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More than this. If you thought "they took our jobs" was a big rallying cry, wait until it's "they get our UBI". It's possible to resent someone who shows up an
by iguy 7y ago
More than this. If you thought "they took our jobs" was a big rallying cry, wait until it's "they get our UBI".
It's possible to resent someone who shows up and works hard. (Harder than you'd like to, because he's more desperate.) It's much easier to resent someone who shows up and simply collects a slice of your inheritance.
And in addition: The guy who stepped off the boat in 1900 and then spent a few decades working long hours in a factory, spent a lot of time interacting with other people in his new country. It was unavoidable. (Possibly he got drafted, too, another great way to spend time with the locals.) One of the reasons integration is not going so well in Europe is that this is no longer the story.
- yxhuvud 7y agoThe guy that stepped off the boat was probably resented too for a while, until the next big wave of immigration came. At the very least, that happened with the Irish and the Italians.
- iguy 7y agoAbsolutely. The fact that this died down with time is the great miracle of 20th century america, but one we're so used to now that we take it for granted. Plentiful factory jobs are one factor behind this (along with rapidly rising living standards for everyone, shared experience in the army etc, and a few generations with almost no further immigration from back home).
- devonkim 7y agoPrior to WWI Americans typically self-identified among their ancestral lineage like Irish-American, German-American, Italian-American. It took a war and the associated shared trauma and government propaganda machine to start developing a distinct "American" nationality and more unity which developed into a much stronger nativist agenda.