Anti-Immigration Movement Source 2

2.      Website:         (Link didn’t work)

Citation:         Hartman G. Building the Ideal Immigrant: Reconciling Lithuanianism and 100 Percent Americanism to Create a Respectable Nationalist Movement, 1870-1922. Journal Of American Ethnic History [serial online]. Fall98 1998;18(1):36. Available from: MasterFILE Premier, Ipswich, MA. Accessed February 8, 2012.

Summary: This document is called Building the Ideal Immigrant: Reconciling Lithuanianism and 100 Percent Americanism to Create a Respectable Nationalist Movement by Garry Hartman in 1998. In this piece, Hartman talks about how immigrants who came to American from Eastern and Southern Europe during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were greatly discriminated against. People in the United States (some members of the Anti-Immigration Movement) put a large amount of force on the newcomers of America to do the accepted thing, by changing themselves to act more “American like.” More specifically, this article focuses on how a particular nationality called the Lithuanians felt the pressure to “Americanize” themselves so that they would be better accepted. The article provides several example of how the Lithuanians felt that they needed to change their customs, habits, and daily activities, to be more like the Americans that surrounded them when they immigrated to America. Lithuanians felt that their patriotism was always in question. “Lithuanian Americans recognized the need to reassure the American public that particular ethnic royalties did not conflict with their loyalties to the United States.” The Lithuanian group was trying to stress that they succeed in America without losing their true identities at the same time. However, some were willing to make small changes in order to be accepted into the American society. One way that they did “Americanize” themselves was by changing part of their last names so that their ethnic background would be less distinct. Anti-Immigration members tried to limit the amount of immigrants that were allowed entry into the U.S. each year, but putting a fixed quota on how many would be admitted. This directly affected the Lithuanians who took several measures in trying to overcome Anti-Immigration in the U.S.