This
paper explains that John Higham, in his "Strangers in the Land",
states that, although the United States prides itself on being a country open to newcomers and strangers, this diversity has created a great deal of conflict between the peoples who have made up and continue to make up the American nation. The author points out that the very fragility of American identity, given that America is a constructed
nation upon soil that once belonged to an alien, native people, has made the characterization of what is American all the more important and the voices that give rise to
nativism all the more strident. The paper relates that anti-immigrant sentiment was directly linked to unemployment, ultimately resulting in the passage of anti-immigration acts directed against 'others' such as, for example, Chinese immigrants in 1924.
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