Question

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Answer 1

the immigrant have become rich in America while the shadow shows their past in their native country.

Answer 2

The shadows of the prosperous immigrants represent the immigrants when they first arrived in America. Now that they have grown wealthy, they are afraid that new immigrants will flood the country and take some of their wealth away, and seek to block any new immigrants from entering so as to avoid the memory of the raw poverty they experienced years before.

Answer 3

The shadows represent the past of the standing figures, or the past at least of their families, when they (or their parents, grandparents, et cetera) were poor immigrants themselves.

As for why they might oppose further immigration: any number of reasons. The fact that one was an immigrant (or of immigrant origin) one's self, once upon a time, has zero necessary connection to whether you favor immigration some time later. For example, maybe times have changed here: immigration was once a source of cheap labor when there was a labor shortage, but now there's no labor shortage, so immigration is just a source of disappointed and angry unemployed people. Or maybe times have changed there: immigration used to pull in the hard-working and innovative, but now it just pulls in the lazy and shiftless. Or you could be in favor of immigration for some people (including yourself and people like you), but not for absolutely everyone of the same national origin. Maybe you're a German who thinks ex-Nazis should be allowed to immigrate.

But it seems likely the author of this cartoon, since he is mocking former immigrants now opposing immigration, doesn't agree with this. That he thinks if you were in favor of immigration at any time, for yourself for example, then you should logically be in favor of immigration for anyone of your national origin forever. That's a pretty clownish and ignorant point of view, but, hey, you don't go into drawing political cartoons for a living if you have a habit of thinking deeply about stuff.

So why *should* you (in justice) be forever in favor of immigration, if you're an immigrant, but strongly tempted not to be? The underlying assumptions here, I strongly suspect, are that life and economics are a "zero sum" game. That means person A can only become wealthy and successful by taking away the wealh and success of someone else, call him B. The richer A gets, the poorer B must get. This is what makes it "zero sum": wealth and success of A + B = a constant (which you could set to zero in the right units), and stays that way.

So...if you started off poor, someone else started off rich. You *became* rich only because you are able to impoverish someone else, so A + B = a constant. That is why you would fear someone like you who was poor: you are afraid of the process repeating itself, only this time with you on the side of the see-saw that goes down. The new immigrants will get rich -- by making you poor.

This is a bogus view of economics, of course. The only people who get rich by impoverishing others have to do it by force, since no one would *voluntarily* put up with that. So that means only criminals and the government, which operate by force. Anyone who gets rich by business -- by voluntary transactions -- almost certainly does so by making lots of other people rich, too. For example, Steve Jobs got rich by significantly reducing the cost to millions of people of acquiring high-quality music that could be played on the go. That is, he significantly improved the overall wealth of millions of consumers (they had more of what they wanted for less money, or equivalent had to spend less money to get what they wanted), and that is exactly why he got rich. (To be sure, he got richer than any one of his consumers, but he got less rich than all of his consumers put together.)

This is typical of wealth generated by business. So in reality no one who got rich through business would feel threatened by someone who reminded him of himself in his lean and hungry and ambitious days. He would most likely, in fact, see in that person an excellent new hire, and push for his immigration to be eased. (And in fact businessmen almost always strongly favor immigration; it is much more common for laborers to oppose it, because immigrants compete for low-wage jobs, pushing wages lower.)

So why would a cartoonist misrepresent the identity of those most likely to be opposed to immigration for economic reasons? That's easy: scapegoating. There are always fewer wealthy people than poor, so they are always a minority. Furthermore, most people are at least a little envious of those who are wealthy, and that makes them very willing to believe bad of them -- that they don't deserve their wealth. Which means if the cartoonist convince people that opposition to immigration is just the work of a wealthy minority, it is easier for him to demonize that opposition -- to suggest they are not fully human, or reasonable, and can be treated with contempt. That their arguments need not be considered seriously. And the purpose of a political cartoon is to win an argument by setting the terms of the argument such that the other side loses before they start talking. It's not a way to rationally debate ideas, just a way to mock, demonize and make fun of your opponents. That doesn't mean it doesn't have value, of course: mockery and satire can have considerably enlightening value, when supplemented by sober reflection.