Immigration Experience

HIS/120

Immigration Experience

Dear Journal, There are many reasons why my family decided to leave their homes in Italy and make the move to America. There were many political and religious issues, along with towns and homes being overcrowded. My family were farmers looking for a change and the unification was rural along with the land management was poor. As my family did not have a lot of cash, we could only afford to buy tickets in the cargo area of the ship. The food was horrible as we were sailing to the new land. We ate a lot of potatoes, soup, and left overs. It was food to comfort us but not what I really wanted to eat. Often times I found myself still hungry after eating, as the food had to be stretched to feed all of us. At night we would roll out the sacks that the potatoes were transported in. Piling them sometimes 3-5 high to make a soft bed out and covering with our blankets we each brought with us is how we would sleep at night. It was not how I pictured us sleeping, but it was a safe place and at least I was with my family. The only real time we saw daylight and fresh air was when we went to the upper deck to wash. I remember the smell of the air and beauty of the sunshine on my face to this day. My brothers and sisters hated going back below deck as it was the last time we would see the outside until the next day. The weather on our journey to America over the Atlantic Ocean made me ill. The storms would rock the ship side to side and at times it would feel like as if the ship was going to turn on its side. When we finally reached Ellis Island I felt a sense of fear disappear but that was short lived once we got inside. “Only immigrants who rode in steerage on ships had to stop at Ellis Island for inspection. The rest of the passengers in first and second class had their immigration papers processed while on the ship. The passengers that travelled to Ellis Island transferred from their ships to smaller ferryboats which took them to the island for inspection” (Grossman, 1993). There was so many people from different countries wanting the same thing as we did. Ellis Island was covered with long lines of people waiting for inspection. This consisted of examination by a doctor and an interview with an inspector. If a doctor saw you as sick, you would have to stay at Ellis Island until you were well again. While with an inspector, immigrants were expected to answer questions like where they were from, whether they had relatives in America or not, how much money they had, could they read or write in any language, and if they had jobs waiting for them in America or not. Most Italian immigrants had to speak to the inspector through a translator because they did not know any English. I could many Italians “refer to the island as L'Isola delle Lacrime: The Island of Tears" (Grossman, 1993). We were amongst the lucky ones that did not get sick and have to be sent back to or homeland. We only had to wait about twelve hours before being passed and were able to stay and start a new life. While many Italian immigrants scattered across the states, my family felt as if it was in our best interest to stay close. My parents made the decision to stay in New York because they were comfortable here, familiarity, the influence of Catholicism, and thought we had already traveled enough to get here. We lived in a tenement house. It is apartment house shared with others that is run down and in poor sections of the area (Limmer & Dolkart, n.d.). My father did not have good education or fluent in English, this put a hold on him receiving a well-paying job. At first he started working at the docks as a fisherman and stevedores. Later he took a factory job assembling plastic parts. The hours were long and the pay was very little. Most of the time he would barely bring home on average he would bring home thirty dollars a month. We tried to survive on just his income, after two months of struggling to make ends meet my mother announced she would return to work. She worked part time as a seamstress, but it helped with food and bills in our new world. I found Americans discriminated against us mainly because how many immigrants were coming to America at that time. My family as other Italians did not have very much money, lived in poor conditions, understood little English, and my parents worked for very low wages. At school, once we got to go, schoolboys taunted us by calling us ethnic slurs such as "Guinea" and "Dago", and threw things at us, politicians complained and called for restrictions on the amount of immigrants being let into the country at this time. When I have kids I want them to know about the hard times we had coming to this land, how my parents fought for us to have a better life, how I have succeeded in making this happened, and how they can grow up to be anything they want to be. I want them to know that because of their past it is nothing to be ashamed of but proud of, and that I will be proud of them no matter what they do as long as it is the right thing and the honest thing.

References
Limmer. R., Dolkart, A., (n.d.). The Tenement as History and Housing. Retrieved from: http://www.thirteen.org/tenement/eagle.html
Grossman, R. P., (1993). Italians in America. Minnesota: Lerner Publications Company. Retrieved from: http://www.angelfire.com/indie/immigrants/pages/Links_and_Works_Cited.html?