Anti-Catholic nativism peaked after mass Catholic immigration, not before it

Evidence

Before the mid-nineteenth century, when the Catholic population was negligible, anti-Catholicism was driven by ideology rather than demographic realities. After three million Catholics from Ireland and Germany immigrated to the United States between 1846 and 1855, Protestant nativism surged. The additional four million Catholic Italians and two million Poles who immigrated to the United States between 1880 and 1920 bolstered the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 287

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to paragraph 284’s finding that prejudice predated the population — together they show ideology precedes demographics, then demographics amplify it. — connects to: Anti-Catholicism became nativist only when Catholics seemed foreign agents.; Racial nativism supplanted anti-Catholicism because it fit the new immigrant threat — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 567; Nativism can collapse even as the immigrant influx it fears soars — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 644 (+8 more)
• SEED: Article angle: mass immigration amplifies rather than creates prejudice — the sequence across Irish, Italian, and Muslim populations.