Despite all the recent news coverage there has been on immigration and the “path to citizenship,” after reading Foner’s “Who They Are and Why They Have Come,” I can safely say that I thought I knew a lot more than I actually do on immigration to America.
I knew that in the past one of the largest obstacles in immigration involved the various laws and quotas America had imposed, limiting the types and numbers of people who could immigrate to America. However, it never occurred to me that immigration was also largely dependent on immigrants’ countries of origin and their exit policies. I did not realize the extent to which countries had prevented their citizens from immigrating, with their own quotas and emigration policies.
I also was shocked to learn how contagious, what Foner calls, “American fever” had become. It was astonishing to read that an Italian mayor had actually greeted visitors “in the name of…the inhabitants of this town…whom are in America..[or] preparing to go” (23), and that children “played at emigrating” instead of playing hide-and-go-seek or tag.
Additionally, it was interesting to learn how the “American fever” has translated into the risks, hardships and danger people in the past, and present, have been willing to endure on the off chance that they will succeed in immigrating. Foner details how families are willing to break up so that some can go to America before the others, and how some immigrants were packed in cattle cars or shoved into the steerage of a boat and forced to stay there for days. She also outlined the drastic costs and risks they must take, such as the thousands of dollars spent on false documents or their fabricated bank statements and landholdings. It is crazy to think how all of these immigrants had no guarantee that they’d succeed or lead a better life in America, but yet they were willing to try nevertheless.
