Chapter One of Nancy Foner’s From Ellis Island to JFK explains a lot about the immigrants who are coming in and who have come to New York that many people drastically overlook when speaking about the topic of immigration. While in the wave of immigrants from one hundred years ago, we had few variety of nationalities, today America is home to many West Indians, Asian Indians, Africans, and Europeans. As we already know, with the immigrants of old, “professionals were scarce” (Foner 15). In fact, only a small percentage of the Jewish and Italian immigrants between the years of 1899 and 1910 were professionals in their home countries. I found the contrast between the immigrants of the early twentieth and late nineteenth centuries and those of this century to be very fascinating, especially with the bad reputation that immigrants get today. Although today’s immigrants come to America for similar reasons as their predecessors, they come with more credentials: “According to the 1990 census, 10 percent of the working-age immigrants living in New York City were college graduates; an additional 6 percent had a master’s degree or more“ (Foner 15). This is a very different picture than what is painted in the media today, portraying immigrants as the opposite of educated and professional. Presently, many of the immigrants coming here today are more educated and professional than many Americans.
Another interesting aspect of this chapter is one of the blaring differences between new and old immigrants: their modes of travel. The old immigrants had to endure the sickening conditions of the ships that they arrived on. These ships were, “scrubbed and disinfected the lavatories only on the last day of the journey—just in time for the official inspection upon landing” (Foner 31).” In addition to these unsanitary conditions, the food was also horrid. The passengers were fed disgusting meats, fish, vegetables, and fruits. On the contrary, this age of immigrants have it made compared to the old immigrants. New immigrants arrive on a plane to John F. Kennedy Airport. On the plane, the clean, clean plane, the passengers have space for themselves, and also receive snacks and drinks for a short journey to the United States. A journey that only takes mere hours, in great contrast to the lengthy travel the old immigrants had to endure.
These two points stuck out to me in the chapter because they make me think about today’s immigrants differently. First off, I think about their many qualifications to be active in American society, a right that many try to deny them. Additionally, I think about how lucky it is for today’s immigrants that their journey to America and finding their place in her has much more ease than it did one hundred years ago.
