Social fears

Question 1

KU

Answer 1

Many Americans did not like foreigners, they saw them as dirty, unskilled and lacking in English however many worked in poorly paid and unskilled jobs such as sharecroppers this resulted in them being unable to improve their lives.
immigrants were blamed for increasing crime rates.

example of this was on May 5th 1920 Italian immigrants sacco and vanzetti were arrested for an armed robbery and they were found to be anarchists carrying guns. Their lawyer claimed they were elsewhere during the robbery, in reality there was little to no evidence against them however the judge whispered “anarchist bastard” they were later sentenced to death.

Question 2

Analysis

Answer 2

This helped change attitudes towards immigrants as they were blamed for social issues that were burdening american societies such as higher rents and job competition which was bad in the cities.

Question 3

analysis +

Answer 3

However taverns, brothels and gambling houses were also visited by “native born americans” this was a fact ignored by many anti immigration workers.

Question 4

evaluation

Answer 4

Overall this factor is not all that important because settlement workers were better at acknowledging that the poor living conditions, sickness and fear were the true causes of crimes in those areas. Most of the immigrant crimes were for the crimes of poverty such as drunkenness and petty theft

due to these incidents taking place in areas densely populated by immigrants created a stigma thus allowing prejudices surrounding immigration to spread. This shows that racism and prejudice is a more important factor.