SURSEHAJ

Hi, everyone. My name is Sursehaj Singh and I was born in India. I was only 5 months old when my parent moved to America. I currently live in Flushing and has lived their my whole life. i have many interests that include music, sports, and biological sciences. The human body interests me because we don’t give it enough credit as what it is able to do.

I currently live with my parents in a apartment in Flushing Queens. I personally love Flushing and don’t plan on ever moving to another neighborhood. I enjoy my morning 1 hour 15 minute commutes. I love cold weather and hate rain. Also,  love to cook and cook everyday for myself. Something interesting about me is that I could spend hours in a sporting goods store and a shoe store.

IMMIGRATION STORY

BLOG POSTS

Need Grit and Strength to live the life of a Immigrant.

Last Friday, I went to the tenement museum for the first time. When I think of museums, I think of a large building where many artifacts and pictures are enclosed in glass. But, the Tenement museum offered a first hand perspective on life of immigrants during the 1800s and early 1900s; From the outside, the building looked rather new, but when we entered the actual exhibit of the apartments, the living conditions were surprising. How does a large family live in a 200 square feet apartment while they are are trying to manufacture clothes and live their lives? I’m sitting here and complaining to my parents that we need a larger house that has a large background while teenagers like me are working in their homes to produce garments. The fact that most families had children was shocking because it had to been hard on the families mentally and physically. Also, our tour guide explained that the oven in the tenements was constantly on. In such a small apartment the heat and smoke coming from the stove must have been excruciating and suffering on the families, especially during the summer time.

The cramped apartments depict how life was for immigrants. They had to work constantly to provide for their families and were limited to social mobility. Immigrants were forced into manual labor and most of the time it was done in their homes. In one apartment, I learned that the females and males weren’t allowed to sleep together even if they were brother and sister. Most times, the males slept on the floor. I was constantly thinking, “imagine” if I lived in these circumstances, would I survive?

When I think of Manhattan, I picture tall building, with fancy elevators, and glorious lights. The tenement museum imposes a different view of Lower Eastside. The Lower Eastside Tenement Museum allowed me to experience the everyday hardships and difficulties that the people that lived there faced. Through the 19^th and 20^th century, the tenements were a home for thousands and thousands of immigrants. The tenement is located in what is current day Chinatown but has drastically changed since the 1900s.

BOOK REVIEW

From Ellis Island to JFK New York’s Two Great Waves of Immigration

 

Textbook Citation:

Foner, Nancy. From Ellis Island to JFK: New York’s Two Great Waves of Immigration. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. Print

Introduction:

From Ellis Island to JFK focuses on the two main waves of immigration that happen in New York. These two movements solidified New York by bring more and more people to the city.  The first is of Jews and Italians from 1880 to 1920, and the other of post- l965 Mexicans, Asians, Latin Americans, and Caribbean Islanders. Immigration peaked in the first decade of the 20^th century and Foner compares the different waves of immigration. She gives the immigrants the quintessential depiction as hardworking laborer who is striving for the better. Foner distinguishes between the two major waves of immigration through education, occupation, and their overall social status. These differences between the immigrants led to many changes in New York and in the life of the immigrants. Further she evaluates the myths involved with immigration as we see New York developing into a multi-cultural throughout the century.

 

Authors Background:

Nancy Foner, the author of From Ellis Island to JFK, is a sociology professor at Hunter College who received her B.A. from Brandeis University and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. Her main focus of study is immigration, which she explains thoroughly through her representation of immigration in New York City. She has a keen interest in focusing on past immigration with modern immigration.in the United States. From Ellis Island to JFK ideally represents her comparative analysis and differences of immigration. Foner is the author or editor of 16 books and her book From Ellis Island to JFK winner of the 2000 Theodore Saloutos Award of the Immigration and Ethnic History Society.

Besides her career as a author and editor, Foner the Russell Sage Foundation Immigration Research Advisory Committee, the Social Science Research Council Committee on International Migration, and the Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island History Advisory Committee. Her active approach on immigration allowed her   to be the chair-elect of the International Migration Section of the American Sociological Association and the president of the Society for the Anthropology.

 

Book Analysis:

New York has been subjected to very different waves of immigration. Foner exemplifies statistics and social roles to differentiate between the two groups of immigration. She explains how each immigration group differed by incorporating education, race, and various other social roles. During the early immigration movement, there weren’t as many illegal immigrants as there are today. The early immigrants arrived were primarily laborers and lacked every as aspect of professionalism; Furthermore, this represents the dynamic from modern times as most modern immigrants have a college degree or specialize in a particular field. She also describes that the reason for the plethora of immigrants arriving in New York was due to the increased production and innovation of steamed ships. Primary, Foner focused her interest on Italians and Russian Jews in the early 1900s and Dominicans, Chinese and Jamaicans in the late 1900s. The first group, especially the Russian Jews, immigrated to escape political oppression. The first immigration wave exemplified the representation of tenement life in lower east side where most of them were laborers and often their homes were their work place. On the contrary, the second wave of immigration, which, focused on the Chinese, had more of a social class, as most of them were educated and financially capable to live a complete lifestyle. This is still the trend as Foner describes the immigration as “Ethnic Succession” (chapter 2); as immigrants are reentering new areas, social and economic mobility are increasing. Throughout the book, Foner reiterates the importance on old vs. new immigration and how they differ.  Also, it’s important on who is immigrating because in may cases race, appearance, and gender caused imitations in society.

An important concept that Nancy Foner emphasizes regarding immigration is race. Through the norm social behavior in society, many people believed that race was an important defining characteristic. This led to severe consequences for the different immigrants any whom from West Indians to the Hispanics that came to America for the benefits of freedom. Foner details by category the different discriminations that the races endured when they arrived in America. For example, Jews were criticized by society for having an innate love for money and Italians were condemned on their physical characteristics (low foreheads, open mouths,) and their volatile demeanor. Though they both were white by color, such distinction was pervasive in history and was deemed as proper thoughts for these races. In fact, statistics and data convey that the segregation facing the lighter colored people was far less than that of the darker skinned. This belief of black people being parsimonious and more inclined to crimes in society was widely accepted.

Foner also compares how immigrants kept their ties with their homes and uses the phrase transnationalism to compare how immigrants tie up their bonds with their countries. Primarily, Foner discusses that U.S citizens have close economical, cultural, and political ties with their country.  These types of connections have been discussed by immigration with respect to the fact that they have distinctly changed from the past than those of the present. Such a dramatic transformation was astonishing to notice and can be denoted by several, important parameters: relatives from European countries who would come to U.S for working opportunities keep close ties by sending letters or any other forms of basic communication. Additionally, at a relatively medium return rate, immigrants would go back to their own country for several major reasons: prevention of economic losses during boom-bust times and painful stings of prejudices.

Though there was mutual abhorrence toward this idea transnationalism, many reformers writers believed this policy fosters globalization of America by their important political connections and offering of labor services. Such benefit is emphasized to be a critical favor and can be readily recognized through the advances in technology and communication that has happened over the years. For example, this advance helps immigrants keep their ethnic ties through an effective and cheap method of usage of telephones. Asian Indians were studied to be one of the largest immigrant groups that believed in keeping these ties with their family. Hence, forms of modern communication and technology allowed for more transnationalism and even more racial acceptance by the Americans since there was more commitment to cultural diversity. Overall, this idea brings a whole new realism side to this immigration of the advanced education, strong labor force, dual nationality, and professional financial support. The spread of the benefits allows for transnationalism to grow and celebrated among today’s society.

Foner also proclaims that race helps convey to the reader the varying standpoints that education had on society. Primarily, she references the educational distinctions between Jews and Italians due to the pervasion of prejudice for these two particular immigrant groups in the 20^th century.  For example, her descriptive studies show that Jews barely finished past high school due to the low age requirement for the labor force. In particular, Jews received an inadequate amount of education in America due to the low age requirements, prejudice of race, overflowing of immigrants in the crowded schools, and the crowding of these ethnic groups in NYC. However, Italian parents neglected formal education for their children and wished for them to learn the ways of the labor force.

Differences between the two waves of immigration are clearly evident as the primary goal for early immigrants was to work in factories, which were often located in their homes. The reiteration of this point with the usage of statistical data of the amount of Jews and Italians that were presented in the cramped classes allows for the reader to realize the huge changes that education had back then compared to today. One of them included that the job workforce didn’t have a diploma requirement and the entire college tuition was covered through scholarships and the thought this type of education for immigrant families conveyed a beneficial education standpoint.

Foner discusses several other barriers in order to help explain the loss of education for newcomers. Such examples included: language, poor teaching methods, and others. Hence, proven by these factors, the native whites were always on top of the educational hierarchy who had better graduation rates. However, this distinction of whites versus Jewish immigrants is apparent as Jews continued to dominate higher education opportunities.

By analyzing this historic-based immigration with the contemporary immigrants that come with the shared goal of attaining a better education, a radical education change is shown. Several reasons are demonstrated: higher education requirements for acceptances into better colleges, broader range of education opportunities, toughening of entrance exam requirements into select institutions. The drastic improvements astonishes me as, however, at the same time with analyzing this transition, Professor Foner discusses the plethora of improvements that the government must perform to correct all of the social flaws that came along with these educational reforms. Though these problems may seem apparent, they bring major attention in order to form a better system balance. Such conflicts involve several key factors: overcrowding of schools, budget cuts, immigrants with poor education, inadequate amount of ESL classes needed to provide the students with a sturdy base in the English language, and many others. Exemplifying this mishap, studies were done to show the differing education levels that immigrants from Eastern Europe and Asia have compared to ones over here. The results convey that Asians over represent the city’s public high schools and do well on difficult standardized entrance exams. However, Foner, again, references to the same issue of race that causes various concerns for researchers. Accommodating to the lifestyle in America may cause immigrants to adapt to the teenage schedule of a greater degree of freedom and the rejection to academic efforts. Also, immigrants in New York may face assimilation by their high-crime neighborhoods, which causes them to attain low academic standards by focusing on dangerous actions in order to be more accepted by them.

Ultimately, Immigrants were Americanized in history based on skin color. Since most of the Jews and Italian immigrants were white skinned they would blend in to the society well. Other black Americans and Hispanics who were dark skinned were looked down up and had to adapt to the American lifestyles. Most of them would assimilate to their lifestyles but this black-white division existed throughout the 20th century. However, a upward of socioeconomic status in the U.S would allow second generation Jewish and Italian immigrants to adapt to the lifestyles of America and move up on the social ladder. The differences in gender were another factor that influenced the types of workplaces that they worked in. Though discrimination existed during those times, there was still a force of the large numbers that crowded. This compared to today’s acceptance towards immigration conveys a radical and society change.

 

Conclusion:

Nancy Foner corrects the representation of the different immigration groups. She emphasizes minuet details and statistics that can affect the life of a immigrant. The most important aspect Foner claims is the racial barrier that separates the immigrants. Many had language problems, which prohibited them from opportunities other educated immigrants had. The book overall brought up retrospective views and compared them to modern views. We see the dynamic and radical changes in immigrants of New York. Modern immigrants are able to sustain a middle-class lifestyle. This was unheard of during the 1920s. It amazing how nearly 60 years can affect the lifestyles of immigrants in numerous ways. This is an amazing book if one wants to learn the dynamics in immigration. It gives an interesting aspect into the lives of the people who came to America and I would highly recommend this book to anyone trying to seek knowledge on immigration.