Immigration

Immigration Then and Now, Part II

More Similarities Between Immigration Then and Now In both 1880-1924 and today, you had a massive influx of low- or no-skill workers. Likewise, there was great anxiety about absorbing so many culturally and linguistically foreign people. There was the same fear of criminality and disease and a similar worry that the cultural core of the U.S. was giving way to Balkanization (with so many Slovaks and Serbs among the older immigration, somewhat literally so.) If anything, the fears of the past were stronger than today, because “dark white” immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe were thought to be genetically inferior and a debasement to the American “race.”Just as with Mexican-Americans and other recent immigrants, those of the past also kept close ties to their homelands and sent a great deal of money home. Even Germans, whom we rarely even consider an ethnic group today, were highly ethnocentric until WWI made such loyalties problematic. Immigrants maintained close contact with those left behind, and organized politically along ethnic lines. Much like immigrants today, they were not terribly interested in citizenship, except in uncertain political times when it might be personally beneficial.Also like contemporary immigrants, those of the past came here through long chains of migration — friend following friend following brother following cousin. Much like today, such chains led immigrant groups to dominate certain industries: Jews and Italians in the needle trades; Cornishmen and then Ukrainians in coal-mining; the Chinese in hand-laundries.With so many similarities, we might be tempted to say, “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” Not so much. Check in with my follow-on posts as I explain why the current immigration is fundamentally different than its predecessors.