June 2014 1-01: Explain why there was opposition to mass immigration in the years 1890 to 1914 (12 marks)

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Explain why there was opposition to mass immigration in the years 1890 to 1914 (12 marks)

Causes

  • Many felt that immigrants could be used as strike breakers in industrial disputes.
  • There was a fear of the damaging political impact of mass immigration.
  • There was opposition from protestant and temperance groups.
  • Fear of crime increasing from Italian and Irish gangs.
  • Mass immigration from 1890 did not compare to the earlier waves of immigration.
  • There was also a growing fear that many of the newer immigrants were poor.
  • The scale of immigration raised fears of rapid overcrowding, particularly in cities, especially in the eastern seaboard cities of the USA.

Effects

  • This view was held by many trade unionists and it was shared by many urban workers who also felt that mass immigration posed a threat to their economic interests in terms of competition in the labour market, since immigrants would work for low wages.
  • This was reflected through Tammany Hall, many newly arrived immigrants to New York especially Irish Catholics had to rely on Tammany Hall to help them find work and accommodation. This help was offered in return for them voting Democrat. There was the fear that the USA’s democratic foundations would be compromised as politicians would manipulate block voting by immigrant ethnic groups.
  • Many immigrants came from cultural backgrounds in which social drinking was common, i.e. Irish Catholics.  This raised fears in the minds of many small town rural communities.  There was also the response from Protestant factions who feared the influx of Roman Catholics and other religious groups.  There was a strong connection between temperance movements and religious fervour.
  • Immigrants were blamed for a lot of social problems at the time. There was fear of crime increasing from Italian and Irish gangs. Immigrants often lived in poorer parts of cities, areas with higher crime rates.
  • Later immigration was characterised by a wider diversity of religious groups and ethnicity, particularly in terms of the numbers of Jews and eastern European people.  There was a long-term realisation in the minds of many Americans of this shift in the pattern of immigration.  Many early immigrants were from western Europe and Scandanavia.
  • There was a fear of the disintegration of the established social order with the creation of a huge underclass and the potential threat this posed to the wealth of better off Americans.  (Italian peasants 1900-1910 nearly 2 million immigrants from Italy).
  • Far more of the recent immigrants were tending to stay in these cities rather than migrate further into the rural hinterland as earlier immigrants had often done.

Overall summary

consider the diversity of the opposition and see it in terms of many social groups opposing immigration for their own individual reasons. 

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