Tuesday, November 1, 2016

Iowa woman enrobes her nativism with Statue of Liberty reference



Quoted in The immigration divide: Why Iowans love Trump's tough talk.  (Des Moines Register, 10/31/2016)
Downey is drawn to Republican nominee Donald Trump in no small part because of his hard-line stance on immigration. A 78-year-old retiree from Iowa’s energy assistance office, she worries illegal immigrants pose an existential threat to the nation, taking jobs from willing Americans, increasing costs of social service programs and overburdening the health care system

Does Sue want Donald Trump to Make Iowa Whiter Again?  Things don't seem to be going her way.



Why Sue can't sleep at night?



Related reading:
Cycles of Nativism in U.S. History.  (University of Colorado-Boulder)
  • Alien and Sedition Acts (1798)
  • Protestant Crusade (1850s)
  • Chinese Exclusion (1882 culmination)
  • Return of Anti-Catholicism (late 19th century)
  • Americanization campaign (early 20th century)
  • Triumph of Anglo-Saxon Racialism (early 1920s)
  • English-only Movement (late 20th century)
  • California Nativist Trend (1990s)
  • Nativism in the New Millennium

Opinion.  America has always been hostile to immigrants. (Washington Post, 8/27/2015)
You know Lady Liberty’s entreaty to give her “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”? Emma Lazarus penned that sonnet when the United States began implementing strict laws to keep the huddled masses out. A year earlier, in 1882, Congress had passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, the first major immigration law to restrict entry of a specific ethnic group, after complaints that the Chinese were polluting American culture and appropriating American jobs.

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