Culture and the Immigration Debate
You will read excerpts and analyze a political cartoon to better understand the different cultural arguments made for and against immigration. For each text or visual source, determine whether it presents evidence for or against immigrants and immigration. Then, in the Cultural section of the chart, summarize each source’s argument.
G. "The High Tide of Immigration—A National Menace," Judge Magazine, August 22, 1903
Description: Reflecting the alarm among some Americans at the growing number of immigrants from countries in Southern and Eastern Europe, the cartoon’s subtitle reads: "Immigration statistics for the past year show that the influx of foreigners was the greatest in our history, and also that the hard-working peasants are now being supplanted by the criminals and outlaws of all Europe." The hats of the "riffraff" read pauper, illiterate, criminal, outlaw, and Mafia.
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H. "Dirt, overcrowding, and other unpleasant conditions did exist in immigrant neighborhoods, to the dismay of the residents as well as their critics; but, contrary to popular belief, crime was lower among immigrants than among the native born. The physical and social problems prevalent in the living quarters of the "new" immigrants were due to poverty and inadequate urban services rather than to the inferiority of their southern and eastern European inhabitants."
I.
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The text under the headline read: "In other words, the facts of this Census make it clear that these alien colonies have become so large and as we shall see, so compact that they threaten to remain quite undigested lumps of imperfect civilization in our midst. . . . The second significant feature of recent developments in respect of the racial composition of our population is neither the absolute nor the relative number of foreigners, but the change in their character and quality. Even a big lump of aliens might be assimilated to American standards, although, perhaps, with difficulty, were it not that these later contingents are of an entirely different and inferior type."
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