Christine Diaz
LITR 5733
July 27, 1999

Immigrants and the American Dream

Comparing Today's Dream to the Dream Of The Early 20th Century

"Most of the immigrants came to these shores without a penny. But they are the ones who have built the palaces, machines, food, and clothing which America enjoys today. "- Jewish Daily Forward, 1909

The American Dream can be defined as the aspiration of the working class American, immigrant or citizen, to reach heights previously unattainable by past generations to find wealth, security and happiness. It was this dream that drove the mass influx of immigrants at the turn of the 20th century. As indicated below, millions of immigrants from all over Europe poured through the Great Hall at Ellis Island in search of the American Dream.

Number of Immigrants to Pass Through Ellis Island

(1892-1897, and 1901-1931)

Top Ten Countries of Origin

Italy 2,502,310

Russia 1,893,542

Hungary (1905-1931) 859,557

Austria (1905-1931) 768,132

Austria-Hungary (1892-1904) 648,163

Germany 633,148

England 551,969

Ireland 520,904

Sweden 348,036

Greece 245,058

*Source: http:Hwww.historychannel.com/cgi-bin/frarned.cgi

Today, America opens its doors to a new wave of immigrants on search of the Dream.

Immigrants from Mexico, China, the Philippines, and the Dominican Republic, for example, cross our border every day in search of the Dream.

Top Ten Nations of Origin of Inunigrants to

America in 1993*

Mexico 126,561

China (mainland) 65,578

Philippines 63,457

Vietnam 59,614

Dominican Republic 45,420

India 40,121

Poland 27,846

El Salvador 26,818

United Kingdom 18,783

Ukraine 18,316

*Source: U.S. Department of Justice 1993 Statistical Yearbook

What was the experience of the immigrants who first passed through Ellis Island in the early 20th century? How has the American experience changed for today's immigrants? Has the dream changed?

In the early 20th century, immigrants came to American cities such as New York, Boston, Detroit and Chicago in search of work. They settled in lower class neighborhoods, lived in tenement

Bob Hope, Irving Berlin, Frank Capra and Issac Asimov. All of these men passed through the Great Hall at Ellis Island and went on to achieve their own personal version of the American Dream. But for millions more, the American Dream would be a long, distant dream only to be reached by the second generation, after years of work, empty stomachs, sickness and premature death.

In the early 20^th century, immigrants came to American cities such as New York, Boston, Detroit, and Chicago in search of work. They settled in lower-class neighborhoods, lived in tenement buildings, with barely enough money for food and clothing. Immigrants like the McCourt family struggled to make ends meet. Frank McCourt recalls in Angela's Ashes: "The apartment is empty and I wander between the two rooms, the bedroom and the kitchen. My father is out looking for a job and my mother is at the hospital with Malachy. I wish I had something to eat but there is nothing in the icebox but cabbage leaves floating in the melted ice" (20). These European immigrants struggled to meet ends meet. They spent long hours in terrible working conditions, with the threat of losing their jobs or family illness looming overhead.

My own family lived through this struggle. My grandparents, Michael and Helen Bodnar came to America from Austro-Hungary in 1920. After living a short time in the coal-mining town of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, my family moved to the small city of Binghamton, New York. They moved from Wilkes-Barre for the health of my father who had tuberculosis and could not work in or live near the mines. Soon after their arrival in Binghamton, my grandmother gave birth to four children, (two of whom passed away from infant pneumonia) and my grandfather moved to a sanitarium for people infected with tuberculosis (he passed away in 1935 after years in quarantine). My grandmother worked until the day of1her death lacing shoes together in a factory, collecting minimum wage, and earning barely enough to feed my father and his sister. She survived a miscarriage, the early departure of her husband, and struggled with her inability to learn English. My grandmother lived most of her life in a state of depression, as my father and aunt told me, simply because she never wanted to spend her life in America. She came as a young woman, very much in love with my adventuresome grandfather, but never expected to be alone so early on. She struggled to find happiness in a place she never desired to be.

While my grandmother struggled to exist in a strange country, my father thrived on it. As young man he grabbed hold of the American Dream and never let go. He left his hometown for the Air Force, and then for college. On the GI bill, my father attended Stanford University and went on to achieve success as an Advertising Copywriter in San Francisco and New York. He settled in an affluent section of Protestant New England, bought a home and raised his family.

My father's story can be equated to other second-generation immigrants of this time period. In the piece Choosing a Dream: Italians in Hell's Kitchen, Mario Puzo wrote of his young life in New York City where his mother never believed her son could achieve success beyond work on the railroad tracks. Puzo wrote of his peasant-born mother: "And so it was hard for my mother to believe that her son could become an artist. After all, her one dream in coming to America had been to earn her daily bread, a wild dream in itself ' (57). But despite the peasant roots and poor upbringing in Hell's Kitchen, Puzo broke free from his past and achieved the Dream by attending college and becoming a successful author.

Both my father and Mario Puzo's stories are similar to many immigrant children of this era. These second-generation immigrants lived through the struggles of everyday life as children of parents who spoke little English, work hard labor jobs for little money, and battled illness and premature death. These children learned early to straddle between two worlds, the outer American world they embraced in school and the inner world they experienced at home. They had parents who saw a limited future for themselves past what they knew- hard labor. But despite all that, these children overcame their parent's history and their own childhood to achieve the American Dream. They are now the parents and grandparents of generations of European-Americans who have attended college, work white-collar jobs, and own homes. They have settled into lives as Americans, no longer immigrants, and have embraced the life their parents worked so hard to achieve but never experienced for themselves.

Today's immigrants are not coming to America on a boat to Ellis Island. They are getting on an airplane or driving a car across the border, some even walking across on foot. The majority of today's immigrants are from Asia and Latin America. As were their predecessors, today's immigrants come from all walks of life looking for the American Dream. But are they seeking the same Dream as immigrants of the past? Yes, they are looking for wealth, security and happiness, exactly the same thing yesterday's immigrants sought. However, they are also looking to retain, at least in part, their cultural heritage and family connections.

Although some immigrants from the early 20th century did return to the homeland, the majority of immigrants, like my grandparents, established citizenship and a new life in America, never returning to their birthplace. However, with the widespread availability of the telephone, fax machines, email and money wires, today's immigrants can keep in touch regularly with family back home. In addition, as airplane fares continue to be relatively inexpensive, a trip to the homeland is affordable to most immigrants and does not take weeks or months by boat, but a mere few hours by plane.

As reported in the New York Times, this new immigrant tide is enveloping our nation's largest and most ethnically diverse city, New York City, more so than in any other time in reported history.

It is this new wave of immigrants that is changing the face of America. They are a new kind of American, people who embrace world issues and their heritage while using America's resources to achieve their dreams. These 'are Americans who gain success in this country by leveraging our most valuable assets such as higher education, corporate work and the stock market. One example of this new American immigrant was described in the New York Times article "The New Immigrant Tide: A Shuttle Between Two Worlds." In this article, we meet Fernando Mateo, a resident of New York City and Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. A dual citizen, Mr. Mateo embraces America, where he owns a business and raises his children. Yet, he routinely flies back to the Dominican Republic for business and pleasure. Mr. Mateo represents this new immigrant well. He is proud of both his homeland and his new home, wearing a custom designed lapel pin with the flags of both nations displayed. He is choosing what he believes to be the best of both countries; America offers a wealth of opportunity for him and his family, and the Dominican Republic offers family history and culture.

This transient phenomenon also can be seen in the novel, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their

Accents. This is a story of the Garcia de la Torre family of the Dominican Republic, who flee political persecution for a new life in America. Their reason for leaving is similar to many immigrants of the past, such as the Jews, who fled from political or religious persecution in hopes of protecting their family. The Garcia de la Torre family includes four daughters, who move to America when they are children, all following separate paths towards the American Dream while shifting between two countries.

How does the American Dream change for these transient families like the Garcia de la Torre's? While the four daughters met varying degrees of success, they alI achieved American lives.

Among their other American experiences like dating and parties, the girls attended college and

expressed their fundamentally American rights such as freedom of speech. These experiences were distinctly American, experiences that their male dominated country would not allow women to ever experience. Even the Garcia girl's mother enjoyed this new experience: "But Laura had gotten used to the life here. She did not want to go back to the old country where, de la Torre or not, she was only a wife and a mother (and a failed one at that, since she had never provided the required son). Better an independent nobody than a high-class houseslave" (144).

Not all the Garcia girls desired to achieve the American Dream, though. Carla, for example, prayed to return to the Dominican Republic, never believing she could fit into the New World. Yolanda too, despite her mother's hopes and dreams of success, reflected to herself that back in the Dominican Republic that she felt more at home there than in America.

Yolanda's struggle for her place in American society can be exemplified by the incident with her parents and the speech she was to give in honor of her teachers. After worrying about speaking in her less-than-perfect English, Yolanda gained the courage to write a speech that had quoted Walt Whitman. After reading the speech to her mother and father, the house erupted in anger. Her mother thought the speech was powerful and beautiful. It evoked thought and challenged authority, all of which was allowed in a country with free speech. Yet Yolanda's father forbade her to read it, saying it was disgraceful, insubordinate and improper. Yolanda's father, although losing his grip over his daughters in America, won this battle with Yolanda, who wrote a kind speech to the teachers instead.

It was this kind of family struggle that the Garcia de la Torre family dealt with in America. The Garcia girls found themselves struggling with the idea of fighting their old-fashioned father for their American rights? The girls wanted to express freedom of speech, use birth control, and experiment with drugs, to live their own version of the American Dream. But for the Garcia girls, there was a constant struggle over where they belong: in the new country or in the homeland.

That is a similar feeling for many recent immigrants. My husband and I are close to a family who migrated from Venezuela to America six years ago. While they have two children who were bom here, they are building a life for themselves in Texas that is distinctly Venezuelan. They are not immersing themselves into American society. Instead, they spend their free time with other Venezuelans and Latinos discussing politics and economics of the homeland. They almost always cook Venezuelan food, as well as read the Venezuelan newspaper on the Internet and return home several times a year to buy products from home. While immigrants fi-om the past also cooked meals, discussed politics and spent time with friends from homeland, there is a significant distinction between these two immigrant tides. The difference can be seen in the V111, second generation.

The second-generation immigrants from the early 20th century worked to assimilate into American mainstream culture. Like my father, they moved into mainstream society, bought homes, raised children and left the past behind; they became American. My father never once cooked me an Austro-Hungary meal, told me a myth from the homeland or taught me the language he spoke with his mother. He dismissed his heritage and became a proud American.

Many of today's second-generation immigrants are learning the language of the homeland, and like the Garcia girls, they are spending significant amounts of time back in the homeland. They return to the homeland for the summer, or for Christmas, they hear music and learn dances that their parents grew up with. They are also maintaining contacts with relatives and perhaps choosing to return to the homeland when they are old enough; something my father would have never thought to do.

What does this mean for the American Dream? America was the land of opportunity in the early

201h century, and still is. However, the definition of the dream is changing. Today's immigrants

recognize that success is attainable here, with education and perseverance, wealth can be

reached. With most immigrants coming to America from third world countries, it only takes a

modest life here to reach unbelievable heights. For example, my mother-in-law makes the

equivalent to $80 month in Pe O)hile here, my husband and I make three times that much in a

day. By all accounts, my husband, a first generation immigrant, has reached the American

Dream. But while my husband's American Dream includes wealth, it also includes keeping a

connection with his past. His dream includes building a house for his family in Peru while living and working here. He plans to bring his family here, allowing his extended family the chance to earn significantly more income in America before retiring back to the dream house in Peru.

My husband's dream is similar to our friend's from Venezuela. They recently bought a home, are sending their children to the.best schools possibleand are saving money to support themselves and their families in Venezuela at the same time. They routinely travel to Venezuela in addition to having family visiting here and they are proactively planning their move back to the homeland. But, without knowing that all their hard work in perseverance will help them to return to Venezuela, to the casual observer, they look like typical immigrants reaching for the American Dream.

The American Dream has become a buffet cart from which to pick and choose the life you desire. Many immigrants are choosing American colleges, corporate jobs and three bedroom homes, while using the American stock market to earn and save money to use back in the homeland. They are teaching their children the language of the homeland, about their family culture, while embracing American ideals such as democracy and civil rights. They are hard working, industrious people who are helping drive the strong economy we all enjoy. Yet, all the while, are working not only to succeed in our melting pot society, but also to ensure their family history and culture is not lost.

As many children of today's immigrants are learning, my children will know English and Spanish, will dance Meringue and Hip Hop, and eat cerviche and hot dogs. Unfortunately, because my father turned away from his past and did not share his experiences with me before his death, his grandchildren will never know much of their Austro-Hungarian roots. That is the difference. We are entering an era where multiculturalism will accepted and encouraged.

Ultimately, only the future will tell us just how the new American immigrants and their children will affect the long-term vision for our society, but today, one thing is certain: America is still the land of opportunity, the Dream lives on.

Bibliography

Alvarez, Julia. How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. New York: Penguin Group, 1991

"Close up on Immigration." It's Us. 27 June 1999. Time Warner. 27 June 1999. http://www.pathfinder.com/corp/itsus/'iesson3.httnl

"History Channel Exhibits: Ellis Island." History Channel.com. 23 July 1999. History Channel. 23 July 1999. http://www.historychannel.com

McCourt, Frank. Angela's Ashes. New York: Touchstone, 1996

Puzo, Mario. Choosing a Dream: Italians in Hell's Kitchen. Ed. Wesley Brown and Amy Ling. New York: Persea, 1993. 48-59.

Sontag, Deborah and Cecilia W. Dugger. "The New American Tide: A Shuttle Between Worlds." New York Times 19 July 1998, late ed., sec. 1: 1 +.