u/Intelligent_Wafer562

The original 1924 Immigration Act, shown above being signed by President Calvin Cooldige, strict quotas on immigration, which became largely restricted for everywhere except from Northwest Europe, where not many were immigrating from anyways. It was mainly written with barring "white ethnics" in mind, with immigration from Latin America and the Global South, while still frowned upon, being an afterthought. "White ethnics" referred to any whites who were Jewish, Catholic, or Orthodox, or from a country that mostly followed one of those faiths. Many modern figures in the far-right who consider the 1924-1965 era of restrictive immigration to be a model, meet the "white ethnic" criteria, including Stephen Miller (Jewish), Nick Fuentes (Irish, Italian, Mexican, and Catholic), Matt Walsh (Irish Catholic), Jack Poseobic (Polish Catholic), etc. They would have been considered, at this time, fake Americans who were replacing "real American culture," which was considered to be Protestant and British/Germanic. "White ethnics" faced widespread discrimination and were barred from American polite society alongside people of color, and the largest mass lynching in American history was against Italian prisoners in New Orleans who were collectively blamed for the death of a cop. This isn't to say "white ethnics" had it as bad as Latino, African, and Native Americans, but it does show the far-right idea that it's always been White Europeans against everyone else is a farce. 19th and early 20th century American nativists would be traumatized if you told them the ethno-religious backgrounds of who was leading their movement in the 21st century.