No Stupid Questions

People hated immigrants DURING the time period you're thinking of. And it wasn't always a skin color thing either, the Irish were one of the big targets for a long time.

Everything can be summarized in one Chinese idiom (成语):
过河拆桥

Aka: Crossing the river, then dismantle the bridge.
You're already crossed it, why care about the bridge, you wont be using it anymore.

Within a single generation. My grandfather showed up here at 11 from Romania. Never became a US citizen. His son, my father, is a rabid anti-immigrant racist Fox News fan boy. It's disgusting. Ironically my mother's great-great grandmother lost her birthright citizenship by marrying a Finnish immigrant before the 14th amendment existed and had to reapply for her own citizenship along with her husband because women's status was tied to the male head of household at the time, and now he rants about how birthright citizenship is wrong, despite being the exact person who benefits from it.

Anti-immigrant sentiment is nearly universal across human cultures. It's a form of tribalism/fear of "the other". Just look at the backlash against arab refugees in Germany and Sweden, or the relatively recent tightening of Canada's immigration policy which used to be one of the most liberal in the world, for modern examples. Historic examples are even easier to find.

In general, we see more anti-immigrant sentiment in a country due to (a) the general population feeling insecure for some reason, (b) the perception that immigrants are immigrating faster than they are integrating.

When times are good and people feel secure, they look back at the past and say to themselves "look at how great our society is - we welcome people from all over the world, and now we have korean-mexican fusion. Yay, us!" But then when times get harder and people feel less secure, they say "these goddamned Nigerians keep coming here and taking all our video-editing and corporate accounting jobs! And they chew with their mouths open and have annoying laughs. And on top of that, their food isn't even that good. They're the worst, stop letting them in!"

Immigration is part of the mythologizing of the United States, but that doesn't except it from the great overarching trends of humanity.

Because their lives are shit and they need somebody to blame.

The right will accept a boot on their face as long as they've got a face on which to rest their own boot.

Here's a wiki article about the topic, because it would be a bit much to list it all out in a lemmy comment:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nativism_in_United_States_politics#History

The TLDR is though that its existed since before the country even became independent.

Mostly personal opinion incoming, with a few facts mixed in: I think the message on the Statue of Liberty was what the best of us at the time wanted the majority of us to be. I'm not sure we ever were.

First we get the Puritans, wiping out Native Americans, and trying to push their religion on everyone.

Then you get the slave trade, which is not immigration, but a large influx of a new population regardless, that was suddenly a problem for some when those people were free and citizens.

Then you get the Ellis Island years. Immigrants would get here, get sucked into "the American dream" of capitalism (which can help only very specific people), then want to close the door behind them. That way none of the new, filthy immigrants from (insert ethnic/religious group of your choice) could get the same advantages. But everyone kept coming.

Now, in power due to the way everything got handled (badly) after our civil war, you have a combination of the religious right, who want christianity to continue to be number one, and the racists, who want to make sure their daughter doesn't sleep with anyone who's the wrong color. They were always here, festering in the background, but now they've gained power, and they're louder than before.

The rest of us are still here, suffering, watching the country we were told was great reveal its ugliest population to everyone. I'm left wondering if we were ever a country who actually wanted immigrants. Or if it was merely aspirational.

Its called "ladder pulling".

The US has always had an anti-immigrant streak. Whoever the last group are they are unhappy with the next group. The Irish were not welcome, except by Tammany Hall, then the Italians were suspect. The Chinese have always been seen as suspicious and we all know what happened to the Japanese in WW2. Interestingly those of German descent haven't been suspect, probably because they formed a large chunk of the US (PA, OH) and Eisenhower had German ancestry.

I doubt any country has never had an issue with someone seen as outsiders.

One way the wealthy and powerful stay that way is by constantly promoting the narrative that it's those poorer than you who are your enemy, not the bosses who starve you both.

General population was always anti immigrant but the ruling class was smart enough to understand they needed immigration to sustain the growth. What changed is that everyone got so dumb they don't know what's in their best interest anymore.

A large majority of 'anti-immigrant' people wouldn't care if say, a French person immigrated into their country. When these people say immigrants, most of the time they mean people of color.

Yeah, sorry OP.

Racism has always and will always be a part of America's identity. I'd go so far as to say I think it's part of human nature, given how pervasive and common it's been throughout all of human history.

The "fuck you, I got mine" mindset aka FYIGM or getting first dibs.

That is, kicking out the ladder or destroying bridges or cutting off reach so that no one else is getting what one has achieved. Like, "I got first, you're getting nothing!"

America was never accommodating. The only thing immigrants had in common was hating black people.

The US is not anti immigrant.

There's a few greedy white people with lots of money who bought the media and the elections who are anti-immigrant.

Don't confuse policy with popular sentiment.

As soon as they settled down and thought, now they have got something to loose.

When the rich figured out that our innate tribalism could be weaponized to distract us from their abuse, lawlessness, and greed.

Blaming immigrants is classic political trope.
Right along with blaming the poor.

Even when the nation was welcoming immigrants, handing them a weapon, and shoving them to the front line. They were being denigrated and demonized by other Americans.

When immigrants from the "wrong" country started applying.

What is the wrong country? What ever the media says it currently is.

See the 1947 US Army video: “Don’t be a Sucker”:

https://archive.org/details/DontBeaS1947

It’s always been a hypocritical ideal. Even the US Military acknowledged our xenophobic tendencies, and the constant struggle against them. And slowly doing better. That’s the point.

…But I think the radical shift of the “attention economy” is what makes it feel like the ideal is finally collapsing. The population is sucked into doomscrolling Fox News (for example) at such scale that makes this US Army video feel quaint.

If they published the same thing today, no one would even notice. There’s too much noise. And that is unprecedented.

When stupid and hateful took over all three branches of government and runs unopposed...

I mean they blare "brown man make your life bad" 24/7 on state tv

Sigmund Freud's work, and those who built upon it after his death, proved humans are very very very very easy on a large sample size to mislead.

Theres even a phrase "you are not immune to propaganda."

Owner class wants cheap slaves... But they don't want to be blamed for it.

So they got Indigenous population to blame the new slaves while owners exploit both. That wage growth since 1970s speaks for itself.

Indigenous Americans are just useful idiots fighting culture wars. They should know better but propaganda be good!

Anti-immigrant sentiment in the US has been a thing for hundreds of years. It was commonly called "nativism". Consider watching Scorcese's "Gangs of New York" for a (fictionally dramatized) depiction of it in times past.

As for why mass deportations are possible today - - until the late 1800s, immigration to the US was essentially unregulated. The Chinese Exclusion Act and later systems of quotas and literacy tests introduced around the turn of the 20th century instituted the first national immigration policies.

I frankly don't find it unfair or unreasonable that the US government's executive branch has chosen to enforce existing immigration laws for political gain. Americans should change their immigration laws if they get upset when they're actually enforced. If anything, the executive branch was utterly failing to enforce laws that representatives had placed and kept on the books for a long time. If you want more immigrants, make it easy and legal to receive more immigrants without tests, long wait periods, or country of origin quotas.

Lead and propaganda.