Italian Immigration Experience
Immigrants Experiences from Italy to the United
States
Italian emigration was fueled by dire poverty. Life in Southern Italy, including the islands of Sicily and Sardinia, offered landless peasants little more than hardship, exploitation, and violence. Even the soil was poor, yielding little, while malnutrition and disease were widespread.
Most of this generation of Italian immigrants took their first steps on U.S. soil in a place that has now become a legend—Ellis Island.
In 1907 was the peak year for Italian migration to the U.S. The voyage from Naples and New York, which is 4,188 knots, is performed by these steamers in fourteen to sixteen days, which included one days stoppage at Gibraltar.
A 15-year-old girl was the first Ellis Island …show more content…
The Italian immigrants who passed the test of Ellis Island went about transforming the city that they found before them. Many previous immigrant groups, such as those from Germany and Scandinavia, had passed through New York City in decades past, but most had regarded the city merely as a way station, and had continued on to settle elsewhere in the country. This generation of Italian immigrants, however, stopped and made their homes there; one third never got past New York City.
Immigrants’ work places could be as unhealthy as their homes. A substantial number of southern Italian immigrants had only worked as farmers, and were thus qualified only for unskilled, and more dangerous, urban labor. Many Italians went to work on the growing city’s municipal works projects, digging canals, laying paving and gas lines, building bridges, and tunneling out the New
York subway system. In 1890, nearly 90 percent of the laborers in
New York’s Department of Public Works were Italian immigrants.
Italians found work throughout the city, in many of the improvised trades that have long been a haven for immigrants, such as shoemaking, masonry, bartending, and barbering. For a time, some observers felt that Italians operated every fruit-vendor’s
States
Italian emigration was fueled by dire poverty. Life in Southern Italy, including the islands of Sicily and Sardinia, offered landless peasants little more than hardship, exploitation, and violence. Even the soil was poor, yielding little, while malnutrition and disease were widespread.
Most of this generation of Italian immigrants took their first steps on U.S. soil in a place that has now become a legend—Ellis Island.
In 1907 was the peak year for Italian migration to the U.S. The voyage from Naples and New York, which is 4,188 knots, is performed by these steamers in fourteen to sixteen days, which included one days stoppage at Gibraltar.
A 15-year-old girl was the first Ellis Island …show more content…
The Italian immigrants who passed the test of Ellis Island went about transforming the city that they found before them. Many previous immigrant groups, such as those from Germany and Scandinavia, had passed through New York City in decades past, but most had regarded the city merely as a way station, and had continued on to settle elsewhere in the country. This generation of Italian immigrants, however, stopped and made their homes there; one third never got past New York City.
Immigrants’ work places could be as unhealthy as their homes. A substantial number of southern Italian immigrants had only worked as farmers, and were thus qualified only for unskilled, and more dangerous, urban labor. Many Italians went to work on the growing city’s municipal works projects, digging canals, laying paving and gas lines, building bridges, and tunneling out the New
York subway system. In 1890, nearly 90 percent of the laborers in
New York’s Department of Public Works were Italian immigrants.
Italians found work throughout the city, in many of the improvised trades that have long been a haven for immigrants, such as shoemaking, masonry, bartending, and barbering. For a time, some observers felt that Italians operated every fruit-vendor’s