by Judith S. Baughman, et al., vol. 3: 1920-1929, Gale, 2001. Student Resources in Context) Soldiers having little jobs to return to after the Great War also led to strong sentiment against them. In post war America, the hate towards German-Americans shifted to Russians. In 1917, the emperor of the country was ousted by communists who started the revolution against the traditional monarchies that once ruled Europe. After the war, it spread to all of the Balkans region and into Germany, Americans were now afraid of radical socialists spreading their ideas on U.S. soil. While isolated incidents did happen, it was nowhere near the scale that they expected. To rid this threat, congress passed the Immigration act in 1924, which greatly reduced the number of Europeans that could enter the country. Now, only 2 percent of each nationality was eligible for citizenship. Asians were completely excluded from the right. (“Anti-immigrant sentiment in the 1920s, 1921-1924” DISCovering U.S. History, Gale;