RESEARCH STARTER

Stigmatization against immigrants

Stigmatization against immigrants refers to the negative labeling and discrimination faced by foreign individuals seeking entry or residence in a new country, particularly in the United States. This phenomenon is often rooted in societal fears, such as concerns over cultural change, national security, or perceived moral inadequacies. Historically, various immigrant groups, including the Irish, Italians, and Asians, have been subjected to derogatory stereotypes and legal restrictions based on their race, religion, or political affiliations. These discriminatory attitudes have manifested in legislative acts, such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, and in violent incidents driven by xenophobia.

Fear of "undesirable" immigrants has led to significant prejudice, particularly during periods of social upheaval, as evidenced by the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and the discrimination faced by Middle Eastern individuals post-9/11. Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated stigmas against Asian communities, fueled by misinformation and scapegoating. Despite these challenges, immigrants often demonstrate resilience and contribute positively to society, achieving economic success and overall well-being at rates that can exceed those of native-born citizens. Understanding the dynamics of stigmatization against immigrants highlights the ongoing need for cultural sensitivity and the importance of addressing harmful stereotypes.

Full Article

DEFINITION: The judging of foreign immigrants to be unsuitable for admission to the United States because of their presumed low morals, poor health, objectionable political or religious views, or other reasons 

SIGNIFICANCE: An essential irony of US immigration history has been the propensity of Americans to stigmatize members of certain groups and categories. Although the types of immigrants who have been denigrated have changed from era to era, a fundamental cause for their stigmatization has generally been some form of fear, such as fear of loss of hegemony by the majority groups, fear of cultural change, or fear of criminal behavior. 


Discrimination against immigrants has traditionally been leveled against a wide range of groups for an equally wide range of reasons, with race and religion perhaps prompting its most frequent application. From the days of the early republic through the early twentieth century, French, German, Irish, and Italian immigrants were often stigmatized in part because many of them were Roman Catholics.  

Discrimination against immigrants rooted in racial prejudice has a long legal history in the United States as well. Through much of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, various laws prohibited or severely restricted immigration from eastern and Southern Europe and non-European countries. Anti-Chinese sentiment was especially vitriolic, resulting in such discriminatory legislation as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which all but ended immigration from China for decades, and such atrocities as the 1887 massacre of nearly three dozen Chinese workers at Snake River, Oregon. The perception of non-Whites as “undesirables” also led to some of the most shameful court cases in American history, such as Ozawa v. United States (1922), in which Japanese people were declared not to be “White” and thus to be ineligible for citizenship, and United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind (1923), in which a World War I veteran of Punjabi origin was denied US citizenship because people from the Indian subcontinent were judged to be neither “White” nor “Caucasian.” 

Beyond Race and Religion

Numerous other factors have led certain groups of immigrants to be tagged as undesirable in the United States. One of the most obvious is the fear of political subversion or sabotage. The first instance of such a fear resulting in legislation happened early in the republic, when tensions between the United States and France moved legislators to pass the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, which allowed authorities to deport noncitizens who were deemed threats to the government. 

Similar worries of officials and the public led to discrimination against Germans during both World War I and World War II. During the latter conflict, the state of Minnesota passed a law forbidding the German language from being spoken. However, the most glaring example of fear causing an immigrant population to be seen as “undesirable” because of the perception that they threatened national security was the internment of more than 100,000 Japanese Americans during World War II (1939-45). 

Fear of political subversion spread in the aftermath of President William McKinley’s assassination in 1901 by a Polish American anarchist. That same fear, refocused on communists, increased after World War II during the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. During the early twenty-first century, in the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001, fear of subversion by Islamic militants surged, resulting in acts of prejudice against noncitizens and citizens of Middle Eastern descent. 

After race, religion, and political persuasion, perhaps the most prominent force that creates circumstances in which members of nonnative-born groups come to be perceived as “undesirable” is fear of submersion. In these instances, Americans who see themselves as “mainstream” or “typical” fear the loss of their way of life because of a large influx of immigrants with cultures and folk-ways different from theirs. For example, Irish and Italian people had been present in small numbers before the American Revolution, but xenophobic attitudes toward them as groups did not emerge on a large scale until large waves of immigration came, first the Irish during the Great Irish Famine during the mid-nineteenth century and then when similar economic disasters befell Italy in the latter half of the century. Only after these groups appeared in great numbers did anti-Irish and anti-Italian rhetoric appear and violence occur, such as the notorious signs reading “No Irish Need Apply” in windows of businesses, and the slaying of eleven Italian Americans in the streets of New Orleans in 1890 because of their suspected but unproven connection to the killing of a local police chief. Likewise, much xenophobic propaganda about Latinos stresses the large number of recent immigrants and feeds on the fear that “Anglo” culture will be subsumed and English will be replaced by Spanish.  

During the COVID-19 pandemic in late 2019 and 2020, those of Asian descent faced increased discrimination and hate crimes in the United States. Studies indicate that some Americans viewed Asian Americans as foreigners and falsely accused them of spreading disease. The physical and emotional well-being of many was severely affected. This damaging rhetoric was supported by some who were racist and misinformed about people of Asian descent and their connection to public health and disease. In 2020, President Trump issued a proclamation that attempted to restrict students and researchers from China from immigrating to the United States. This stigma against Asians and Asian Americans also exposed the power of social media in perpetuating modern stereotypes and spreading misinformation. 

Ironically, data shows that naturalized immigrants and their second-generation children in countries such as the United States and Canada are more likely to achieve higher rates of economic success than native-born citizens. These outcomes are common to all immigrant nationalities, genders, and historical eras. Immigrants are more prone to good health and also less likely to experience divorce or revert to poverty compared with those born in the United States. These characteristics of immigrants, termed "the immigrant advantage," may themselves be a cause for native-born animosities which lend to negative stereotypes and caricatures. 

An ethnic group may be the subject of positive stereotyping. In the 2020s, such sentiments pre-supposed that those of Asian ancestry were uncommonly disciplined and proficient in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematic (STEM) subjects. Though not outwardly negative, this type of messaging is subject to the whims of other social groups. These other social groups may later find it convenient to negatively alter a stereotype for self-beneficial purposes. A prime example is the spike in violence that occurred against people of Asian descent in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic.   

During the 2024 presidential election campaign, Republican candidate Donald Trump ran on a platform whose policies were decidedly anti-immigrant. Referring to a trend where large numbers of Chinese citizens were seeking entry through the United States' southern border, Trump stereotyped these Chinese people as "spies" and as members of "an army" seeking to wage war on the United States. Asian advocacy groups again noted the negative impacts such stereotyped messaging had on their communities. 

In June 2025, the US government issued Proclamation 10949, which suspends or restricts immigration and visa issuance for nationals of 19 countries—citing national-security and public-safety concerns as justification. This policy demonstrates how the framing of immigrants and foreigners in terms of “security threat” can recast entire national or ethnic groups as “undesirable.” In this way, legal and administrative measures echo past patterns of exclusion and stigma—showing that the discourse around “undesirable aliens” continues to shape US immigration policy into the twenty-first century.


Bibliography

Anderson, Stuart. “Inside Trump’s Immigration Order To Restrict Chinese Students.” Forbes, 1 June 2020, www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2020/06/01/inside-trumps-immigration-order-to-restrict-chinese-students/?sh=2f3c9b683bec. Accessed 13 Mar. 2023.

“Anti-Asian Stigma: A Study on COVID-19's Detrimental Effects on Asian Americans.” American Psychological Association, 3 May 2022, www.apa.org/pubs/highlights/spotlight/issue-238. Accessed 13 Mar. 2023.

Bernard, William S., et al., editors. American Immigration Policy: A Reappraisal. 1950. Kennikat Press, 1969.

Curran, Thomas J. Xenophobia and Immigration, 1820–1930. Twayne Publishers, 1975.

Dalla, Rochelle L., et al., editors. Strengths and Challenges of New Immigrant Families: Implications for Research, Education, Policy, and Service. Lexington Books, 2009.

Daniels, Roger. Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life. 2nd ed., HarperCollins, 2002.

Giridharadas, Anand. "The Immigrant Advantage." New York Times, 24 May 2014, www.nytimes.com/2014/05/25/opinion/sunday/the-immigrant-advantage.html. Accessed 19 Sept. 2024. 

Oyen, Meredith. "The Perils of Vilifying Chinese Migrants." Time, 13 Aug. 2024, time.com/6989755/chinese-migration-rhetoric-peril. Accessed 19 Sept. 2024.

"Proclamation on Restricting the Entry of Foreign Nationals to Protect the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats". The White House, 5 June 2025, https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/06/restricting-the-entry-of-foreign-nationals-to-protect-the-united-states-from-foreign-terrorists-and-other-national-security-and-public-safety-threats/?. Accessed 4 Dec. 2025.

"Trump Suggests Chinese Migrants Came to U.S. to Build an ‘Army.’ Migrants Share the Actual Reasons They Came." The Associated Press, 13 May 2024, www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/trump-suggests-chinese-migrants-came-us-build-army-migrants-share-actu-rcna152033. Accessed 19 Sept. 2024. 

Vellos, Diana. “Immigrant Latina Domestic Workers and Sexual Harassment.” Journal of Gender and the Law, vol. 5, no. 2, 1997, pp. 407–32, digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/jgspl/vol5/iss2/4/. Accessed 18 Oct. 2016.

Full Article

DEFINITION: The judging of foreign immigrants to be unsuitable for admission to the United States because of their presumed low morals, poor health, objectionable political or religious views, or other reasons 

SIGNIFICANCE: An essential irony of US immigration history has been the propensity of Americans to stigmatize members of certain groups and categories. Although the types of immigrants who have been denigrated have changed from era to era, a fundamental cause for their stigmatization has generally been some form of fear, such as fear of loss of hegemony by the majority groups, fear of cultural change, or fear of criminal behavior. 


Discrimination against immigrants has traditionally been leveled against a wide range of groups for an equally wide range of reasons, with race and religion perhaps prompting its most frequent application. From the days of the early republic through the early twentieth century, French, German, Irish, and Italian immigrants were often stigmatized in part because many of them were Roman Catholics.  

Discrimination against immigrants rooted in racial prejudice has a long legal history in the United States as well. Through much of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, various laws prohibited or severely restricted immigration from eastern and Southern Europe and non-European countries. Anti-Chinese sentiment was especially vitriolic, resulting in such discriminatory legislation as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which all but ended immigration from China for decades, and such atrocities as the 1887 massacre of nearly three dozen Chinese workers at Snake River, Oregon. The perception of non-Whites as “undesirables” also led to some of the most shameful court cases in American history, such as Ozawa v. United States (1922), in which Japanese people were declared not to be “White” and thus to be ineligible for citizenship, and United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind (1923), in which a World War I veteran of Punjabi origin was denied US citizenship because people from the Indian subcontinent were judged to be neither “White” nor “Caucasian.” 

Beyond Race and Religion

Numerous other factors have led certain groups of immigrants to be tagged as undesirable in the United States. One of the most obvious is the fear of political subversion or sabotage. The first instance of such a fear resulting in legislation happened early in the republic, when tensions between the United States and France moved legislators to pass the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, which allowed authorities to deport noncitizens who were deemed threats to the government. 

Similar worries of officials and the public led to discrimination against Germans during both World War I and World War II. During the latter conflict, the state of Minnesota passed a law forbidding the German language from being spoken. However, the most glaring example of fear causing an immigrant population to be seen as “undesirable” because of the perception that they threatened national security was the internment of more than 100,000 Japanese Americans during World War II (1939-45). 

Fear of political subversion spread in the aftermath of President William McKinley’s assassination in 1901 by a Polish American anarchist. That same fear, refocused on communists, increased after World War II during the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. During the early twenty-first century, in the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001, fear of subversion by Islamic militants surged, resulting in acts of prejudice against noncitizens and citizens of Middle Eastern descent. 

After race, religion, and political persuasion, perhaps the most prominent force that creates circumstances in which members of nonnative-born groups come to be perceived as “undesirable” is fear of submersion. In these instances, Americans who see themselves as “mainstream” or “typical” fear the loss of their way of life because of a large influx of immigrants with cultures and folk-ways different from theirs. For example, Irish and Italian people had been present in small numbers before the American Revolution, but xenophobic attitudes toward them as groups did not emerge on a large scale until large waves of immigration came, first the Irish during the Great Irish Famine during the mid-nineteenth century and then when similar economic disasters befell Italy in the latter half of the century. Only after these groups appeared in great numbers did anti-Irish and anti-Italian rhetoric appear and violence occur, such as the notorious signs reading “No Irish Need Apply” in windows of businesses, and the slaying of eleven Italian Americans in the streets of New Orleans in 1890 because of their suspected but unproven connection to the killing of a local police chief. Likewise, much xenophobic propaganda about Latinos stresses the large number of recent immigrants and feeds on the fear that “Anglo” culture will be subsumed and English will be replaced by Spanish.  

During the COVID-19 pandemic in late 2019 and 2020, those of Asian descent faced increased discrimination and hate crimes in the United States. Studies indicate that some Americans viewed Asian Americans as foreigners and falsely accused them of spreading disease. The physical and emotional well-being of many was severely affected. This damaging rhetoric was supported by some who were racist and misinformed about people of Asian descent and their connection to public health and disease. In 2020, President Trump issued a proclamation that attempted to restrict students and researchers from China from immigrating to the United States. This stigma against Asians and Asian Americans also exposed the power of social media in perpetuating modern stereotypes and spreading misinformation. 

Ironically, data shows that naturalized immigrants and their second-generation children in countries such as the United States and Canada are more likely to achieve higher rates of economic success than native-born citizens. These outcomes are common to all immigrant nationalities, genders, and historical eras. Immigrants are more prone to good health and also less likely to experience divorce or revert to poverty compared with those born in the United States. These characteristics of immigrants, termed "the immigrant advantage," may themselves be a cause for native-born animosities which lend to negative stereotypes and caricatures. 

An ethnic group may be the subject of positive stereotyping. In the 2020s, such sentiments pre-supposed that those of Asian ancestry were uncommonly disciplined and proficient in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematic (STEM) subjects. Though not outwardly negative, this type of messaging is subject to the whims of other social groups. These other social groups may later find it convenient to negatively alter a stereotype for self-beneficial purposes. A prime example is the spike in violence that occurred against people of Asian descent in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic.   

During the 2024 presidential election campaign, Republican candidate Donald Trump ran on a platform whose policies were decidedly anti-immigrant. Referring to a trend where large numbers of Chinese citizens were seeking entry through the United States' southern border, Trump stereotyped these Chinese people as "spies" and as members of "an army" seeking to wage war on the United States. Asian advocacy groups again noted the negative impacts such stereotyped messaging had on their communities. 

In June 2025, the US government issued Proclamation 10949, which suspends or restricts immigration and visa issuance for nationals of 19 countries—citing national-security and public-safety concerns as justification. This policy demonstrates how the framing of immigrants and foreigners in terms of “security threat” can recast entire national or ethnic groups as “undesirable.” In this way, legal and administrative measures echo past patterns of exclusion and stigma—showing that the discourse around “undesirable aliens” continues to shape US immigration policy into the twenty-first century.


Bibliography

Anderson, Stuart. “Inside Trump’s Immigration Order To Restrict Chinese Students.” Forbes, 1 June 2020, www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2020/06/01/inside-trumps-immigration-order-to-restrict-chinese-students/?sh=2f3c9b683bec. Accessed 13 Mar. 2023.

“Anti-Asian Stigma: A Study on COVID-19's Detrimental Effects on Asian Americans.” American Psychological Association, 3 May 2022, www.apa.org/pubs/highlights/spotlight/issue-238. Accessed 13 Mar. 2023.

Bernard, William S., et al., editors. American Immigration Policy: A Reappraisal. 1950. Kennikat Press, 1969.

Curran, Thomas J. Xenophobia and Immigration, 1820–1930. Twayne Publishers, 1975.

Dalla, Rochelle L., et al., editors. Strengths and Challenges of New Immigrant Families: Implications for Research, Education, Policy, and Service. Lexington Books, 2009.

Daniels, Roger. Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life. 2nd ed., HarperCollins, 2002.

Giridharadas, Anand. "The Immigrant Advantage." New York Times, 24 May 2014, www.nytimes.com/2014/05/25/opinion/sunday/the-immigrant-advantage.html. Accessed 19 Sept. 2024. 

Oyen, Meredith. "The Perils of Vilifying Chinese Migrants." Time, 13 Aug. 2024, time.com/6989755/chinese-migration-rhetoric-peril. Accessed 19 Sept. 2024.

"Proclamation on Restricting the Entry of Foreign Nationals to Protect the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats". The White House, 5 June 2025, https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/06/restricting-the-entry-of-foreign-nationals-to-protect-the-united-states-from-foreign-terrorists-and-other-national-security-and-public-safety-threats/?. Accessed 4 Dec. 2025.

"Trump Suggests Chinese Migrants Came to U.S. to Build an ‘Army.’ Migrants Share the Actual Reasons They Came." The Associated Press, 13 May 2024, www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/trump-suggests-chinese-migrants-came-us-build-army-migrants-share-actu-rcna152033. Accessed 19 Sept. 2024. 

Vellos, Diana. “Immigrant Latina Domestic Workers and Sexual Harassment.” Journal of Gender and the Law, vol. 5, no. 2, 1997, pp. 407–32, digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/jgspl/vol5/iss2/4/. Accessed 18 Oct. 2016.

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