Eastern and Southern European Immigrants: Expectations, Reality, and a New Agenda

Throughout the history of their settlement in America, Eastern and Southern European ancestry groups have varied dramatically. Yet there is a logic to combining all these groups into a single analytical category, based on the time of their arrival, their religious and cultural differences from other Americans, and their living memories of gaining freedom from serfdom and peonage. From 1924 to 1964, a national immigration policy of selection and restriction effectively excluded immigrants from these regions of Europe using flawed social scientific rationales that tagged Eastern and Southern Europeans as undesirable and inferior. By 1965, however, a fresh spirit of tolerance and consensus had come to prevail. The 1980 census data on ancestry populations and foreign-born persons from Eastern and Southern Europe sustain the notion that local variations should not be ignored. Finding the convergent issues of various ethnic populations remains on the American agenda of liberty and justice for all. Ancestry groups with recollections of the immigrant experience could become a pivotal force in resolving conflict during the next era of immigration.