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1880 To 1925 Dbq Research Paper

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People are always uneasy with what they don’t know, and immigrants carry with them different cultures, languages, and the unknown. During the late 1900s and early 2000s, America was dealing with a large influx of immigrants. In America from 1880 to 1925, immigrants were viewed through a lens of racial prejudice and seen as either sources of work or of crime. At first, America welcomed immigrants with open arms. They promised an ideal world, a utopia even (Document A) but soon many citizens saw immigration as a dichotomy between accepting workers or criminals. James Bryce, on the workers side, clearly stated that immigrants coming to work was a positive to America (Document B). However, it is important to note it was not the people that were the positive, but the work they provided. Others favored the perspective that immigrants provided crime – not work. In 1892 the National People’s Party platform describes immigrants as, “paupers”, and, “criminals”, (Document C). Clearly, they were not in favor of immigration. Among the populace, immigration was a heated topic. …show more content…

Some people had clear racial prejudices as to what immigrants were more favorable. James Bryce thought Italians and Slovaks were good for work (Document B) and Madison Grant thought Nordic races were good for leadership (Document G). Other races, however, were not so welcome, with immigrants’, “strange habits”, being denounced (Document D), or discouragement of Japanese immigration to the United States (Document E). The American populace definitely was tense, even hostile, to incoming immigrants who were different from

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