Italian Immigration Research Paper

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The Same but Different Ryan Myers Ms. Maureen MacLeod Word Count: 1013 12 April 2012 AMH-2097-04 Immigration, it is something that affects all countries in some way, shape, or form. With that being said, there has not been any other country in the world that has been able to compete with the amount of immigrants that the United States has had over time since it has been created. There have been so many different races, ethnicities, and religions that have had to assimilate in America that the country will never be anything but a diverse melting pot. Though there has been a multitude of different nationalities that have immigrated to the United States, the Irish, Italian, and Japanese are some of the most different and controversial…show more content…
that is now the fourth largest European ethnicity in the country is the Italian-American. The immigration of Italians to the U.S. was the most intense from the years 1880 to 1920, that period of time alone brought in an estimated 4 million of them. The reasons for the surge of Italians in those forty years was because of the Unification that took place in 1861 and the new constitution that ensued which supported northern Italy and oppressed the people of south Italy, especially farmers and the like, forcing many Italians to subsequently leave the country in search of better life in the United States. What all these immigrants did not realize is that they were going to have an extremely difficult time of trying to assimilate into the American way of life, especially since they usually could not speak English and they were treated unfairly. In the autobiography of Rocco Corresca, who was a mere child when he immigrated to America, he talks about the unjust treatment and wages that he witnesses happening to Italian laborers. The scenario that Corresca describes is as follows: “Most of the men in our room worked at digging the sewer. Bartolo got them the work and they paid him about one quarter of their wages. Then he charged them for board and he bought the clothes for them, too. So they got little money after all.” Adjusting was difficult for Italians for a while but eventually things got easier when Americans…show more content…
The Irish, Italian, and Japanese all play a significant role in the immigration history of the U.S. and they all have similarities as well as differences. All three of those immigrant groups were at first denied many things in America and they were not paid well by anywhere they worked. With that said though, the Irish and Italians never had to go through anything like the internment camps that the Japanese dealt with while at the same time the Japanese were not being constantly insulted for everything about them by Americans like the Irish were for so long. These are all ethnicities that make up the United States today and without them and their immigration history, the country would not be the same as it is today and we would be lacking that ethnicity in the melting pot that is America. Bibliography Doyle, John. “Suffer for About the First Six Months After Leaving Home.” Journal of the American Irish Historical Society 12 (1913), 201–204. Corresca, Rocco. “The Biography of a Bootblack.” Independent, LIV (Dec. 4, 1902), 2863 67. Ling, Huping. Voices of the Heart. Michigan: Truman State University Press, 2007. -------------------------------------------- [ 1 ]. Doyle Journal of the American Irish Historical Society [ 2 ]. Doyle Journal of the American Irish Historical Society [ 3 ]. Corresca The Biography of a Bootblack
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