Earlier waves of Southern and Eastern European immigration dwarfed and contested Anglo demographics

Evidence

Two waves of mass immigration between the mid-nineteenth century and the early twentieth century triggered a White nativist backlash similar to today’s xenophobia against Latinos, Muslims, and Asian immigrants. Between 1830 and 1930, approximately 38 million immigrants came to the United States. Nearly 16 million of them arrived between 1900 and 1930. In 1920, immigrants and their children made up 76 percent of New York’s population, 72 percent of Chicago’s, and 69 percent of Cleveland’s. This major influx of immigrants was composed primarily of Eastern European Jews, Irish Catholics, and Italian Catholics. By the second decade of the twentieth century, Southern and Eastern Europeans were immigrating at twice the number of the “English speaking races.” — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 228

Categorization

• XREF: The demographic-tipping-frame (immigrants outnumbering ‘English speaking races’) directly mirrors the modern ‘great replacement’ rhetoric the book discusses elsewhere.