In both readings the authors, Foner and Anbinder share the horrifying personal experiences of immigrants from Italy and China. In “From Ellis Island to JFK,” Foner relays their descriptions of their journeys taken to come to the United States. One journalist posing as an immigrant from Naples in 1906 wrote: “How can a steerage passenger remember that he is a human being when he must first pick the worms his food…and eat in his stuffy, stinking bunk, or in the hot and fetid atmosphere of a compartment where 150 men sleep, or in juxtaposition to a seasick man.”
While reading the dense statistics, brief narratives such as the one above are what really stood out to me in the readings. Looking at charts and percentages, it is easy to be removed from the material – but descriptions given by people who actually experienced ten days to two weeks in disgusting, smelly, unsanitary steerage make you sympathize and force you to view the statistics in a different light. Can you imagine living in the belly of a boat with 150 other people for two whole weeks in your own excrement without washing, eating soggy bread, a “queer, unanalyzable mix of vegetables,” and stinking, rotting meat and fish? When I imagine picking the worms out of my food, or sleeping on a cot infested with insects, or even not showering for more than a few days I am completely, beyond grossed out.
Hundreds of thousands of people who came to the United States had to endure horrific conditions just to be here. My question is: is it really worth it? In most cases, I don’t really think it is. When you think about it, most of the immigrants who came here in the early 1900’s came to live in slums and work multiple, miserable, menial, minimum wage jobs. What’s worse is that the first generation immigrants never really reap the benefits of their labor – it’s their children who live quasi-comfortable lives at their parent’s expense.
Although much has changed for the “New Immigrants,” such as a more comfortable journey through JFK, and the “New Immigrants” themselves have changed to include well-trained, skilled workers and college graduates – a lot is still the same. The “Old Immigrants” (who were mainly peasants and unskilled laborers) and “New Immigrants” are still doing a lot of the same menial jobs. Isn’t the fact that “the Korean greengrocer and the Indian newsstand dealer on the corner may have college and even graduate degrees” sort of upsetting?
Think of all the things immigrants have to give up to be Americans. Some dish out thousands of dollars for fake paper work, some endure terrible journeys in steerage, and some have to give up their highly respected professions and status to start over as janitors or street vendors. For the poorest of the poor or the people who are actually suffering because of an oppressive government (like the Russian Jews) or from hunger or extreme poverty (like the Irish immigrants during the potato famine), maybe coming to America could be worth it, but for the middle classes of immigrants, I don’t think it is, especially if “Americans” who are of your same class in whatever country you were from are going to look down on you just because you are an immigrant here.
