The Nativist versus Immigrationist argument is very complicated and controversial. There are so many different ideas and thoughts circulating these days, it is hard to classify yourself as one or the other. Nativists are people who do not support immigration, and Immigrationists are people who do. Those are both extremes, and there is a lot of gray area in between the two. In this paper I will be explaining to you both sides of the argument, how things have changed over time, and then I will share with you my own opinion on the issue.

One side of the immigration argument is Nativism. The first Nativists were Americans back in the 1900’s that started to grow anxious when such large numbers of foreigners arrived in this country (Nativist Packet, Page 1). Most of the immigrants that arrived in America did not know how to speak English and they brought along their own religions and beliefs. This worried many Americans and caused them to wonder how we would adapt to all the changes and if our society would be weakened by these new travelers (Nativist Packet, Page 1).

Nativists believe that immigrants are not good for America and we should not allow unrestricted immigration. Some anti-immigration arguments that Nativists have are:

• Immigrants isolate themselves in their own communities and refuse to learn the local language
• Immigrants take jobs that otherwise would have been available to native citizens
• Immigrants increase the use of limited resources
• They may cause overpopulation
• Immigrants sometimes swamp a native population and replace its culture with their own
• Their skills are sometimes needed in their country of origin
• It leads to more housing needed; therefore countryside is being torn up and built on

Many Nativists also blame immigration for problems like unemployment, crime, harm to the environment, and weakening public education. One excerpt from Our Country, by Rev. Josiah Strong (1885) reads:

“…immigration not only furnishes the greater portion of our criminals, it is also seriously affecting the morals of the native population. It is disease and not health which is contagious.”

On the other side of the argument, there are the Immigrationists. Immigrationists are the people that support immigration and believe that it is a good thing for our country. They are the people who started to defend the immigrants after the Nativists began to protest against them. They also have an argument, and many counter-arguments against the Nativists. Some of them are:

• Immigrants take the boring and low paying jobs that most natives would not want anyways
• Immigrants are good people in search of a better life
• People have the right to live in whatever country they want to
• Immigrants don’t cause more crime; there would still be crime even if they weren’t here
• Immigrants own many small businesses

The Nativist versus Immigrationist argument has not changed much since the 1900’s. The Nativists believed that immigrants were isolating themselves and that they didn’t belong here, and they still believe that now. The Immigrationist argument hasn’t changed much either, but does from time to time as Nativists come up with new things to blame on the immigrants. There have always been many degrees of Nativism and Immigrationism, so that has not changed either. I think that most Nativists still do not believe in immigration, but some of them have realized that it is more beneficial to compromise than to argue.

I am neither a Nativist nor an Immigrationist, I fit in somewhere in between. I believe that immigration should be controlled, but I do not think that immigrants are a bad. There is a point where it gets to be a “too much a good thing” situation. Immigration is a good because it brings in diversity and workers, but when there are too many immigrants, you are faced with huge numbers of cultural groups who isolate themselves and natives who are jobless. I think that if the number of immigrants had controlled from the very start, we would not be having a problem in today’s world. In order to control the number of immigrants, we do not have to discriminate against a certain country or ethnicity, we simply should say that “first come first serve” and whoever immigrates here first, will be allowed to live here. At the start of each year they could come up with a number, based on availability of resources and population, and that would be the allowed number of immigrants for that year. All in all, immigration is a valuable and beneficial thing, but like anything else, it has to be controlled in order to remain useful.