Immigration In The 1920s Essay

The 1920s was a decade that reshaped American life. The 1920s saw the mass production and consumption of automobiles, household appliances, films, and radio that made a way for a new economy and a new standard for living. However, at the same time, some Americans turned their back on reform, stifled immigration, retreated toward “old time religion,” and sparked millions of new members in the Ku Klux Klan (American Yawp).
Anxiety and suspicions of immigrants and Catholics contributed to a few organizations. None captured the imagination of the country like the Ku Klux Klan (American Yawp). Hiram Evans in “The Klan’s fight for Americanism” says, “There are three of these great racial instincts, vital elements in both the historic and the present
attempts to build an America which shall fulfill the aspirations and justify the heroism of the men who made the nation. These are the instincts of loyalty to the white race, to the traditions of America, and to the spirit of Protestantism, which has been an essential part of Americanism ever since the days of Roanoke and Plymouth Rock. They are condensed into the Klan slogan: "Native, white, Protestant supremacy." Essentially, the Klan protests against all of the ills in modern culture. This includes Blacks, Jews, Catholics, Communist, and labor unions. Evans claims that there has been a moral breakdown because of these immigrants.
Many Americans had anxiety about the changes in the United States.
Americans blamed immigrants from Eastern Europe and Latin America. The changes in the racial character of immigrants led to a continuous agitation of the immigration problem in and out of Congress. There was a steady demand for restrictions on new immigrants from southern and eastern Europe. The U.S. Department of Labor distinguished old immigrants and new immigrants by the part of Europe in which they migrated from. The old immigrants were from northwestern Europe. The new immigrants were from southern and eastern Europe, Latin America, and Asia. In 1921, Congress passed the Emergency Immigration Act. Three years later, they permanently established “country-of-origin quotas through the National Origin Act” (American Yawp). The number of immigrants admitted to the United States could not exceed three percent of the population who had come from that country and resided in the United States in 1890. The act also excluded Asians but temporarily omitted restrictions on Mexican immigrants. Basically, this law made it extremely difficult for any immigrant outside of Northern Europe to enter America legally. This is probably something that the Ku Klux Klan would have agreed with because it seems to only allow white protestant citizens to enter into the United States
legally.