Roy Beck

Roy Beck argues in the following viewpoint that the high number of immigrants who came to America during the Great Wave of immigration between the 1880s and 1920s was unnecessary and harmful to American workers. The American frontier had already been conquered and large numbers of laborers were no longer needed. The continual arrival of tens of thousands of immigrants resulted in lower wages and prevented certain groups—particularly newly freed southern slaves—from obtaining well-paying jobs. In addition, Beck asserts, the immigrants’ presence fostered hostility among American workers and encouraged feelings of racism and anti-Semitism. Beck is the Washington, D.C., editor of the Social Contract magazine and the author of The Case Against Immigration, from which the following viewpoint is excerpted.

In 1910, the fears of many Yankee settlers...