Immigrant and Ethnic History in the United States Survey

Abstract

THE EVENTS OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001, prompted Americans to scrutinize the nation's immigrants and immigration policies with new rigor. Even before the hijacked planes hit the Twin Towers, however, many Americans believed the United States was taking in too many immigrants and that those immigrants were taking too long to assimilate. Fear and loathing have been voiced about every group of immigrants that has come to America. During the colonial period, Benjamin Franklin cursed the great wave of German immigrants as "generally the most stupid of their own nation." The famine Irish were reviled in Massachusetts, where they were caricatured with ape-like features. As Eastern and Southern Europeans poured through Ellis Island at the turn of the 20th century, President Coolidge declared that "America must be kept American."1 We are once again living at a time marked by fear and distrust of foreigners. Since 9/11 "everyone with dark skin, an accent, a turban, or a foreign birthplace looks to many Americans as a potential enemy of the state."2