Italian and American identities in which the immigrants established equilibrium between Italy and America. (American Identity Explorer, CD-ROM)As with all immigrant groups, both Jewish and Italian immigrants were faced with mixed reactions from Americans regarding their place in American society. In accordance with historical reactions to immigrants, many Americans stereotyped immigrant groups as lazy, dirty, loud, uncouth, strange in ways of religion, mentally incompetent, and unable to assimilate into American society. A lot of strong viewpoints were expressed against immigration and immigrants in general which caused problems for generations that descended from immigrants, but they were American born. With regard to immigration restriction and the preservation of the Nordic race, Prescott Hall laments that the United States’ power to regulate the number of immigrants was an excellent opportunity “to exercise artificial selection on an enormous scale.” (Hall, 1906) Americans who were afraid that the large influx of immigrants would somehow “taint” the American race accepted this argument. Despite the great number of tribulations immigrant groups endured, the end result was a nation of eclectic cultures and diverse ethnicities. Immigration has changed the definition of what it means to be an American by contributing such a vast background of origins and ways of living. Who today can say that he or she is American without taking into account numbers of ancestors that had immigrated to America? The only true native of America is the Native American Indian. Almost all the rest of Americans come from groups of people emigrating their own lands in search of better living in the New World. The experience of the immigrant is truly a valuable lesson to be learned in that it is a tool to understanding the history of the United States as well as the cyclical nature of reactions to groups different from ...
