Alabama and nativism
Alabama, a state characterized by its ethnic diversity due to varying immigration patterns, has experienced significant nativist sentiment, particularly in response to the arrival of large immigrant groups. Throughout its history, Alabama's population has included Indigenous Americans, Spanish, French, and more recently, immigrants from Latin American and Asian countries. The late twentieth century saw an influx of Mexican immigrants, which triggered protests from local taxpayers and workers concerned about job competition. This apprehension towards newcomers has persisted into the twenty-first century, as nativism resurfaced with the arrival of immigrants from various backgrounds.
Legislation such as the Beason-Hammon Alabama Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act of 2011 aimed to address these concerns by enforcing strict immigration controls, though many provisions faced legal challenges and were eventually blocked by federal courts. Despite these tensions, there have been efforts within the community to assist immigrants in integrating, highlighting a complex relationship between native Alabamians and newcomers. As of the mid-2020s, Alabama's immigrant population continues to grow, with significant numbers originating from Mexico, Guatemala, India, China, and Korea, underscoring the ongoing dynamics of immigration and nativism in the state.
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Alabama and nativism
SIGNIFICANCE: Patterns of immigration in Alabama have varied markedly among different areas of the state, making the state as a whole ethnically diverse; however, the arrival of large groups of new immigrants sometimes prompted eruptions of nativism. Late in the twentieth century, an influx of Mexicans provoked protests from taxpayers and workers who felt their jobs were threatened. As immigrants continued to arrive from Latin American and Asian countries in the twenty-first century, nativist sentiment in Alabama continued.
During the sixteenth century, Spanish explorers found Alabama populated by Iroquoian and Muskogean Indigenous Americans, large numbers of whom were killed by Europeans. Most of those who survived were forced off their land and sent to what became the state of Oklahoma. Many died on the infamous Trail of Tears during the 1830s.
After several unsuccessful Spanish colonization efforts, the French established a colony at Mobile, which was still a part of French Louisiana, in 1711. In 1780, that settlement was taken over by the Spanish. In 1813, the United States (US) claimed it. Nevertheless, the French and the Spanish had left their imprint on Mobile, and as a port city, it would continue to have a more cosmopolitan atmosphere than any other place in Alabama. Baldwin County, which lies on the eastern shore of Mobile Bay, also attracted a diverse population.
After the US Civil War ended in 1865, immigrants from Italy, Scandinavia, Greece, Germany, Central Europe, and French Canada settled in the county, cleared the land, farmed the fertile soil, and fished in the coastal waters. The ethnic origins of the communities they founded are still evident. For example, Fairhope, a town in Baldwin County, was the site of two unusual ventures organized by Midwesterners. It was originally founded as a semisocialistic single-tax colony, and it was also the home of an early educational experiment, the School of Organic Education. Alabama’s central and northern parts were settled largely by people from other states. Planters from South Carolina and Georgia, who could no longer grow cotton on their depleted soil, moved to the Black Belt in central Alabama. Scotch-Irish from the eastern Appalachians traveled westward into northern Alabama. From time to time, new European arrivals attempted to carve out places for themselves. For example, in 1817, two years after the final fall of France’s Emperor Napoleon, some of his officers and officeholders went to western Alabama to establish vineyards and grow olive trees. Their enterprise was a failure, and they left, but the town they named Demopolis remains. During the 1890s, immigrants from Sweden, Denmark, and Norway were persuaded to move to Fruithurst, a model town in eastern Alabama, but their winemaking project, too, was a failure. German immigrants who founded Cullman in 1848 had no better luck with viniculture, but they remained and succeeded at other enterprises.
During the 1880s, Birmingham became the center of a new industry, the making of coke pig iron. The manufacturers added immigrants from England, Scotland, Ireland, Italy, and Holland to the local labor force. Because these immigrants made up less than one-fifth of the local workforce, there was no concerted protest of their presence. After World War I, however, when immigrants flooded in from southern and Eastern Europe, local workers saw their jobs threatened. Moreover, longtime residents, who were mostly of Protestant Scotch-Irish stock, looked with suspicion at the languages, customs, and religions of the new arrivals, many of whom were Roman Catholics or Jews. The result was a storm of protest and the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan.
Native Alabamians welcomed well-educated immigrants who could fill obvious needs, such as the German scientists who transformed Huntsville into a technological center and Indian physicians who came to Alabama to work in understaffed hospitals. However, they resented the immigrants who began coming from Latin America, and especially from Mexico, during the 1990s. They believed these immigrants took jobs away from native Alabamians and burdened taxpayers with their demands for schooling, health care, and social services. The fact that as many as half of these immigrants had probably entered the US illegally also concerned Alabamians. Many feared they were involved in illegal activities. Some Alabamians supported taking legal steps to expel undocumented immigrants. However, others made efforts to teach English to Spanish-speaking immigrants and help them in other ways to become integral members of the community.
In 2011, Alabama passed a state law, the Beason-Hammon Alabama Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act, severely curtailing the activities of Alabama residents who entered the country illegally. The law requires police, teachers, and employers to make an effort to determine the citizenship status of others they interact with when doing their job and requires proof of citizenship to be shown at the polls when voting. Several provisions of the act have been blocked by district courts, including people who entered the country illegally being forbidden from applying for jobs and being barred from attending public colleges and universities. While several states have similar laws, Alabama's is the strictest in the country; some consider this law to be a product of nativism. Thirteen percent of Latino children enrolled in Alabama public schools withdrew in the first year after the law was passed.
Although then Governor Robert Bentley argued the Beason-Hammon Alabama Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act was necessary because the federal government had not done its job enforcing immigration laws, many of the law’s provisions were struck down in federal courts in the early 2010s. In 2013, federal courts ruled that schools could not collect information on a student’s immigration status and struck down many other provisions of the law. Alabama continued to grow its immigrant population in the mid-2020s. According to data collected in the 2022 American Community Survey, analyzed by the American Immigration Council, Alabama had 183,500 foreign-born residents, comprising 3.6 percent of its population. In the early 2020s, Alabama’s immigrant residents came overwhelmingly from Mexico but also from Guatemala, India, China, and Korea. Just as a general anti-immigrant attitude has prevailed in the discourse of some demographics in the US, nativism has remained a sentiment in Alabama in the twenty-first century.
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