1838

"It was enough to turn a man’s stomach to see the way they were naturalizing this morning. Wretched, filthy, bestial-looking Italians and Irish, the very scum and dregs of human nature filled the office so completely that I was almost afraid of being poisoned by going in." — George Templeton Strong (Source)

1891

"If immigration was properly restricted, you would never be troubled with anarchism, socialism, the Mafia and such kindred evils!" (Source)

"Their habits of life, again, are of the most revolting kind" -Francis Amasa Walker (Source)
"[The] foul and stagnant pool of population in Europe, which no breath of intellectual or industrial life has stirred for ages" -Francis Amasa Walker (Source)
"...masses of peasantry, degraded below our utmost conceptions" -Francis Amasa Walker (Source)
"...vast numbers of men, foreign in birth [...] with a poorer standard of living, with habits repellent to our native people, of an industrial grade suited only to the lowest kind of manual labor" -Francis Amasa Walker (Source)

"These sneaking and cowardly Sicilians, the descendants of bandits and assassins, who have transported to this country the lawless passions, the cut-throat practices, and the oath-bound societies of their native country, are to us a pest without mitigation. Our own rattlesnakes are as good citizens as they… Lynch law was the only course open to the people of New Orleans to stay the issue of a new license to the Mafia to continue its bloody practices." —New York Times (Source)

"[Italians are] just a little worse than the Negro, being if anything filthier in [their] habits, lawless, and treacherous." —John Parker, governor of Louisiana (Source)
"The population of the United States will, on account of the great influx of blood from South-eastern Europe, rapidly become darker in pigmentation, smaller in stature, more mercurial, more attached to music and art, more given to crimes of larceny, kidnapping, assault, murder, rape and sex-immorality [than were the original English settlers]." -Charles Benedict Davenport (Source)

"The test scores for these representative groups showed that 83 percent of Jews, 80 percent of Hungarians, 79 percent of Italians, and 87 percent of Russians [are] feebleminded." -Henry H. Goddard (Source)

"From these slaves [of ancient Romans] are descended the south Italians... people incapable of self-government and totally devoid of initiative or creative ability." -Kenneth Roberts (Source)

"Immigrants from eastern and southern Europe are storming the Nordic ramparts of the United States and mongrelizing the good old American stock." (Source)