We hear today about Arab-Americans being scapegoated for terror attacks based on their appearance/race, and the notorious history of what happened to Japanese-Americans in WWII is likewise well known, as is the lack of popularity of German language, culture etc. after the world wars.
One thing I wondered about was during the Cold War when communism was seen as a threat, was there any sentiment like this -- say distrust of Eastern European, Russian, Chinese Americans themselves or any other people whose ethnicity was shared with overseas communists, on the basis of being perceived as possibly more sympathetic to the enemy etc. Was there extra profiling/discrimination of ethnic groups because of that?
Or was it much different, since communism was an ideology who could not be tied to race, religion, ethnicity or nationality, so anything that McCarthyism focused was based on political views, not ethnicity that could be visibly displayed?
My readings suggest that both your interpetations may be correct, actually.
There was prejudice against Eastern Europeans during the Cold War. After the end of World War II, many Eastern European Jews were deported for being members of the Communist party. As Steven J. Gold noted in his essay in Waters, Ueda, and Marrow’s collection, Russian Americans felt pressured to downplay their heritage during the “Red Scare” following World War II, declining to express Russian culture publicly and claiming a more general “European” identity instead. As a result, Gold claims, Russian ethnic communal organizations never reached the same success and acceptance other ones like Italian or Irish organizations did. (1)
However, Gold also notes that the Cold War did provide some benefits for this group. Educated Russian-Americans found themselves in demand since the U.S. government wanted to know more about its Cold War adversary. For Eastern European immigrants generally, the Cold War offered an opportunity to assert their “American-ness.” As Philip Jenkins notes in The Cold War at Home: The Red Scare in Pennsylvania, 1945-1960, ethnic groups from Yugoslavia, such as Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, staunchly opposed Communism due to its oppression of the ethnic churches in their home country, and were able to portray themselves (and this is a direct quote from Jenkins) as “a virtual resistance movement in exile.” (2).
Some Americans welcomed them with open arms; Carl J. Bon Tempo offers a telling quote I think is worth reproducing in full:
“[President] Truman found it preposterous that “Greeks, struggling to assist the helpless victims of a communist civil war” and “Turks…brave defenders of the Eastern flank” had such paltry quotas. “We do not need to be protected” from eastern European immigrants, Truman continued, but “on the contrary we want to stretch out a helping hand, to save those who have managed to flee into Western Europe, to succor those who are brave enough to escape from barbarism, to welcome and restore them against the day when their countries will, as we hope, be free again.”...Through their anticommunism, and because of their victimization at the hands of communist governments, they had exhibited the respect for and understanding of American ideals like liberty, freedom, and democracy that all good Americans displayed.” (3)
One can see a similar ambivalence in the fate of Chinese-Americans during the Cold War. Ellen D. Wu notes that during the Cold War, the United States wanted to portray itself as a land of freedom and opportunity for all people in order to combat and “contain” the seemingly worldwide appeal of Communism (Mary Dudziak has explored how the Civil Rights campaign for African Americans benefited from this approach in her books, but that’s another subject). Many Americans also saw Chinese immigrants as victimized refugees fleeing Communist oppression. Wu points out that they therefore benefited from an American government and cultural atmosphere that “provided Chinese in the United States with unprecedented opportunities for inclusion during the early Cold War.” However, as the Cold War continued and the U.S. became involved in the Korean War, federal officials began to claim that there was a danger of foreign Communists from China infiltrating the government (One can see this distrust of the Chinese, and of Asian people generally, in the portrayal of Asians in the movie The Manchurian Candidate). This legitimized increased surveillance of people living in “Chinatowns” and a concerted effort to police and control Chinese immigration to America; as Wu says,
“The vulnerability of the community was made clear in 1956 when the federal government instigated a crackdown on illegal Chinese immigration. The manner in which state agencies and officials proceeded to address this issue—alleging that all Chinese entering the United States were potential spies for Communist China, issuing mass sub-poenas, and conducting grand jury investigations of Chinatown organizations—placed all Chinese in the United States under a cloud of suspicion. This atmosphere led to devastating outcomes for many individuals and families who were subject to private torment, public shame, prosecution, and deportation.” (4)
So, in the end, OP, I think you could argue the Cold War mitigated both for and against the acceptance of immigrants from Communist countries. On the one hand, the American people and government often saw them as victims of Communism and therefore potential allies against it, thus making it advisable to accept them. On the other hand, as the politics of the Cold War changed and shifted, people from these ethnicities became “security risks” deserving of suppressing in order to protect the United States from internal subversion. As with many historical phenomena, the Cold War had very different effects for various ethnic groups at various places and times.
Sources Cited:
1: Ellen Schrecker, “Immigration and Internal Security: Political Deportations during the McCarthy Era” in Science and Society, Vol. 60, No. 4 (Winter, 1996/1997), pp. 393-426, p. 401-402, Steven J. Gold, “Russia” in Mary C. Waters, Reed Ueda, and Helen B. Marrow, eds., The New Americans: A Guide to Immigration since 1965 (Harvard University Press Reference Library, 2007), pp. 583-584.
2: Gold, 583, Philip Jenkins, The Cold War at Home: The Red Scare in Pennsylvania, 1945-1960 (The University of North Carolina Press, 1999), pp. 143-145.
3: Carl J. Bon Tempo, Americans at the Gate: The United States and Refugees During the Cold War (Princeton University Press, 2008), p. 30.
4: Ellen D. Wu, “America's Chinese”: Anti-Communism, Citizenship, and Cultural Diplomacy during the Cold War" in Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 77, No. 3 (August 2008), pp. 391-422 pp. 395, 421.
Other resources to look at are:
Zuoyue Wang, “Transnational Science during the Cold War: The Case of Chinese/American Scientists” in Isis, Vol. 101, No. 2 (June 2010), pp. 367-377
Cheng, Cindy I-Fen. 2006. “Out of Chinatown and into the Suburbs: Chinese Americans and the Politics of Cultural Citizenship in Early Cold War America”. American Quarterly 58 (4). The Johns Hopkins University Press: 1067–90. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40068406.
Hsu, Madeline Y.. 2012. “The Disappearance of America's Cold War Chinese Refugees, 1948-1966”. Journal of American Ethnic History 31 (4). University of Illinois Press: 12–33. doi:10.5406/jamerethnhist.31.4.0012.