Anthropology on Immigration: The AAA General Statement

Anthropology on Immigration: The AAA General Statement: "American anthropology has a long history of scientific interest in and professional concern for immigrant populations.  For example, Franz Boas, the founding father of American anthropology, wrote and spoke extensively on erroneous beliefs, anchored in pseudoscience, that immigrants in the early twentieth century from Southern and Eastern Europe were genetically inferior.  A century of anthropological research on immigration and host society responses to immigration shows that immigration tends to be driven by economic deprivation and political persecution, that first generation immigrants are frequently stereotyped in inaccurate and demeaning ways, that scapegoating of immigrants escalates in times of economic contraction (the degree of scapegoating being roughly proportionate to the degree of economic contraction), and that anti-immigrant campaigns tend to be premised on erroneous factual claims and predictions."

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