This week’s readings covered immigration laws that favored immigration from Nordic countries over immigration from eastern Europe. We have seen on multiple occasions united states citizens changing and manipulating the parameters of race and ethnicity in order to prevent certain groups of people from gaining access into the country. One point in this article was the idea that immigrants came into America and stole jobs from white people. This idea still exists today as a fear tactic to shape opinions and gain voters. One point in this article that I found interesting was that while Hoover was campaigning, he was campaigning opposing quotas only to appeal to immigrant voters and ended up winning. While nativists in the united states were barring Chinese immigrants from coming into the U.S, they also tried and focused on changing the parameters within other nations in order to keep them out as well. Nativist also tried to bar Mexicans from entering the country as well but found this to be a bit more challenging due to the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which allowed Mexicans who lived on the land that now belonged to the United States to become American citizens. These Mexican-American citizens were classified as white until the 1930 Census Bureau declared Mexicans as a separate race.
2 thoughts on “Week 6 Readings”
Partial credit. There is a lot of important issues in this article that you should have addressed in your post. Be more specific in the future.
I agree that it was interesting that both Hoover and his opponent, Al Smith, courted voters, as Hoover claimed that quotas would be nearly impossible to determine and Smith changed his opinion depending on whether he was campaigning in the north or south. Obviously, courting voters happens all the time, but I do wonder what the reaction was from voters. I also noticed some similarities with the changing perception of Mexican immigrants, framing them as a disposable, illegal labor force, and rhetoric that is still used today.