Xenophobia in the United States is the fear or hatred of any cultural group in the United States that is perceived as being foreign or strange or un-American. It expresses a conflict between an ingroup and an outgroup and may manifest as suspicion by one of the other's activities, and beliefs and goals. It includes a desire to eliminate their presence, and fear of losing national, ethnic, or racial identity and is often closely linked to racism and discrimination.
This has resulted in discriminatory laws, such as the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, restrictions on immigration policies and other actions including violence.
Anti-Catholic xenophobia During the 18th and 19th centuries, many states in the United States allowed non-citizens to vote. Anti-Irish Catholic sentiment and anti-German Catholic sentiment following the War of 1812 and intensifying again in the 1840s lead many states, particularly in the Northeast, to amend their constitutions to prohibit non-citizens from voting. States that banned non-citizen voting during this time included New Hampshire in 1814, Virginia in 1818, Connecticut in 1819, New Jersey in 1820, Massachusetts in 1822, Vermont in 1828, Pennsylvania in 1838, Delaware in 1831, Tennessee in 1834, Rhode Island in 1842, Illinois in 1848, Ohio and Maryland in 1851, and North Carolina in 1856.
Anti-Italian xenophobia
California gold rush
In the years of 1849 and 1850 Chileans were particularly targeted by Anglos during the California gold rush. Anti-Chilean violence stated in the mines but spread later to the towns and cities.
Hostility toward foreign miners during the Gold Rush was also reflected in discriminatory legislation such as the Foreign Miners' Tax Act of 1850, which imposed fees on non-citizen miners.
The rapid influx of migrants from the United States and abroad made California’s mining regions highly diverse during the Gold Rush, with miners arriving from Latin America, China, Europe, and other regions. This diversity contributed to tensions and frequent conflicts among different groups of miners, as competition for access to gold intensified. Contemporary accounts note that American miners often attempted to exclude foreign miners from productive claims, contributing to patterns of hostility and discrimination in mining areas.
Chinese immigrants who arrived during the Gold Rush also faced discrimination, exclusion, and hostility, including harassment and episodes of violence, and were often confined to abandoned mining claims while being subjected to discriminatory taxation. Chinese immigrants were favored as hired laborers because of their work ethic, which later contributed to a ten-year suspension of Chinese immigration with the passing of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
Know-Nothing Party, 1854-1856 The Know Nothing party was a nativist political party in the mid-1850s. It carried many state and local elections in 1854-1855, but failed to pass major laws and suddenly collapsed.Ray Allen Billington, The Protestant Crusade: 1800-1860 (1938) pp 380-436. online
Know Nothing agitators proclaimed that a "Romanist" conspiracy headed by the Pope in Rome was in control of Catholic immigrants. The goal was to subvert civil and religious liberty and destroy Protestantism. In response it was urgent to politically organize native-born Protestants. The Know Nothing movement emphasized that Irish Catholic priests and bishops would control a large bloc of voters in the Democratic Party.Tyler Anbinder, Nativism and slavery: the northern Know Nothings and the politics of the 1850s (Oxford UP, 1992) pp ix-xiv. Henry Winter Davis, an active Know-Nothing, was elected on the American Party ticket to Congress from Maryland. He told Congress in late 1856 that the un-American Irish Catholic immigrants were to blame for the recent election of Democrat James Buchanan as president, stating:Quoted in James Fairfax McLaughlin, The life and times of John Kelly, tribune of the people (1885) pp 72-73 online The recent election has developed in an aggravated form every evil against which the American party protested. Foreign allies have decided the government of the country -- men naturalized in thousands on the eve of the election. Again in the fierce struggle for supremacy, men have forgotten the ban which the Republic puts on the intrusion of religious influence on the political arena. These influences have brought vast multitudes of foreign-born citizens to the polls, ignorant of American interests, without American feelings, influenced by foreign sympathies, to vote on American affairs; and those votes have, in point of fact, accomplished the present result.
In the South, the party did not emphasize anti-Catholicism but instead attacked corrupt Democratic politicians and filled the vacuum caused by the collapse of the Whig Party. The ideology and influence lasted only one or two years before it disintegrated due to weak and inexperienced elected officials who were unable to pass legislation, and a deep split over the issue of slavery.
Asian targets
Asian xenophobia in the United States has at least 100 years of history.
Anti-Chinese
In the 1870s and 1880s in the Western states, ethnic Whites especially Irish Americans targeted violence against Chinese workers, driving them out of smaller towns. They relocated into districts of a few larger cities called "Chinatowns."Stanford M. Lyman, "Conflict and the web of group affiliation in San Francisco's Chinatown, 1850-1910." Pacific Historical Review (1974): 473-499. Denis Kearney, an immigrant from Ireland, led a mass movement in San Francisco in the 1870s that incited racist attacks on the Chinese there and threatened public officials and railroad owners. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was the first of many nativist acts of Congress which attempted to limit the flow of immigrants into the U.S.. The Chinese responded to it by filing false claims of American birth, enabling thousands of them to immigrate to California.Erika Lee, At America's Gates: Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion Era, 1882–1943 (2003) The exclusion of the Chinese caused the western railroads to begin importing Mexican railroad workers in greater numbers ("traqueros"). In 1943 when China was an ally against Japan, the restrictions were repealed and Chinese could become citizens.Erika Lee, America for Americans (2019) p. 226.
Anti-Japanese
Attacks on the Japanese in the Western U.S., echoing the dreaded Yellow Peril became increasingly xenophobic after the unexpected Japanese triumph over the supposedly powerful Russian Empire in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. In October, 1906, the San Francisco Board of Education passed a regulation whereby children of Japanese descent would be required to attend racially segregated and separate schools. At the time, Japanese immigrants made up 1% of the state's population; many of them had come under the treaty in 1894 which had assured free immigration from Japan. In 1907, nativists rioted up and down the West Coast demanding exclusion of Japanese immigrants and imposition of segregated schools for Caucasian and Japanese students.
The California Alien Land Law of 1913 was specifically created to prevent land ownership among Japanese citizens who were residing in the state of California. In 1918 courts ruled that American-born children had the right to own land. California proceeded to strengthen its Alien land law in 1920 and 1923 and other states followed.Ferguson, Edwin E. 1947. "The California Alien Land Law and the Fourteenth Amendment." California Law Review 35 (1): 61.
According to Gary Y. Okihiro, the Japanese government subsidized Japanese writers in America especially Kiyoshi Kawakami and Yamato Ichihashi to refute the hostile stereotypes and establish a favorable image of Japanese in the American mind. Thus Kawakami's books especially Asia at the Door (1914) and The Real Japanese Question (1921) tried to refute the false accusations. The publicists confronted the main allegations regarding lack of assimilation, and boasted of the positive Japanese contributions to American economy and society, especially in Hawaii and California.Gary Y. Okihiro, The Columbia guide to Asian American history (Columbia University Press, 2001), p. 207.
During World War II, the United States forcibly relocated and interned at least 120,000 people of Japanese descent in 75 identified incarceration sites after Imperial Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 and the United States subsequent declaration of war on Japan.The official WRA record from 1946 states it was 120,000 people. See . Japanese Americans that were 1/16th or less were excluded from being sent to the camps but above that was considered a threat to the United States. This number does not include people held in other camps such as those which were run by the DoJ or the Army. Other sources may give numbers which are slightly more or less than 120,000. Most lived on the Pacific Coast, in internment camps in the western interior of the country. Approximately two-thirds of the inmates were United States citizens. These actions were initiated by president Franklin D. Roosevelt via an executive order shortly after Imperial Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.
Anti-Filipino
Emergency Quota Act
Trump administration
Immigration policy, including illegal immigration to the United States, was a signature issue of President Donald Trump's first presidential campaign, and his proposed reforms and remarks about this issue generated much publicity.Rebecca Hamlin, "Trump’s Immigration Legacy." The Forum 19#1 (2021). Trump has repeatedly said that illegal immigrants are criminals. Critics have argued that there is an increasing amount of evidence that immigration does not correlate with higher crime rates.
A hallmark promise of his campaign was the construction of much expanded Mexico–United States border wall on the United States–Mexico border and to force Mexico to pay for the wall. Trump has also expressed support for a variety of "limits on legal immigration and guest-worker visas",Sahil Kapur, "Reality Check: 4 Reasons Trump's Immigration Plans Are Impractical" , Bloomberg Politics (August 8, 2015). including a pause on granting green cards, which Trump says will lower immigration levels to historical averages."Trump says would raise visa fees to pay for Mexican border wall" , Reuters (August 16, 2015).
As president, Trump imposed a travel ban that prohibited issuing visas to citizens of seven largely-Muslim countries expanded to thirteen in 2020. In response to legal challenges he revised the ban twice, with his third version being upheld by the Supreme Court in June 2018.
He attempted to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, but a legal injunction has allowed the policy to continue while the matter is the subject of legal challenge. He imposed a "zero tolerance" policy to require the arrest of anyone caught illegally crossing the border, which resulted in separating children from their families.
Trump's position was strongly supported by conservative voters. Studies found the higher voters' xenophobia was, the higher was their support for political violence.
Current status A network of more than 300 US-based civil rights and human rights organizations stated in a 2010 report that "Discrimination permeates all aspects of life in the United States, and it extends to all communities of color." Discrimination against racial, ethnic, and religious minorities is widely acknowledged, especially in the case of Indians, Muslims, Sikhs as well as other ethnic groups.