Like William and ToniAnn, I found immigrants discriminating against other immigrants to be both infuriating and ironic. All immigrants arrived in America searching for something, whether it was jobs or freedom or relief from the accursed potato blight. For immigrants, America represented the light of the end of the journey–for them New York City was a beacon of hope. Maybe this explains why most Irish immigrants who were originally sent to Canada preferred to move to the City.
In many cases, what we perceive something to be, or what we want something to be is actually more important than what the something actually is. Immigrants, past and present, wanted New York City to hold for them a better life. There’s no doubt that they would have heard of the conditions of the City from relatives already living there, but I think that they needed to believe that New York City would provide a better life for them in order to survive the ordeals of that they were going through at that time and the sufferings on the journey here.
