Race or Politics? Henry Cabot Lodge and the Origins of the Immigration Restriction Movement in the United States

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 128-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Gratton
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Ethnic Differences ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Biological Theory ◽  
Market Competition ◽  
The United States ◽  
Immigration Restriction ◽  
Political Response ◽  
New Immigrants ◽  
Class Anxiety

Abstract:This article addresses the origins of the immigration restriction movement in the late 19th century United States, a movement that realized its aims in the early 20th. It critiques the dominant scholarly interpretation, which holds that the movement sprang from a racism that viewed the new immigrants of this period as biologically inferior. It argues first that activists did not have at hand a biological theory sufficient to this characterization and did not employ one. It argues second that the movement arose as an adroit political response to labor market competition. The Republican Party recognized the discontent of resident workers (including those of older immigrant origin) with competition from new immigrants. The Party discerned ethnic differences among new and old immigrants and capitalized on these conditions in order to win elections. Ethnocentrism and middle-class anxiety over mass immigrant added to a movement that depended on bringing working class voters into the Party.

Building a Nation

2017 ◽  
pp. 24-49
Author(s):  
Adam M. Howard
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Labor Movement ◽  
The United States ◽  
White Paper ◽  
The Other ◽  
Immigration Restriction ◽  
Government Organizations ◽  
Jewish Immigration ◽  
New Immigrants ◽  
Union Leaders

During the late 1920s and early 1930s, some Bundists began to identify as non-Zionists. Although they viewed Zionism as a nationalist distraction from their socialist values, they believed assisting a fellow labor movement in Histadrut a worthy cause. Additionally, they saw Palestine as a practical option for persecuted Jews to emigrate. With immigration restriction quotas passed by congress in 1921 and 1924 that several restricted Eastern and Southern Europeans from immigrating to the United States, these non-Zionists in the labor movement viewed Palestine as a reasonable alternative for persecuted Jews to go and begin new lives with a strong labor movement to help absorb them into the growing Jewish society there. To help Histadrut absorb these new immigrants, Jewish trade-union leaders expanded beyond the fundraising of the Gewerkschaften Campaign to specifically raise money for colonization. They raised money for the purchase of land in two places where housing was built for these new settlers, naming one the Leon Blum colony and the other the Louis Brandeis colony. This demonstrated the power of these non-government organizations (NGOs) operating transnationally to develop the infrastructure of burgeoning nation. However, in 1939, the British government’s McDonald White Paper would drastically reduce Jewish immigration to Palestine for the next five years and then eliminate it altogether after 1944.

Native Acts, Immigrant Acts: Citizenship, Naturalization, and the Performance of Civic Identity during the Progressive Era

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Cristina Stanciu
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civic Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Native People ◽  
Immigration Restriction ◽  
Federal Indian Policy ◽  
Federal Indian Law ◽  
New Immigrants ◽  
History Of ◽  
Indian Law

Abstract This article reveals the complicity of immigration restriction laws and federal Indian policy with organized Americanization in legislating an imagined, desirable “new American” at the beginning of the twentieth century, when resurgent nationalism threatened to restrict undesirable immigrants as it also sought to assimilate Indigenous people into a mass of Americanism. While the immigrant has figured in the U.S. national imaginary as someone who desires America, the American Indian was not desired to enter into political membership—although Native land was desired, and subsequently taken by settlers through strategies of dispossession written into federal Indian law. This essay argues that the Indian—read as an imagined category with little connection to the lives of Native people—occupies an anomalous position in the legal history of naturalization, finalized with the passing of the Indian Citizenship Act in 1924, at the same time that racist immigration restriction quotas also limited the entrance of new immigrants into the United States through the 1924 Johnson-Reed Immigration Act. For Native people, Americanization and the imposition of citizenship were extensions of colonialism, adding one civic status over another—domestic dependent, ward, or U.S. citizen. For new immigrants hailing from southern and eastern Europe, forced by economic and cultural constraints to relocate to the United States, in contrast to their Anglo-Saxon or Nordic settler predecessors, Americanization meant a renunciation of political allegiance to other sovereigns, the acquisition of English, and civic education for citizenship. This essay challenges the myth of America as a “nation of immigrants,” and the settler colonial nation-state's ongoing infatuation with its colonial project as it continues to erase Indigenous presence and sovereignty.

The New Economic Populism and the Future of Inequality in the United States

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
William W. Franko ◽  
Christopher Witko
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
Labor Unions ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Public ◽  
Empirical Results ◽  
Income Disparities ◽  
The Face ◽  
Over Time

The authors conclude the book by recapping their arguments and empirical results, and discussing the possibilities for the “new economic populism” to promote egalitarian economic outcomes in the face of continuing gridlock and the dominance of Washington, DC’s policymaking institutions by business and the wealthy, and a conservative Republican Party. Many states are actually addressing inequality now, and these policies are working. Admittedly, many states also continue to embrace the policies that have contributed to growing inequality, such as tax cuts for the wealthy or attempting to weaken labor unions. But as the public grows more concerned about inequality, the authors argue, policies that help to address these income disparities will become more popular, and policies that exacerbate inequality will become less so. Over time, if history is a guide, more egalitarian policies will spread across the states, and ultimately to the federal government.

scholarly journals IMPROVING HYPERTENSION CONTROL IN THE UNITED STATES: UNDERSTANDING RACIAL/ETHNIC DIFFERENCES IN THE BLOOD PRESSURE CASCADE

2021 ◽  
Vol 77 (18) ◽  
pp. 1475
Author(s):  
Rahul Aggarwal ◽  
Nicholas Chiu ◽  
Rishi Wadhera ◽  
Andrew Moran ◽  
Changyu Shen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Blood Pressure ◽  
Ethnic Differences ◽  
The United States ◽  
Hypertension Control ◽  
Racial Ethnic

scholarly journals When Interbranch Norms Break Down: Of Arms-for-Hostages, "Orderly Shutdowns, "Presidential Impeachments, and Judicial Coups

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter M. Shane
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Government ◽  
Democratic Legitimacy ◽  
National System ◽  
Effective Operation ◽  
Political Conservatism ◽  
Per Se ◽  
The Government

The orderly and effective operation of our national system of government was intended to depend to an exceptional degree upon certain norms of cooperation among its competing branches. The strength of those norms is essential to securing the primary political asset that our government design was intended to help realize: an especially robust form of democratic legitimacy. From this standpoint, it is constitutionally worrisome that norms critical to inter-branch cooperation are coming under heedless assault. To illustrate the problem, this article revisits four critical episodes that have involved destabilizing and antidemocratic initiatives, each undertaken by a branch of the national government while in the control of the current, very conservative generation of Republican party leadership: the Iran-Contra affair, the government shutdown of 1995, the impeachment of President Clinton, and the Senate stonewalling of President Clinton's judicial nominations. The repeated willingness of the Republican Party's most conservative elements to engage in such initiatives is not rooted in political conservatism per se. It reflects rather the narrowing social and ideological base of the Republican Party, and is consistent with a contempt for democratic pluralism that characterizes the constitutional outlook of leading Republican legal theorists. Unless matters are improved, the United States may otherwise be headed towards a new political equilibrium that does considerable violence to America's modern practice of democratic legitimacy.

scholarly journals Abnehmende Kooperation in der Umweltpolitik trotz zunehmender wirtschaftlicher Integration : das kanadisch-amerikanische Verhältnis im Umweltbereich

1992 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 112-120
Author(s):  
A. Gurtner-Zimmermann
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic Integration ◽  
Trade Agreement ◽  
State Intervention ◽  
The United States ◽  
Environmental Problems ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Canadian Experience ◽  
Political Response ◽  
Trading Partners

Abstract. Over the last decades, Canada and Switzerland, countries with "small" economies, when compared with their neighbours, have experienced increasing economic Integration with their main trading partners, the United States and the European Community (EC) respectively. Using a political-economic approach, this article analyzes the effects of growmg Integration for management of transboundary, environmental problems in North America. As well, in view of the Canadian experience, possible implications for Switzerland in its future relationship to the EC are addressed. In the past the Canadian-American debate over transboundary environmental problems has centered around questions of territory. Despite increasing economic Integration, the dominant reaction to ecological interdependence has been reliance on national policies. In accordance with the American, economic leadership in the continental System, the kind of political response to transboundary, environmental Problems is mainly dictated by the importance of the problem in the United States. The Great Lakes are an area of mutual concern and, therefore, an example for limited, environmental Cooperation and the adoption of an environmental advanced Position. In the U. S., the political response to acid rain was reactive and delayed, since only certain regions were concerned. Despite Canadian domestic and international efforts during the 1980s, until recently no significant progress has been made in developing effective measures to abate air emissions. The conclusion of the Canada-U. S. Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in 1988 did not change the very nature of the mutual environmental relationship. However, in the corollary to the FTA serious threats to the environment can be identified. Liberalized trade and restrained State Intervention foster the accelerated exploitation of Canada's natural resources and further the harmonization of environmental Standards between the two countries. In view ofthe Canadian experience, the article concludes that for Switzerland an economic agreement with the EC without parallel environmental commitments could have significant, negative consequences.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document