"Americans' confidence in assimilation suffered its first significant, though by no means fatal, shock during the wave of anti-immigrant nativism that swept the American political scene in the late 1840s and 1850s. The so-called Know Nothings (and their formal organ, the American Party) rode this wave to widespread, albeit relatively brief, electoral success by denouncing Irish immigration, in particular, which had surged to unprecedented levels beginning in the mid-1840s. The nativists of the 1850s were ultimately unsuccessful in their declared political goal of imposing harsh new restrictions on alien suffrage, including lengthy naturalization periods and even post-naturalization limits on the franchise. But their remarkably swift political ascendency signals the moment when a critical mass of Americans began to worry that a substantial proportion of European immigrants were fundamentally, irredeemably alien to the national character."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
pp.768-769
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_States
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Immigration to the United States
279 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Immigration to the United States →
Related Quotes
"As part of its commitment to human rights, the United States offers asylum to foreign nation-als who flee to its shor…"
"The narrative of immigration as regeneration imagined the republican system itself, as well the economic arrangements…"
"Immigrants were legally reconstructed as foreigners only in the final decades of the nineteenth century, as Europeans…"
"Human judgment can never be eliminated from any system of justice. But we believe that the outcome of a refugee’s que…"
"If the adoption of the Alien Friends Act represented a dramatic short-term political triumph for the Federalist Party…"
"The history of immigration law and politics in the nineteenth century is, in an important respect, a history of repea…"
"Although the fact that the Constitution vests the authority to enact naturalization laws in Congress suggests that so…"
"Collectively, asylum officers, immigration judges, members of the Board of Immigration Appeals, and judges of U.S. co…"
"In crafting a naturalization law, prudence thus counseled that immigrants undergo a period of probation before being …"
"Over the first half of the nineteenth century, even as Americans developed progressively sharper critiques of immigra…"