Immigrants

Once upon a time

Beginning in 1892, Ellis Island in the port of New York began receiving immigrants, replacing the Castle Garden station. Steamships unloaded their third-class passengers where they were processed before being allowed into what to them was the gateway to a land of opportunity. Immigrants flocked from Ireland, fleeing famine, from Italy, from the Baltic countries. They came to escape being called into the military in their home country, to escape the penury and hard times of their villages where a future had little to offer.

On the whole, they were well received, often bringing much needed skills with them as they moved on to other parts of the United States. In the beginning life was hard as they adjusted to a new life style. Some, from the poorer Italian south, came thinking the streets were paved with gold and that carrots and onions grew to enormous sizes. From 1891-1900, 655,644 Italians came into the United States, and an additional 2,045,877 came the following decade, mostly from southern Italy. Such immigration had never been seen before.

One news source in 1890, the New Orleans Times-Democrat, criticized the Italians in particular, stating that immigrants from Germany and Ireland adopted the customs of this new country, acquired its language, mastered its institutions, and identified themselves with its destiny. The Italians, never. They remained isolated from the rest of any community in which they happened to dwell. They seldom learned to speak English, had no respect for the laws or the form of government, they were always foreigners.

Conditions in the 1880s in New York and its Italian quarter were deplorable. Children were left to fend on their own, managing to survive as bootblacks or news boys. At night they would sleep in abandoned structures on the streets, in alleys and doorways. In 1888, Jacob Riis, a journalist and social reformer, brought the dire situation in the slums of New York to the attention of the public in his photographic investigations, first published in the New York Sun. He was the first to use flash in his photography.

In 1900, at the turn of the century, New York had its Little Italy. Recent books and cinema document what life was like at the time. The films include Nuovo Mondo, titled the Golden Door in English, and 1900 or the Pianist on the Ocean, which give us scenes showing life in the old country and in steerage on the great steamships. In her autobiographical novel, Melania Mazucco gives us a picture of Little Italy in New York in 1900 when two immigrants, still children, arrived on Ellis Island from Southern Italy. While they had contacts in New York, it was still a matter of everyone for himself. Her novel is the story of nine-year old Vita and her twelve-year old cousin Diamante as they struggle to survive and create a new life, before moving further inland.

Then there were the immigrants from Ireland, fleeing famine, and those who came for religious reasons. The latter had support from their religious groups and succeeded in making a new life and prospered. Now immigrants continue to flock to America and Europe from Africa and South America, riddled with warring groups interested only in power. A dangerous voyage, often ending up in death at sea.

English is now taught in most Italian grade schools and at times the teachers will introduce their classes to what Ellis Island once was. Closed in 1954 it has since been turned into a museum. Classes often include the children of recent immigrants who may or may not be fluent in Italian, let alone English. The parents may be Moldavian, Rumanian, Albanian, from Morocco, but also from other countries in Africa or Asia. The fathers may be day laborers, the mothers, caretakers for the increasingly ageing Italian population. At home the language spoken will often be that of their parents’ mother tongue. The three grown children of a Moldavian who has been in Italy over 30 years and is married to a Russian, all speak Moldavian, Russian and Italian.

Italy is not what it used to be. When I came here, over sixty years ago, I was married to an Italian, and was the first American in the town. I was not considered an immigrant. Today walking the streets of the town one is likely to see more foreigners (stranieri) than natives, both those who live here permanently and tourists who have come for the day.

I might call these new members of the town immigrants, English-speaking foreigners who have chosen to settle here, who, like yesterday’s immigrants, are fleeing political situations in their native lands they find intolerable or are just enamored of the Italian life style. They may blend in with the Italian citizenship or form an enclave of their own, contributing culturally and economically. Immigrants yes. But the roles have been reversed.