Italian immigration to the United States

Italian Immigration Late 19th to Early 20th Century

Italian Immigration to the U.S.

During the latter part of the 19th century and the first part of the 20th century, the United States experienced a mass influx of Italian migration. Between 1880 and 1920, more than 4 million Italians immigrated to the United States. One of the chief reasons Italians left Italy was because of poverty; many Italians hoped to come to America just long enough to make enough money to change their situations; many did not plan on staying permanently; however there were political reasons as well. This paper will explore some of the reasons for the mass migration of Italians to the U.S. And the impact their immigration had on the United States. The paper will also discuss some of the challenges that Italian immigrants faced -- for example, pervasive racism. The assimilation for many Italians was not an easy one and this paper will attempt to discuss the biggest challenges and how the United States has changed in terms of accepting immigrants and how it has more progress to make.

The United States has been characterized by immigration since its founding in 1776, and even before then, America had attracted immigrants from all over the world (Di Benedetto 2000). Cavaioli (2008) defines immigration as a two-way process: immigrants integrate into a new society, and they also transform that society. Since the very beginning, immigrants have made and then re-made American society, and they are still making and re-making it to this very day (2008). The Italian immigrants who came to America beginning in 1870 until approximately 1920 had a significant impact on their own country's history, and they also made a huge impact on America's society and history. While today we know Italian-Americans to be well-educated, career-driven people, the Italian immigrants who first came to America were for the most part poor, uneducated, illiterate, and unskilled. Sowell (1981) notes that by as late as 1900, the illiteracy rate for southern Italy was 70%, more than ten times that of England, France, or Germany at the same time. As well, southern Italians were openly hostile to education and even disparaged it in the home (1981). These attitudes, Sowell (1981) claims, would persist among Italian-American immigrants and to a certain degree their descendents. The United States became witness to "a massive flow of Italians from a heavily populated society dominated by regional and ruling class interests, and a government that ignored the needs of its people" (2008).

One of the most obvious peculiarities of the Italian immigration to the U.S. is the fact that one can clearly outline the migratory trends and waves. De Benedetto (2000) notes that the first wave began with the colonists in the 1600s and lasted until 1820; the second wave began in 1820 and lasted until 1870s, which saw the arrival of some 2.5 million immigrants between 1830 and 1850 alone; the third wave was from 1870 until 1960; and, the fourth wave, beginning in the 1970s is still going on today (2000). However, some of the biggest peculiarities in Italian emigration to the United States seems to be the time from about 1870 until 1920: for example, most of the Italian immigrants were rural people who would go on to become urban people; little enclaves of Italians separated by their regions back home in Italy would cluster together and form communities; and, Italians adaptation to America would be much more difficult than it was for any other group of immigrants during this timeframe.

Beginning around the year 1870, births in Italy were rapidly increasing while death rates were rapidly decreasing (Mintz 2007). This population growth along with poverty and natural disasters such as the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, which burned down the town of Naples, and Mount Etna (2007) spurred one of the biggest migrations to the United States in history (2007); the United States became the largest single receiver of Italian immigrants in the world (Oracle 2010). The year 1871 is typically considered the official year of the mass migration from southern Italy because of the fact that Italy had become a unified nation with a new democratic institution -- yet the south did not enjoy any of the benefits from the new development (Rapczynski 2010).

Southern Italy, where most of the immigrants came from during the latter part of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th century, had not been treated as well by nature or man throughout history (Sowell 1981). The major accomplishments of the Italian Renaissance were of northern Italian origins and really did not impact the south. Columbus, Dante, Michelangelo, and Rossini were all northern Italians (1981) and the history of the Roman Empire -- "the glory that was Rome" -- meant nothing to southern Italian peasants (1981). Sowell (1981) notes that Spartacus' rebellion of 90,000 slaves happened in southern Italy as well as other uprisings over centuries of history -- however, all brutally crushed as their wasn't any sufficient unity among the oppressed peoples of the region to gain a strong movement.

For centuries the southern Italians had suffered. The agricultural aspect alone was incredibly bleak: the land was not irrigated nor were there trees being planted to stop erosion and floods and soil quality was poor. There were also financial burdens: taxes had increased and the economy was stagnant. Even more devastating: disease like cholera and malaria were killing southern Italians at an alarming rate (2010). With little choice, the thousands of chiefly southern Italians who made their way to the United States and passed through Ellis Island would forever change the city of New York and other cities such as Philadelphia -- however, the transition for the immigrants would not be an easy one as they were subject to pervasive racism, crowded and filthy living condition, and severe lack of nutrition (2010). Despite all the harsh realities of their new beginning, Italian immigrants -- like other groups of immigrants (e.g., Chinese, Japanese, Greeks, Mexicans and Slavs) (2007) -- would make the United States their permanent homes and change the way that Americans view immigrants; though the change would not be easy.

Historians use the term "birds of passage" to describe the kinds of immigrants who never had the intention of making the United States their permanent home (Mintz 2007). The Italian immigrants who came to America before 1900 were chiefly men (approximately 78%) (2007) between the ages of 24 and 45 (Rapczynski 2010); they had left their families behind -- parents, wives, and children -- in order to find work and eventually return to Italy with enough money to take care of their families. The majority of these "birds of passage" came to America in the early spring when temperatures were becoming warmer; they would work until the end of the fall, before temperatures dropped, and then they would go back home to their gentler climates in Italy for the winter (2007). Approximately 20 to 30% of those Italians who went back stayed in Italy permanently (2007). The return of Italians to Italy affected Italian-Americans who remained, as well the people and culture back in Italy. "Those from America took back to Italy not only material wealth but also different views of the world -- including more appreciation of education" (Sowell 1981).

Most of the Italian immigrants who came to America looked at the journey as purely a way to continue their traditional lives back home; they were not, in any way, leaving Italy as an expression of rejection -- even though the living conditions were by no means ideal there. But whereas the Irish immigrants were able to "merge" into the mainstream quite easily, because they were "white" and they wanted to become American citizens and had come to America as settlers rather than as sojourners, the Italians did not "merge" into mainstream life (Takaki 2008). Only 10% of Irish immigrants went back to Ireland, while Takaki (2008) notes that the Italians had a return rate ranging from 40 to 60%. Perhaps it was because of the Italian desire to return home to their cultures and traditions that made the Italian immigration plight so rough.

The racism that the Italians endured wasn't all that different from the racism that other groups such as the Chinese, Japanese, Africans and Jews had to endure (Takaki 2008). Rapczynski (2010) notes that the discrimination that these immigrants faced stemmed from a rising anxiety about large-scale immigration. This anxiety started to influence a political response by the middle of the 19th century. In 1840s and 1850s, the "Know-Nothing Party," a nativist American political party that created a movement out of the fear of too many immigrants in America, described immigrants as paupers and wanted a major curtailment in citizenship privileges (2008). The most frequent suggestion was to require a 21-year period for naturalization and ban any foreign-born individuals from holding any major office (2008).

Rapczynski (2008) states that the Italian immigrants who came to America in the late 19th/early 20th century were farmers, however, they did not farm in America for a number of different reasons. The biggest reason for this was financial. Farming takes time to sow, grow and harvest, and there was simply not time for that; the Italian immigrant needed to make as much money as he could in the least time possible; farming simply would not work (2008). Farming also implied a certain amount of permanence, which was not the plan for many Italian immigrants (Mintz 2007).

Land in America was also quite expensive. There had been free land in the west that was given out under the Homestead Act, but that was no longer available (2008). The Italians with their agricultural backgrounds became mostly urban people (Oracle 2010). Rapczynski (2008) posits that another reason could have been because farming simply reminded them of the poor conditions that had left behind in Italy and they wanted to do something different. Because of the vastness of the land in America, many Italians considered the farming profession to be much too isolated (2008) and they were probably uncomfortable with not having other Italians nearby. Because many of them did not want to feel isolated in America (at least any more than they were because of the pervasive racism that existed), neighborhoods became where the Italian immigrant would stay permanently (2008).

Italian immigrants never wanted to go too far away from their neighborhood streets as they were not comfortable with meeting non-Italians (many Americans had names for them like "wop," "guinea," and "dago" (2008) and their English, for the most part, was very limited (2008). There were stores that would not sell its items to Italians and landlords who would not rent homes. Because of this, many Italians would all live very close to each other, even if it meant -- and it often did -- living in very dirty city tenements (2008).

There was a definite pervasiveness of racism against Italians. Gjerde (1998) discusses the dissent towards southern Europeans and states that their "inferior" characteristics was believed to have the potential to pollute the American bloodstream. Overall, the general attitude towards immigrants -- and especially southern and eastern European immigrants -- was a racist one (1998).

Many considered the cities "moral cesspools" (Cavaioli 2008) as this was where many immigrants lived.

Organized labor, dominant religious groups, racists, and others motivated by eugenics sought to protect the American system from this invasion of people they considered to be of "low moral character," distinct form the people who came from northern and northwestern Europe.

Yet the city was the most common permanent destination for many Italian immigrants for the chief reason that most simply did not have enough money to move anywhere else once they had arrived to the U.S. (Inglish 2010). In cities, clusters of Italians from the same area in Italy would live together in close communities.

In some cases, the population of a single Italian village ended up living on the same block in New York, or even the same tenement building, and preserved many of the social institutions, habits of worship, grudges, and hierarchies from the old country. In Italy, this spirit of village cohesion was known as campanilismo -- loyalty to those who live within the sound of the village church bells (Library of Congress 2004).

Sowell (1981) notes that this clustering of individuals from certain localities in Italy wasn't peculiar to America. In the large Italian immigrant population of Argentina around the same time, people from one area of Italy clustered together in much the same fashion. However, while there may have been a concentration of certain groups of Italians -- whether Sicilians or Neapolitans, Italians rarely made up the majority of any large neighborhood in American cities (1981). Other immigrant groups like the Germans, Jews, or Irish -- generally shared the same neighborhood.

The Italians immigrants were segregated from the larger society in the same sense that their contemporary immigrants were -- that immigrant neighborhoods seldom contained any Native American families. Italians were, however, far from being randomly distributed. Italians in 1880 and 1910 were more 'segregated' (in the statistical sense of deviation from a theoretically random distribution) than other immigrants and more segregated than blacks in the same years (Sowell 1981).

Unlike other immigrants that came to America, Italians suffered from exploitation by people of the same nationality and religion (Mintz 2007). The new immigrants didn't think of themselves necessarily as "Italians" but rather as "Neapolitans," "Sicilians," "Calabrians," or "Syracuseans" (Library of Congress 2004). This can probably be best understood by the fact that until 1861, Italy was not a consolidated state. The political, social, and economic divisions within the Italian peninsula prevented cooperative development and each area had its own distinct set of problems and separate history, customs, and dialect (Scarpaci & Mormino 2008). Only when Italians got to America did they truly understand what the concept of nation meant. Di Benedetto (2000) states that Italians became Americans before they were ever truly Italians.

With the exception of the Native American, every American is America is an immigrant. The United States is the prime example of the ultimate multiracial and multinational nation -- however, despite this fact, immigration issues are still a major issue in American politics and culture. The Italians who immigrated to the United States in the latter part of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th century endured much strife in order for later Italians to become successful and welcomed people in America.

Italian-Americans have hung on to many of their cultural traits from their homeland, however, unlike Jews who have a strong preoccupation with Israel, Italian-Americans do not have the same identity and nationalistic feeling for Italy (Sowell 1981). Italian-Americans were ready and willing to take part in the invasion of Italy by the U.S. Army in World War II without feeling a total sense of conflict when it came to their loyalties (1981).

America has proved to be the ultimate land of opportunity for the millions of immigrants who have chosen to call it home. For the Italians who came to America, it was opportunity turned into the reality of progress only by hard work and perseverance (Sowell 1981).

Despite America's self-proclaimed status as a "melting pot" alongside the fact that the United States is a nation built by immigrants, the U.S. still struggles with issues concerning immigration and issues that go along with it such as race. This is obvious when one considers the problem of illegal immigrants in the United States and Arizona's new immigration law. Arizona's new immigration law that went into effect in July of 2010 makes the failure to carry immigration documents a crime and instructs the police to question people about their immigration status and request to see they documents if there is reason to think that they are illegal (Elder 2010). Federal law makes it so that noncitizens carry documents to prove that they are in the country legally. Arizona makes the failure to do so a state crime (2010). The law says: "For any lawful stop, detention or arrest…where reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien…a reasonable attempt shall be made…to determine the immigration status of the person" (2010). Many believe that the law is unconstitutional and that there are too many gray areas to be morally right or fair. Can a person be stopped because they are darker skinned and may be Mexican? Well, if someone were stopped for a reason that wasn't associated with illegal entry into the United States, can looking a certain way make a police officer suspect that he or she is in the U.S. illegally? What constitutes reasonable suspicion? What is a lawful stop? (2010).