No Stupid Questions

Historically, I'm quite certain that the "small" people (e.g. peasants, and such) had always had incredibly right-wing views, including tribalism (we're better than anyone else, for no reason, we just are), "hard-work" ethics, who doesn't work doesn't deserve to eat, and such.

The landlords couldn't care less about immigration. As long as the immigrants pay their taxes, the landlord is happy. Why would they bother?

It's the peasants who see their land occupied (sothat their own land's relative share decreases) who get furious at the foreigners who take their jobs and eat their food, while also possibly bringing infectious diseases and an inferior way of life.

They have always been anti-immigrant. Gor the longest time they simply tolerated it, but no more.

As for the the statue of liberty, a, it was built by the French not Americans, b, I can also happily say that I pride myself on being a great person, while in truth being a terrible peraon.

When the rich figured out that our innate tribalism could be weaponized to distract us from their abuse, lawlessness, and greed.

Sigmund Freud's work, and those who built upon it after his death, proved humans are very very very very easy on a large sample size to mislead.

Theres even a phrase "you are not immune to propaganda."

The US has always had an anti-immigrant streak. Whoever the last group are they are unhappy with the next group. The Irish were not welcome, except by Tammany Hall, then the Italians were suspect. The Chinese have always been seen as suspicious and we all know what happened to the Japanese in WW2. Interestingly those of German descent haven't been suspect, probably because they formed a large chunk of the US (PA, OH) and Eisenhower had German ancestry.

I doubt any country has never had an issue with someone seen as outsiders.

I mean they blare "brown man make your life bad" 24/7 on state tv

Once we stopped needing cheap labor to build the railroads and mine ore and occupy native lands and farm crops and roof houses and paint walls and run the cash register at the gas station. Actually we still need immigrants for some of that in order to sustain the level of growth required to fund our retirement plans and do the jobs that we would rather not do for wages that we would rather not work for. It looks like Republicans are hoping to fuel that growth internally through reproduction among existing citizens (under the theory that kids will work for lower wages), while the democrats want to rely on immigrants. That's my theory anyway.

A large majority of 'anti-immigrant' people wouldn't care if say, a French person immigrated into their country. When these people say immigrants, most of the time they mean people of color.

Oh we've been fighting about this for centuries

Because their lives are shit and they need somebody to blame.

The right will accept a boot on their face as long as they've got a face on which to rest their own boot.

So it turns out that the Statue of Liberty never represented the opinions of all Americans to begin with

Whenever hate can be used to divide the masses. We must be divided lest we decide that a system that protects unethically gained wealth is unethical, even if it protects ethically gained wealth.

The US is not anti immigrant.

There's a few greedy white people with lots of money who bought the media and the elections who are anti-immigrant.

Don't confuse policy with popular sentiment.

People hated immigrants DURING the time period you're thinking of. And it wasn't always a skin color thing either, the Irish were one of the big targets for a long time.

General population was always anti immigrant but the ruling class was smart enough to understand they needed immigration to sustain the growth. What changed is that everyone got so dumb they don't know what's in their best interest anymore.

Everything can be summarized in one Chinese idiom (成语):
过河拆桥

Aka: Crossing the river, then dismantle the bridge.
You're already crossed it, why care about the bridge, you wont be using it anymore.

Anti-immigrant sentiment is nearly universal across human cultures. It's a form of tribalism/fear of "the other". Just look at the backlash against arab refugees in Germany and Sweden, or the relatively recent tightening of Canada's immigration policy which used to be one of the most liberal in the world, for modern examples. Historic examples are even easier to find.

In general, we see more anti-immigrant sentiment in a country due to (a) the general population feeling insecure for some reason, (b) the perception that immigrants are immigrating faster than they are integrating.

When times are good and people feel secure, they look back at the past and say to themselves "look at how great our society is - we welcome people from all over the world, and now we have korean-mexican fusion. Yay, us!" But then when times get harder and people feel less secure, they say "these goddamned Nigerians keep coming here and taking all our video-editing and corporate accounting jobs! And they chew with their mouths open and have annoying laughs. And on top of that, their food isn't even that good. They're the worst, stop letting them in!"

Immigration is part of the mythologizing of the United States, but that doesn't except it from the great overarching trends of humanity.

The "fuck you, I got mine" mindset aka FYIGM or getting first dibs.

That is, kicking out the ladder or destroying bridges or cutting off reach so that no one else is getting what one has achieved. Like, "I got first, you're getting nothing!"

Within a single generation. My grandfather showed up here at 11 from Romania. Never became a US citizen. His son, my father, is a rabid anti-immigrant racist Fox News fan boy. It's disgusting. Ironically my mother's great-great grandmother lost her birthright citizenship by marrying a Finnish immigrant before the 14th amendment existed and had to reapply for her own citizenship along with her husband because women's status was tied to the male head of household at the time, and now he rants about how birthright citizenship is wrong, despite being the exact person who benefits from it.

America was never accommodating. The only thing immigrants had in common was hating black people.

Here's a wiki article about the topic, because it would be a bit much to list it all out in a lemmy comment:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nativism_in_United_States_politics#History

The TLDR is though that its existed since before the country even became independent.

Its called "ladder pulling".

One way the wealthy and powerful stay that way is by constantly promoting the narrative that it's those poorer than you who are your enemy, not the bosses who starve you both.