Everything can be summarized in one Chinese idiom (成语):
过河拆桥
Aka: Crossing the river, then dismantle the bridge.
You’re already crossed it, why care about the bridge, you wont be using it anymore.
The USA prided itself on a nation of immigrant, heck even the Statue of Liberty says it. When did immigrants (US citizens from the old world) become anti immigrant and why?
Submitted 3 weeks ago by Patnou@lemmy.world to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
Comments
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
ieatpwns@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
They pull up the ladder behind them
ZMoney@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The US as a country does it to the rest of the world too, not just the immigrants.
garbagebagel@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
So like burning your bridges in English? Although I guess that’s more for people. Maybe more like pulling up the ladder behind you.
lemmyng@piefed.ca 3 weeks ago
The English version is "I got mine, fuck you."
Also applies to immigrant minorities who them vote conservative to keep other immigrants out.
NABDad@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I think how generally “burning bridges” is used refers to not leaving yourself a way out. However in this case we’re talking about not leaving others a way in.
TimewornTraveler@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
I love Chinese four letter aphorisms and I’m glad you shared this one but i dont think this really answers the when or the why 😛
eatCasserole@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Perhaps along with de-industrialization; as more labour is outsourced, less labour_ers_ are needed.
hddsx@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
What and the conservative states trying to prosecute people in the Democrat states is 合久必分分？
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
What?
Nah, that phrase more accurately applies to US Civil War.
finitebanjo@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The Chinese have sort of lost their credibility on Politics and History, this last century.
I’m actually less inclined to listen to anything associated with them.
The only proverb I wanna hear out of China is “of the 36 stratagems, fleeing is best.”
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Maybe you wanna hear this:
“上有政策，下有对策”
“When above has policy, below has countermeasures/resistance”;“above” meaning the government from the north, aka Beijing, and “below” means the people in the south, far away from the reaches of Beijing and therefore its policies are harder to be enacted upon. (But the “above” and “below” could also be reference to social status, because the emperor is “above” and us “peasants” are “below”)
One of the best examples of this is the one child policy, anecdodally, my existence is from the direct violation of this policy. I don’t know the whole story my mother and I aren’t really on speaking terms these days, but she told me that she was supposed to get mandatory birth control (aka: sterilization) after giving birth to my older brother, but she lied to the authorities about it then she had another pregnancy (which was me), her hukou was in the village where she was born in, so she went into the city, and PRC isn’t actually that centralized btw, they delegated a lot of law enforcement to the local government and I think because either jurisdictional issues or because the city has too many people and its easier to blend in, and therefore harder to find people, the government never found her and so I was born. (My mom said they weren’t allowed to “terminate” me after my birth already happened) In the end, my parents only had to pay a fine, so I get to live. So that’s one example of people just disobeying the government. (Honestly, I’m not entirely sure if I enjoy being alive, my parents are kind shitty and abusive, I much rather be reincarnated in Norway or something, but… oh well… life doesn’t let you choose 🤷♂️)
Or you know, the “great firewall” policy and VPNs as countermeasures against censorship. (I’m living in the US right now, so their firewall doesn’t affect me lolz)
frustrated_phagocytosis@fedia.io 3 weeks ago
Within a single generation. My grandfather showed up here at 11 from Romania. Never became a US citizen. His son, my father, is a rabid anti-immigrant racist Fox News fan boy. It's disgusting. Ironically my mother's great-great grandmother lost her birthright citizenship by marrying a Finnish immigrant before the 14th amendment existed and had to reapply for her own citizenship along with her husband because women's status was tied to the male head of household at the time, and now he rants about how birthright citizenship is wrong, despite being the exact person who benefits from it.
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
His son, my father, is a rabid anti-immigrant racist Fox News fan boy.
Ding!
Ask not for whom the right-wing propaganda tolls, rest-of-the-world, it tolls for thee
blarghly@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Anti-immigrant sentiment is nearly universal across human cultures. It’s a form of tribalism/fear of “the other”. Just look at the backlash against arab refugees in Germany and Sweden, or the relatively recent tightening of Canada’s immigration policy which used to be one of the most liberal in the world, for modern examples. Historic examples are even easier to find.
In general, we see more anti-immigrant sentiment in a country due to (a) the general population feeling insecure for some reason, (b) the perception that immigrants are immigrating faster than they are integrating.
When times are good and people feel secure, they look back at the past and say to themselves “look at how great our society is - we welcome people from all over the world, and now we have korean-mexican fusion. Yay, us!” But then when times get harder and people feel less secure, they say “these goddamned Nigerians keep coming here and taking all our video-editing and corporate accounting jobs! And they chew with their mouths open and have annoying laughs. And on top of that, their food isn’t even that good. They’re the worst, stop letting them in!”
Immigration is part of the mythologizing of the United States, but that doesn’t except it from the great overarching trends of humanity.
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
More broadly, it’s all Tribalism.
You’ll see it at many levels, not only towards the “outsiders” in nation terms (and examples are not only the anti-immigrant discourse but also in the discourse mainly blaming a country’s problems on some “foreign power” or other, in both cases as insiders didn’t have vastly more power than such outsiders) but also at various other tribal levels (race, political party, region, city and even town in so-called “small town” environments).
The human tendency from Tribalism will turn even otherwise “good people” (but not very competent when it comes to introspection or having a strong keen sense of what is Just) into mindless “us vs them” drones who are easy to manipulate into blaming outsiders for the outcomes of the actions of insiders.
0_o7@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
There it is again. West does next level horrible shit in a scale never seen before.
“But everyone does the same thing”
-Some guy trying to minimize their atrocities.
There’s a difference between few people being racist to a group of immigrants and a systematic racism being the norm through the generations lasting a century shifting through a different target each time.
Have some humility. Geez.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
“But everyone does the same thing”
Literally everyone does the same thing. Even if you look at the other side of the world, China, Japan and Korea are some of the most anti-immigrant places on the entire world. It’s not just a “western” thing.
QuarterSwede@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
That’s quite insightful.
Blackmist@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
Because they’re lives are shit and they need somebody to blame.
The right will accept a boot on their face as long as they’ve got a face on which to rest their own boot.
CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
Here’s a wiki article about the topic, because it would be a bit much to list it all out in a lemmy comment: en.wikipedia.org/…/Nativism_in_United_States_poli…
quick_snail@feddit.nl 3 weeks ago
The US is not anti immigrant.
There’s a few greedy white people with lots of money who bought the media and the elections who are anti-immigrant.
Don’t confuse policy with popular sentiment.
ameancow@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The vast majority of people who lean right are not individually as hateful as youtube and social media and most of the content algorithmically fed to us would have us believe.
Do they say horrible things around each other? Yes, they ramp up the rhetoric and make it seem like they’re absolute super-villains at times… but we really miss in all this is how shallow their values are. They are not complicated people. They go with the popular sentiment but are so comfortable living in a state of cognitive disonance that they will work all day with a team of black and hispanic coworkers, get along great, consider them true, best friends… then go home and upvote the most racist shit you’ve ever seen on facebook because it makes them laugh. They simply cannot make comparisons the way the other ~66% of the population does, so they don’t see things like hypocrisy or inconsistency. They don’t see larger pictures. They don’t understand the concept of punching down.
As a group, they are our country’s biggest problem, a menage, a scourge upon the Earth who are enabling the worst, most malicious people to engage in plans of oppression we haven’t seen in a century.
But as individuals, we could reach almost each of them. They’re stupid enough to believe whatever we tell them and we’re afraid of them. The math is broken.
We have to get more social, we have to get more confrontational, we have to get less isolated.
I will get some rando lefties screaming at me that they don’t want to “compromise with their oppressors” and that’s fine. Don’t. I’m not making you personally, and if you get that insinuation that I’m telling you personally to do something traumatic, you’re part of the problem. For everyone else, I’ve changed the hearts of people with apparently “set in” bigotry simply by listening and talking to them. It’s not jedi mind magic, it’s just a skill that comes from engaging with people in real life.
CH3DD4R_G0BL1N@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
I get what you’re going for, but it’s hard to believe that when said billionaires’ propaganda campaign was so easily and eagerly adopted by the majority of one of our political party bases. Including some of our own family members who had never openly expressed such sentiments before.
Propaganda is powerful, but can it make you suddenly, deeply believe something you weren’t already secretly feeling?
Doomsider@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
That is pretty much the point of propaganda. It takes advantage of people’s psychology to manipulate them.
lemmyknow@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
Maybe. Fictional stories can make you feel things, even though these stories aren’t real. Just look at (fiction) movies, tv shows, books. If people can watch scary movies and get scared of fiction, maybe people can be made to be scared of other, real life people. Or worried, or whatever. Especially if maybe one doesn’t know or doesn’t have experience enough on the matter at hand.
caltex777@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
There are a few greedy people who figure out that no one will notice them picking folks pockets if they distract them with racism.
Jack_Burton@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
Lyndon B. Johnson
SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The US has always had an anti-immigrant streak. Whoever the last group are they are unhappy with the next group. The Irish were not welcome, except by Tammany Hall, then the Italians were suspect. The Chinese have always been seen as suspicious and we all know what happened to the Japanese in WW2. Interestingly those of German descent haven’t been suspect, probably because they formed a large chunk of the US (PA, OH) and Eisenhower had German ancestry.
I doubt any country has never had an issue with someone seen as outsiders.
Yaky@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
DOJ did denaturalize many members of the German American Bund due to their ties with the Nazi party.
Source: You Are Not American by Amanda Frost, great book.
DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 3 weeks ago
It’s just super wrong all around.
ohiomemory.ohiohistory.org/archives/3673
Because Google sucks now that’s the best source you’re getting but people should at least be aware that the point of calling them “Huns” was like excluding Irish, Italians, Slavs, and Spaniards from “whiteness,” a racial slur ultimately accusing them of having non-white ancestors.
Because racists are very stupid, the fact that the Anglo-Saxon conquests happened after the Hunnic conquests of what would become Germany and most of Europe for that matter never seemed to be worth thinking about.
flop_leash_973@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Its called “ladder pulling”.
ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 3 weeks ago
General population was always anti immigrant but the ruling class was smart enough to understand they needed immigration to sustain the growth. What changed is that everyone got so dumb they don’t know what’s in their best interest anymore.
TheFlopster@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Mostly personal opinion incoming, with a few facts mixed in: I think the message on the Statue of Liberty was what the best of us at the time wanted the majority of us to be. I’m not sure we ever were.
First we get the Puritans, wiping out Native Americans, and trying to push their religion on everyone.
Then you get the slave trade, which is not immigration, but a large influx of a new population regardless, that was suddenly a problem for some when those people were free and citizens.
Then you get the Ellis Island years. Immigrants would get here, get sucked into “the American dream” of capitalism (which can help only very specific people), then want to close the door behind them. That way none of the new, filthy immigrants from (insert ethnic/religious group of your choice) could get the same advantages. But everyone kept coming.
Now, in power due to the way everything got handled (badly) after our civil war, you have a combination of the religious right, who want christianity to continue to be number one, and the racists, who want to make sure their daughter doesn’t sleep with anyone who’s the wrong color. They were always here, festering in the background, but now they’ve gained power, and they’re louder than before.
The rest of us are still here, suffering, watching the country we were told was great reveal its ugliest population to everyone. I’m left wondering if we were ever a country who actually wanted immigrants. Or if it was merely aspirational.
hungryphrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
A large majority of ‘anti-immigrant’ people wouldn’t care if say, a French person immigrated into their country. When these people say immigrants, most of the time they mean people of color.
GladiusB@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yes. It’s a polite way of being racist with most. And if they are asked, they say “I can’t be racist [so and so] is my friend and they are black” or some dumb shit.
Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
One way the wealthy and powerful stay that way is by constantly promoting the narrative that it’s those poorer than you who are your enemy, not the bosses who starve you both.
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
There are two ways to deal with one’s position in the Social Ladder: one can either concentrate one’s efforts in climbing up or one can concentrate one’s efforts into keeping the ones below down.
IMHO, the US used to have mainly the former, but not anymore, whilst the UK (at least by the time I got there, in the 00s) has mostly the latter (and judging by this traditional idea that “people should know their place”, it has been so for a long time).
FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yeah, sorry OP.
Racism has always and will always be a part of America’s identity. I’d go so far as to say I think it’s part of human nature, given how pervasive and common it’s been throughout all of human history.
devolution@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
America was never accommodating.
GnerphBaht@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
And the Irish.
devolution@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
And how do you think the Irish became accepted?
lechekaflan@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The “fuck you, I got mine” mindset aka FYIGM or getting first dibs.
That is, kicking out the ladder or destroying bridges or cutting off reach so that no one else is getting what one has achieved. Like, “I got first, you’re getting nothing!”
SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The Unites States was founded by religious extremists who were pressured to leave their community because of their extremist Christian beleifs.
Until we force wealth equality people in the US will not be equal.
Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
As soon as they settled down and thought, now they have got something to loose.
InfiniteHench@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
When the rich figured out that our innate tribalism could be weaponized to distract us from their abuse, lawlessness, and greed.
Steve@communick.news 3 weeks ago
Blaming immigrants is classic political trope.
Right along with blaming the poor.Even when the nation was welcoming immigrants, handing them a weapon, and shoving them to the front line. They were being denigrated and demonized by other Americans.
slazer2au@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
When immigrants from the “wrong” country started applying.
What is the wrong country? What ever the media says it currently is.
finitebanjo@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Sigmund Freud’s work proved humans are very very very very easy on a large sample size to mislead.
Theres even a phrase “you are not immune to propaganda.”
ChetManly@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I mean they blare “brown man make your life bad” 24/7 on state tv
switcheroo@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
When stupid and hateful took over all three branches of government and runs unopposed…
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
See the 1947 US Army video: “Don’t be a Sucker”:
archive.org/details/DontBeaS1947
It’s always been a hypocritical ideal. Even the US Army acknowledged our xenophobic tendencies, and the constant struggle against them. That’s the point.
…But I think the radical shift of the “attention economy” is what makes it feel like the ideal is finally collapsing. The population is sucked into doomscrolling Fox News (for example) at such scale that makes this US Army video feel quant. If they did the same thing today, no one would even notice.
OccamsRazer@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Once we stopped needing cheap labor to build the railroads and mine ore and occupy native lands and farm crops and roof houses and paint walls and run the cash register at the gas station. Actually we still need immigrants for some of that in order to sustain the level of growth required to fund our retirement plans and do the jobs that we would rather not do for wages that we would rather not work for. It looks like Republicans are hoping to fuel that growth internally through reproduction among existing citizens (under the theory that kids will work for lower wages), while the democrats want to rely on immigrants. That’s my theory anyway.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
The interesting thing is that the US economy (in fact, even the economy worldwide) is probably gonna face a steep decline in demand of human labor in the next few decades.
The reasons include the limits to growth (i.e. the economy can’t grow anymore due to natural constraints, but growth is what causes the majority of demand for human labor) and automation and AI.
Having a higher number of people in the country when there’s a low demand for human labor (a.k.a. few jobs) means higher unemployment numbers, and that in turn is more expensive for the country, because the people still need resources so the country has to pay out unemployment money if it wants to avoid revolts. Now, companies face higher taxation, and everyone is worse off. If people make fewer children today and there’s less immigration, both companies and citizens will be better off in 20 years from now, because they face lower unemployment rates. This insight is relatively new (because until now, supply of human labor was the constraining factor for economic growth), but interesting.
count_dongulus@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Anti-immigrant sentiment in the US has been a thing for hundreds of years. Consider watching Scorcese’s “Gangs of New York” for a (fictionally dramatized) depiction of it in times past.
As for why mass deportations are possible today - - until the late 1800s, immigration to the US was essentially unregulated. The Chinese Exclusion Act and later systems of quotas and literacy tests introduced around the turn of the 20th century instituted the first national immigration policies.
I frankly don’t find it unfair or unreasonable that the US government’s executive branch has chosen to enforce existing immigration laws for political gain. Americans should change their immigration laws if they get upset when they’re actually enforced. If anything, the executive branch was utterly failing to enforce laws that representatives had placed and kept on the books for a long time. If you want more immigrants, make it easy and legal to receive more immigrants without tests, long wait periods, or country of origin quotas.
Doomsider@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
You don’t care that this administration is using immigration law to drive a wedge in society and needlessly ruin people’s lives?
You think it is fair and reasonable because the law as written was not universally enforced according to X interpretation?
If the government decides to apply some random law that was never enforced in that way before to ruin your life to get extra votes than that is just okay. Sounds pretty corrupt to me.
Perhaps you misspoke, or perhaps your just some lawful evil motherfucker.
sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 3 weeks ago
Owner class wants cheap slaves... But they don't want to be blamed for it.
So they got Indigenous population to blame the slaves while they exploit both.
Indigenous Americans are just useful idiots fighting culture wars. They should know better but propaganda be good!
captainlezbian@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Oh we’ve been fighting about this for centuries
the_q@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Lead and propaganda.
False@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
People hated immigrants DURING the time period you’re thinking of. And it wasn’t always a skin color thing either, the Irish were one of the big targets for a long time.
jqubed@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Italians were also targeted. Being from a Catholic country was sometimes enough to get targeted. Always found it funny (Woody Allen marriage funny, not Woody Allen film funny) that the Protestants who came to what is now Massachusetts seeking “religious freedom” meant it only for themselves and drove out anyone who didn’t subscribe to their views.
Plebcouncilman@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
You need to put it in context, many if not most of the denominations that came to America seeking religious freedom did so because continental Christians considered them extremists. So yes, they were seeking it only for themselves.
floo@retrolemmy.com 3 weeks ago
The term “black Irish” didn’t come from nowhere
obinice@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
That’s a term? What’s it mean, besides identifying someone as black and Irish? O.o
Skullgrid@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Irish and Italians were not considered white, so … it’s still a “where is the migration from” kinda thing
Hideakikarate@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
There was a reason businesses would put a sign out front that said “NINA”. No Irish Need Apply.
ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
It was always racism at it’s core.
European immigrants accepted immigrants as long as they were other European immigrants. At the same time they were encouraging immigrants, they were systematically eliminating the original inhabitants or forcing them to assimilate to European culture.
It’s always been a variation of white nationalism … they don’t mind the world becoming more open and inclusive … as long as it only includes other white European people and cultures.
protist@mander.xyz 3 weeks ago
This is just not the case. Read again
aesthelete@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The concept of the white “race” was created by the acceptance of new nationalities into the fold in America and then dividing “us vs them” in a new way.
It’s much the same way that we now have “Judeo-Christianity” so that we can draw the line between white people religion and everyone else.