Frame-shifting immigration to central national problems lent anti-immigrant feeling intellectual respectability.

Evidence

In discovering an immigration problem, the social critics of the eighties might not indulge in the characteristically nativist assault on the newcomer as a foreign enemy of the American way of life; they might not speak in the accents of nationalism. But they raised the question of assimilation in a broadly significant way by connecting it with the central issues of the day. They gave intellectual respectability to anti-immigrant feelings. — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 228

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Economic depression abruptly shifted business framing of immigrants from asset to threat — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 414; Southern and western race-feelings diffused nationwide to shape immigration views — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 1033; A new nationalism rechanneled existing race feelings onto immigrant targets — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 1012 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• A new nationalism rechanneled existing race feelings onto immigrant targets #corroborates (0.85) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 1012
• Deindustrialization shifted the immigrant image from temporary worker to permanent cultural outsider #corroborates (0.80) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3152