Doubt about open mobility led Americans to scrutinize immigrants

Evidence

It was an article of faith that this land of opportunity had leveled all the barriers to individual mobility; and the corollary that a completely free society was an unshakable one appeared hardly less certain. Sheathed in the conviction, public complacency rode out the troubles of the 1870’s. But on a few sensitive minds the stresses of the decade left unhealed scars, and by the early eighties voices of doubt were beginning to be heard. Were classes congealing, and did this sharpening alignment portend a relapse into the internal strife of Europe? Were American horizons really and permanently open, or were they contracting? Some who wondered took the first long, hard, new look at the immigrants. — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 213

Categorization

• XREF: Directly serves reader’s research on how manufactured-enemy solidarity forms when the ideological foundation (open frontier/no class cleavage) erodes — matches Turner thesis and the closed-frontier mechanism. — connects to: In America everyone is an immigrant, but some forget it while others never can — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 645; Rising U.S. immigration opposition tracked culture, not economic conditions — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 540; Anti-Asian suspicion targeted American-born citizens more than immigrants — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 287 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Each immigrant wave faced stigmatization as an un-American threat #expands (0.80) — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 40
• In America everyone is an immigrant, but some forget it while others never can #expands (0.75) — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 645
• Anti-Asian suspicion targeted American-born citizens more than immigrants #complicates (0.75) — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 287
• Rising U.S. immigration opposition tracked culture, not economic conditions #expands (0.70) — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 540