The end of the Second World War was only the beginning of rising tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. During this time, known as the Cold War, the United States developed an “us versus them” mentality framework which marked the Soviet Union its official antithetical rival. America’s emphasis on portraying democracy, sharply contrasted against the Soviet Union’s communist image. By presenting democracy as a virtue of American-ness, communism became a representation of the American antithesis. At the height of American Anti-communist Cold War rhetoric, internal turmoil over civil rights issues ripped a hole through America’s international reputable record, whereby criticism from all over the world poured in against its democratic system. President Lyndon B. Johnson made an effort to patch up the hole by waging war on social inequality through
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Tichenor elaborates on this idea explaining that after World War II the “fact that it took twenty years after the defeat of Nazi Germany for Congress to remove these barriers in American immigration law speaks to how effectively Cold War nativists knitted together racial hierarchy and national security fears.” This is critical because it shows how the sense of national security and flow of immigration are intertwined in the minds of citizens. Which explains why the Johnson-Reed Act provided American citizens with a sense of security after the First World War. Essentially, nativists viewed immigrants as a danger to the safety of their environments and were therefore unlikely to support immigration reform. So, the Immigration Nationality Act of 1965 was unfitting in the midst of a tense environment because it would perceivably weaken national
Tichenor elaborates on this idea explaining that after World War II the “fact that it took twenty years after the defeat of Nazi Germany for Congress to remove these barriers in American immigration law speaks to how effectively Cold War nativists knitted together racial hierarchy and national security fears.” This is critical because it shows how the sense of national security and flow of immigration are intertwined in the minds of citizens. Which explains why the Johnson-Reed Act provided American citizens with a sense of security after the First World War. Essentially, nativists viewed immigrants as a danger to the safety of their environments and were therefore unlikely to support immigration reform. So, the Immigration Nationality Act of 1965 was unfitting in the midst of a tense environment because it would perceivably weaken national