Could your immigrant ancestors pass the test??? [View All]

[catnhatnh]

Because I received some recent e-mails from a family member and guess what-under the conditions they listed my family could never be "Americans"...

Among other prerequisites they seem to think that all past immigrants had a sponsor, a residence, and a job waiting. Not bloody likely if your bog-trotting ancestors were escaping the potato famine. At best they worked "across the water" (England) and earned enough after sending most home to starving relatives-those few still alive-for passage on ships forever after referred to as "coffin-ships". They arrived with NOTHING save the strength to face signs reading "NINA" (no Irish need apply) and a determination to grab a better life.

Hater E-mails now extol them for their perseverance and drive and how well they "assimilated" forgetting a century of Irish (and Italian,and etc.) ghettos and gangs. They forget the fight for prosperity and respect. They forget how eagerly each group scrimped and saved and eagerly imported relatives of both working age and elderly to the land of opportunity...

Of course when my "Wretched Refuse" arrived, the ports were open-the upper classes both needed and welcomed cheap labor just as the upper classes need and want cheap labor from the South now. And then and now the media-electronic now but yellow rag newspapers then-excoriated the newcomers for taking jobs from "Americans".

But then and now without jobs from the wealthy or today corporations this "land of opportunity" would be just another worthless dead end.

Just know that the whole while they revile the (Irish, Italian, Polish, Mexican) immigrants and blame them for the ills you suffer and they cause,it was never about patriotism or being a "real" American. As it was then, it is now about percentage points on the bottom line.