Nativism (politics)
Nativism is the political policy of promoting or protecting the interests of native-born or indigenous people over those of immigrants,[1][2] including the support of anti-immigration and immigration-restriction measures.
Betz argues that economic and welfare themes were historically dominant, but that since the 1990s symbolic nativism has become the focus of radical right-wing populist mobilization.
On July 28, 1921, representatives Andrade Bezerra and Cincinato Braga proposed a law whose Article 1 provided: "The immigration of individuals from the black race to Brazil is prohibited."
[22] In the 19th and 20th centuries, there were negative feelings toward the communities of German, Italian, Japanese, and Jewish immigrants, who conserved their languages and cultures instead of adopting Portuguese and Brazilian habits (so that nowadays, Brazil has the most communities in the Americas of Venetian speakers, and the second-most of German), and were seen as particularly likely to form ghettos and to have high rates of endogamy (in Brazil, it is regarded as usual for people of different backgrounds to marry), among other concerns.
The Brazilian magazine O Malho' in its edition of December 5, 1908 issued criticised the Japanese immigrants in the following quote: "The government of São Paulo is stubborn.
[23] In 1941 the Brazilian minister of justice, Francisco Campos, defended the ban on the admission of 400 Japanese immigrants into São Paulo writing: "their despicable standard of living is a brutal competition with the country's worker; their selfishness, their bad faith, their refractory character, make them a huge ethnic and cultural cyst located in the richest regions of Brazil".
[23] Years before World War II, the government of President Getúlio Vargas initiated a process of forced assimilation of people of immigrant origin in Brazil.
The Klan creed was, historian Martin Robin argues, in the mainstream of Protestant Canadian sentiment, for it was based on "Protestantism, separation of Church and State, pure patriotism, restrictive and selective immigration, one national public school, one flag and one language—English.
"[15][28] In World War I, Canadian naturalized citizens of German or Austrian origins were stripped of their right to vote, and tens of thousands of Ukrainians (who were born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) were rounded up and put in internment camps.
Specific nativist antagonisms may and do, vary widely in response to the changing character of minority irritants and the shifting conditions of the day; but through each separate hostility runs the connecting, energizing force of modern nationalism.
While drawing on much broader cultural antipathies and ethnocentric judgments, nativism translates them into zeal to destroy the enemies of a distinctively American way of life.
Nativism became a major issue in the late 1790s, when the Federalist Party expressed its strong opposition to the French Revolution by trying to strictly limit immigration, and stretching the time to 14 years for citizenship.
In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1844, for example, a series of nativist assaults on Roman Catholic churches and community centers resulted in the loss of lives and the professionalization of the police force.
European immigrants from England, Scotland, and Scandinavia favored the Republicans during the Third Party System (1854–1896), while others especially Irish Catholics and Germans, were usually Democratic.
[43] From the 1840s to the 1920s, German Americans were often distrusted because of their separatist social structure, their German-language schools, their attachment to their native tongue over English, and their neutrality during World War I.
[44] In 1917–1918, a wave of nativist sentiment due to American entry into World War I led to the suppression of German cultural activities in the United States, Canada, and Australia.
There was little violence, but many places and streets had their names changed (The city of "Berlin" in Ontario was renamed "Kitchener" after a British hero), churches switched to English for their services, and German Americans were forced to buy war bonds to show their patriotism.
Denis Kearney, an immigrant from Ireland, led a mass movement in San Francisco in the 1870s that incited attacks on the Chinese there and threatened public officials and railroad owners.
[49] In the 1890s–1920s era, nativists and labor unions campaigned for immigration restriction following the waves of workers and families from Southern and Eastern Europe, including the Kingdom of Italy, the Balkans, Congress Poland, Austria-Hungary, and the Russian Empire.
[50] Following World War I, nativists in the 1920s focused their attention on Southern and Eastern Europeans due to their Roman Catholic and Jewish faith, and realigned their beliefs behind racial and religious nativism.
Led by Madison Grant's book, The Passing of the Great Race nativists grew more concerned with the racial purity of the United States.
American nativist sentiment experienced a resurgence in the late 20th century, this time directed at undocumented workers, largely Mexican, resulting in the passage of new penalties against illegal immigration in 1996.
Authors such as Samuel Huntington have also seen recent Hispanic immigration as creating a national identity crisis and presenting insurmountable problems for US social institutions.
In the former, he warned: the very culture of the bulk of the population of these regions will tend to be primarily Latin-American in nature rather than what is inherited from earlier American traditions ... Could it really be that there was so little of merit [in America] that it deserves to be recklessly trashed in favor of a polyglot mix-mash?
[57] By late 2014, the "Tea Party movement" had turned its focus away from economic issues, spending, and Obamacare, and towards President Barack Obama's immigration policies, which it saw as a threat to transform American society.
The New York Times reported: Political scientist and pollster Darrell Bricker, CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs, argues nativism is the root cause of the early 21st century wave of populism.
In his 2016 bid for the presidency, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was accused of introducing nativist themes via his controversial stances on temporarily banning foreign Muslims from six specific countries entering the United States, and erecting a substantial wall between the US-Mexico border to halt illegal immigration.
They debate the role of cultural differences, ghettos, race, Muslim fundamentalism, poor education and poverty play in creating nativism among the hosts and a caste-type underclass, more similar to white-black tensions in the US.
[63] Sociologists Josip Kešić and Jan Willem Duyvendak define nativism as an intense opposition to an internal minority that is portrayed as a threat to the nation because of its different values and priorities.
Many European immigrants became disillusioned by routine threats of assault, numerous attempts at passing legislation calling for the expulsion of foreigners, and the great difficulty in acquiring English citizenship.
