Posted by Jim at February 28th, 2006

I was listening to NPR at some point recently (within the last few months anyway) and heard a professor being interviewed who argued that anti-immigrant feeling in US politics could be traced to the economy. Basically, the idea was that people were more nervous about immigrants when the economy was bad or percieved to be bad.

I can’t cite sources, but it sounds right to me.

I remember my sister giving a Christmas gift to a friend of hers in middle school. Her friend’s father worked for a company that made auto parts. This was during the early 1980’s. The US was in a recession and everyone was worried about how the Japanese were dominating the world economy, how much better their educational system was, and how they were buying US companies and landmarks.

The pencils were made in Japan. Her friend’s father broke them.

He still had a job, but he feared the inroads the Japanese were making in the auto industry.

Nativism has played an on-going role in US politics. Apparently it led to support for the temperance movement and prohibition (in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s) because immigrants were percieved to be the ones doing most of the drinking. It’s showed up on an off throughout our history, but in my lifetime people seem to be most worried about immigrants when the economy is bad.

As mentioned earlier I remember the fear of the Japanese economy in 80’s, but I also remember people being highly worked up about illegal immigration from Mexico back then too.

Think about some of the issues people have been worked up about lately: offshoring jobs (to India or wherever), illegal immigration (again), the whole mess with a company from the United Arab Emirates leasing portions of our ports (often reported as buying our ports for some reason), China’s growing economy, the US being educationally behind other countries (again)…

Basically they seem to be different versions of “those foriegners are taking our money.”

I don’t get too worked up about these issues. I remember Japan. They’ve been in an economic slump for the last 10 years or more now and may be coming out of it, but they’re not exactly the economic force they used to be.

I’m not saying we should ignore issues like offshoring or how US educational effectiveness compares to the rest of the world’s, but, I think a sense of perspective helps.