Early hostility to new immigrants was cultural contempt, not nativism

Evidence

That the arrival of the new immigrants in large numbers would generate instant dislike was, therefore, only to be expected. But the initial hostility they suffered consisted almost wholly of the conventional reaction against their culture and appearance. Except perhaps where they were caught up in domestic tensions such as those in the Pennsylvania coal fields, the southern and eastern Kuropeans did not as yet seem a distinctive threat to national unity or survival. Thus the criticism of the Italians and of the Jews—the groups which fared worst in most places—fastened on stereotyped traits, not on imputations of subversive activity or total unassimuilability. — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 391

Categorization

• XREF: Evidence bearing on the reader’s question about whether the ‘enemy’ category passes through stages — here contempt precedes and differs from the assimilation-threat frame that racial nativism later applied. — connects to: 1880s nativism attacked immigrants indiscriminately, not by ethnic type yet. — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 383; Nativism was driven by internal anxieties, not by the immigrants themselves — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 397; Anti-immigrant hostility in the 1880s targeted culture, not subversiveness or unassimilability — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 391 (+8 more)
• ADDENDUM: Parallels the immodesty article’s theme that moral/status disdain for outsiders is a recurring, pre-political register distinct from organized threat-defense.

Broader Connections

• Anti-immigrant hostility in the 1880s targeted culture, not subversiveness or unassimilability #corroborates (0.95) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 391
• The old-new immigration distinction was read backward onto the eighties by later nativists #corroborates (0.85) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 383
• Hostility toward a culture grows from ignorance and fear of its principles #expands (0.85) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 313
• Late-century immigrant resentment was primarily class hatred, not ethnic feeling #qualifies (0.80) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 275
• Early 1900s nativism ranked white immigrant groups into inferior castes. #qualifies (0.80) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 232
• Some immigration-policy shifts stem from general anti-immigration sentiment, not Islamophobia #exemplifies (0.80) — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 585