by Melissa D. Ing

Created on: August 12, 2008   Last Updated: January 28, 2012

Those poor tired huddled masses that were so welcomed at the beginning of the twentieth century, are not feeling the welcome mat being extended to them anymore. American's have begun to fear immigration and immigrants themselves; in fact this very fear is turning towards hatred to the former huddled masses.

American's fear of immigration has existed since the early 1980's but has only become truly vocalized since the new millennium. Not a day passes without some negative aspect of immigration being mentioned by the newspapers, news stations, and the Internet. Fear mongering has become common place, and if not kept in check this fear of immigration is going to erupt into conflict.

How American's began to fear Immigrants

The reasons why American's fear immigration is varied and deep rooted. The early 1980's saw an end to the free wheeling easy times of the 1970's and American's first began to feel an economic pinch, especially due to all-of-a-sudden rising gas prices. The higher gas prices of course led to a decline in post-war booming lifestyles, and job losses became common. American's had to go and work for lower wages, and the traditional immigrant at the time who was typically paid less than the average American began to be seen as a threat to WASP economic security.

While American's recovered very quickly from the early 1980's and continued to see a boom in construction and manufacturing, leaving immigrants alone for the most part. While there continued to be talk about foreigners taking our jobs' behind closed doors immigrants for the rest of the 1980's were not seen as a great threat again, until the recession of the early 1990's.

The 1990's brought true difficulties to many American families. Job losses, whole sections of industry being lost, corporations admitting to losing entire pension funds sent the US into crises. At the same time, these poor huddled masses still saw America as a far better bet than their homelands and arrived with more regularity, especially when the iron curtain was ripped down.

Trouble was there was little enough employment for many American's and legal immigrants from war torn countries were willing to work for less. Now while American families were being ripped apart by economic crises, the immigrants began to blossom. Hatred began to set in where previously compassion existed especially for immigrants that arrived from former communist countries. That trend continues to this day.

It was during these difficult 1990's that confusion

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