Use that word!

There has been a lot of discussion of the conference on "national conservatism" that was held last month.  Many of the commentators have said that nationalism is something that has existed in other nations, but not in the United States.  Part of the idea behind this is that America has been open to immigration, so we don't have a common ethnic heritage, and most Americans don't have many generations of family attachment to a particular place ("blood and soil"). One of the strongest statements of this kind came from Bret Stephens.  Among other things, he said "conservatives used to believe in the overwhelming benefits of immigration. Most nationalists want to restrict even legal immigration."  Since 2004, the General Social Survey has had a question about "Do you think the number of immigrants to America nowadays should be increased a lot, increased a little, remain the same as it is, reduced a little, or reduced a lot."  It also has a question asking people to place their political views.   The figure shows the percent saying the number of immigrants should be increased minus the percent saying it should be reduced (I didn't distinguish between "a little" or "a lot") for liberals, moderates, and conservatives.

Conservative opinions stayed almost the same for the whole period:  overwhelmingly in favor of reducing the number of immigrants.  Liberal opinions moved in favor immigration:  in 2016 and 2018, more liberals thought that the number should be increased than reduced.  It seems like the rate of change in opinions increased after Trump (the vertical dotted line is 2015, when he began his campaign).  Up through 2016, moderates didn't change much, but in 2018 they moved in favor of immigration.  So on immigration, Trump did not change conservatives:  he gave them what they had been wanting to hear.

OK, maybe "used to" didn't mean immediately before Trump, but at some more distant point in the past.  In 1964, the Gallup Poll did a survey on "Hopes and Fears of the American People."  This was when the United States was operating under the restrictive immigration laws passed in the early 1920s (they were changed in 1965).  There was a question on immigration:  "Do you think the number of immigrants allowed to enter the U.S. each year should be increased somewhat,
decreased somewhat, or kept at about the present level?"  About 10% of people didn't have an opinion.  Of those who did, 7% said it should be increased, 51% stay the same, and 42% that it should be reduced.

I could have looked at differences between conservatives and liberals, but the survey also had some less common questions, so I decided to consider those instead.  One was how many of your grandparents were born in the United States. Views on immigration for people with different numbers:

gp born outside US      Increased            Same      Decreased
0                                       4%                 47%         49%
1                                       7%                 57%         36%
2                                       9%                 51%         40%
3                                       5%                 60%         36%
4                                      14%                58%         28%

People with more foreign-born grandparents were more likely to support immigration, but even among people whose grandparents were all born abroad, only 14% thought the number of immigrants should be increased and 28% thought it should be decreased.

The survey contained the usual questions on race and religion, and also asked people where their mother's and father's ancestors came from and classified the answers into different groups.  This makes it possible to compare opinions by ethnicity.  Opinions were just about the same among blacks and whites (there were too few people of other races to say much about them).  Jews were considerably more favorable to immigration:  44% said the number should be increased and only 8% that it should be reduced.

Turning to regional background, and limiting it to non-Jewish whites, here are the figures for some groups (they aren't mutually exclusive):

Ancestry            Increased       Same     Decreased

British                  6%          51%        43%
German                   6%          52%        42%
Irish (Protestant)       3%          41%        56%
Irish (Catholic)        12%          61%        27%
Scandinavian             8%          53%        39%
Polish                   8%          60%        32%
East & Central Eur.     10%          52%        38%
Italian                 11%          62%        27%
"Latin"*                 7%          68%        24%

*Spain and Portugal, Latin America, and Puerto Rico.

 There are some differences:  the "old" immigrant groups (Britain, Germany, Scandinavia) were more likely to say that immigration should be reduced than the "new" ones.  But "reduced" outnumbered "increased" by more than 2:1 in every group.

That is, it apparently didn't take long for people from diverse backgrounds to start thinking that they were part of something that needed to protect itself against "outsiders."  The larger question can't be settled by data alone, but in my view nationalism has been strong in the United States from the moment that the United States began. 

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]