An Immigrant Story or Two
Immigration makes America. What Trump/Vance/Miller proposes would undo it and make things bad for everyone.
In the early 1900s, my great grandfather Ignazio Soriano made the trip across the Atlantic, from Italy to the United States, alone. Like many Italians who came to L’America during the Great Arrival, Iggy left his hometown, an oversized village nine miles outside Naples called Accera, to escape poverty, disease, earthquakes, and the ineptitude of a young national government that favored the north over the south. Iggy came to America for the reasons nearly ever immigrant – including the Pilgrims - came to this land, to leave a shitty life for the gamble of a better one.
Once in New York City, Iggy worked as a day laborer and eventually became a stonemason in Rome, New York, a small town upstate, on the Erie Canal. Roots established, Iggy went back to Accera for his wife Angela. In 1911, back home in Rome, New York, they produced their first child. Four years later my grandfather Dominic was born. Other Sorianos followed. In 1925, Iggy became a naturalized citizen, as did Angela (their children were already US citizens thanks to birthright citizenship, a constitutional right).
A lot of Italians came over to America during the Great Arrival. In the 1880s, a little over 300,000 Italians took the voyage. By the end of the 1890s, that number had doubled. In the first decade of the 1900s, over two million Italians, mostly from southern Italy, hopped off the boat. And, while these Italian immigrants were demonized as criminals, deviants, and the worst that Europe had to offer us, they were desperately needed as laborers to build a growing country and create a strong economy.
The Second Industrial Revolution came to the United States about 1870. Mass expansion of railways and telegraph lines, which linked small towns to cities, rural areas with urban centers, and big cities to big cities eased communication and greatly expanded interstate trade, leading to rapid economic growth, and labor shortages. Italian immigration – as well as migration from Ireland, Germany, Eastern Europe, China, and other parts of the world – was an economic essential. Even so, there was a huge backlash to the Great Arrival.
Nativist gangs roamed cities looking for immigrants to intimidate and terrorize. The gangs’ tool was extreme violence and their goal was “mass self-deportation.” Native born Americans were to come first, they yelled, so the criminals sent over from places like Italy had to go. Once gone, “true Americans” would have their jobs back and all will be fine. The “funny” thing about the nativist backlash is that so much of it was based on lies, including immigrants were criminals and all Italians were Mafia.
During the Second Industrial Revolution/Great Arrival, America was experience a huge economic expansion. Every advancement – such as the national railroad system, built with Chinese immigrant labor – led to greater growth. Factories multiplied in the cities, as did mining operations in rural areas. More jobs meant more labor, labor that could only come from outside of the US as United States did not have the population numbers to support its labor needs.
The country also needed more wood and brick to build more housing, which meant more lumberjacks, mill workers, masons, drivers, and railroad workers. More food production was needed to feed all these people, thus huge leaps in agriculture and food production. More doctors, more nurses, more cooks, more cleaners, more of nearly every kind of worker were needed.
And with all this, thousands upon thousands small businesses were created – barbershops, greasy spoons, launderers, mechanic shops, corner stores, pharmacies, and a lot more. A lot of these small businesses were founded in cities and towns with large immigrant populations, including in immigrant ghettos, and because of these businesses immigrant and native American communities thrived.
In 1904, Amadeo Pietro Giannini founded the Bank of Italy in San Francisco, California. The son of Italian immigrants, Giannini grew up in San Jose and experienced anti-Italian discrimination. As an adult, he found modest success as a produce dealer and broker. He also made deals between others for a commission. In the late 1800s, he sold off his businesses and entered banking. As a director of San Francisco’s Columbus Savings & Loan, he saw that immigrants faced a lot of discrimination by banks. Being of immigrant stock, he knew that his people were very industrious and business minded, and that with some investment, immigrant communities could take off financially. To Giannini, the problems were easy to see, the solution was acknowledging the connection between all of the above and doing something about it. That something was the Bank of Italy, which eventually became Bank of America, the first US bank to fully open its assets to America’s immigrants.
While I don’t have an A.P. Giannini in my blood, my family is full of hardworking people. We’ve had government workers, stunt divers, bar owners, firefighters, casino operators, boxers, grocers, insurance salesmen, booksellers, nurse’s aides, chefs, barbers, bakers, construction workers, odd-jobbers, and writers. Some of these folks were union members, others not. Some made good money, others struggled. None of us wound up on the dole (though that wouldn’t be wrong). And we never took a job that wasn’t there for the taking.
My family’s immigration story and that of Italo-Americans is mirrored by the experience of others. While language, ethnicity, appearance, and geographic origin put a spin on the experience of each immigrant group, especially over time, the similarities are great. We were all wanted for our labor. We made a lot of money for native born folks. We were despised and discriminated against. Most of us were targeted by nativist groups like the American Legion and the Ku Klux Klan. We worked long hours for low pay, and took our opportunities where we could find them.
Our immigrant families were stuffed into ghettos and remained there both because it was difficult to get out and the ghettos were far safer than trying to assimilate in “White” neighborhoods and suburbs. In our ghettos, we created businesses and built ethnic empires. We organized ourselves politically and voted in blocs large enough to swing elections. We built power and with that power came resentment and violence. So, we organized to defend ourselves. We defended ourselves through neighborhood-watch type groups and civil rights organizations, but also through gangs and, eventually, organized crime mobs. And, while our illicit defenders never dominated our stories and were exclusive to a fraction of each ethnic group (you wouldn’t know that if entertainment culture is your guide to history), the illegit extracurricular doesn’t define our experience.
While I write this as a proud Italo-American, switch up names and timelines and experiential details, throw a different accent on it, the taste and smell of different cultures, and the words I just wrote could come from the spawn of any of group that went and is going through the American immigrant experience.
In 1942, the United States signed an agreement with Mexico called the Mexican Farm Labor Agreement, which led to the creation of the Bracero Program. The program formalized the flow of migrant labor between the two countries, allowing for Mexican workers to, theoretically, work in the US for a decent wage and under fair working conditions. The program allowed for migrant workers (braceros) to organize (something they did when what was promised didn’t materialize) and avoid military conscription. Braceros also were provided with a safe system to transfer some of their earning back home.
Though there were hitches in the system, the Bracero program was a big success, especially for American agriculture and vitally during World War II, when much of America’s work force was fighting Nazis overseas. It was women and migrant workers that stepped into jobs vacated by GI’s, kept the American economy running, and created the foundation for a gigantic post-war economic expansion and the creation of the American middle class.
You see, the end of World War II did not mean that America’s fighting men returned to farms and factories. Their war experiences, especially in Europe, made them want more. The American government was happy to oblige. Through the GI Bill, (White) veterans went to college and bought their first home. They used their education and assets to create businesses and build their wealth. They sent their kids to college, set them up in businesses, and gave them seed money or small loans to buy their first homes. Now that they were in the middle class, they weren’t going to labor on farms or factory floors. And they didn’t have to because braceros and others were there to do those jobs.
Now, I don’t want to shit-shine the Bracero Program. A lot of what was promised to the workers was ignored by American business. The process for getting to the US was brutal and dehumanizing. At “U.S. reception centers, workers were inspected by health departments, stripped & sprayed with DDT, a dangerous pesticide.” Migrants were intimidated, harassed, extorted, and assaulted. Corrupt officials on both sides of the border trucked in bribery and corruption. Braceros found it hard to access their government run savings accounts and many lost thousands. There was constant dickering between the governments, each trying to gain an edge for themselves and their business clients. And American nativist groups and bigots were constantly trying to shut it down, using the lie that the braceros were taking all the jobs.
In 1954, the US government started a massive purge of immigrants, Operation Wetback (OpW). Perhaps you’ve heard of it. Donald Trump and Stephen Miller certainly have. OpW saw millions of Mexican immigrants rounded up and deported. White churches and labor unions supported the purge and urged the government to shut down the Bracero Program for no other reason than to assert White supremacy. Negotiations to wind down the program led to the program’s 1964 shut down.
As noted, there were a lot of problems with the Bracero Program, but the central complaints of its opponents are bunk. Nativists said the braceros were the worst of Mexico’s worst, prisoners and criminals were sent to invade us by the Mexican government. They claimed that millions of Americans were suffering unemployment thanks to braceros taking their jobs. They insisted that “migrant crime” was rampant. Reusing Jim Crow-era slander against Black Americans, nativists fear-mongered that Brown migrants were going after the White Woman. Not only were immigrants degrading our culture, said the bigots, but our children were being led into barbarianism. This so-called rock & roll music might have come from the jungles of Africa, but it’s those damn Mexicans and their marijuana that make Our White Children susceptible to deviance and criminality.
Not only do these accusations sound familiar, but they were as bunk then as they are today. There’s no date to support claims of “migrant crime waves” or any increase in crime by immigrants. Complaints about the impact of multiculturalism rest on the prejudice of a few, not data and certainly not the desires of most Americans. And we are perfectly able to degrade our own culture without help from “outsiders.”
Further, countless studies on the Bracero Program conclude that native born American workers benefited from migrant labor. Immigration freed up the native work force to go to college and find higher paying jobs outside of agriculture and off the factor floor. American agriculture and the business sector benefited greatly due to having a low-cost labor force that was stable and worked within a system with clear rules and regulations. And, even though they were often cheated and abused, the braceros also found benefits in pay higher than could be had back home, stable work, and increased opportunities. So, not only do today’s nativists sound a lot like yesterday’s, not only are they just as wrong as their forebearers were, the benefits of migrant labor today are not much different than they were back then.
Another thing that is missing in contemporary anti-immigration rhetoric is a plan or even a “concept of a plan.” Donald Trump, JD Vance, Stephen Miller and other xenophobes want “mass deportation,” but they say nothing about who will work the jobs previously held by migrants. They lean into the lie that we have massive unemployment, mostly of native-born White men (according to the department of labor only 3.1% of the White American population is unemployed), and that these unemployed workers will happily show up to the local meat packing plant for work. Remove the migrants and Americans will be free to finally dig ditches and pick strawberries. All bullshit.
We know by experience, especially through the pandemic, that even when there’s high unemployment, native-born Americans do not turn up at the local farm to work a hoe. The early 2020s saw no native rush on dishwashing or chicken plucking jobs. Even when business owners desperately started hiking pay to entice workers, while state government shut down unemployment programs to force people into the work force, labor shortages persisted. It was not until immigrant workers were allows back into the US (following the end of pandemic restrictions, not by the “invitation” of Biden and Harris), that the labor shortage eased, something that happened as unemployment numbers came crashing down and wages finally started to increase.
You tell me how, in the real world, using real data to support real world arguments, that immigration hurts the United States? Immigration does not cause poverty and crime, nor does it take away jobs from native-born Americans. I’ve yet to understand how pizza, tacos, and sushi have degraded our culture. You want to deport someone? Start with South African immigrant and government welfare queen Elon Musk, the loathsome Ayn Rand, Henry Kissinger, and Melania Trump, but leave me Albert Einstein, Isabel Allende, Dikembe Mutombo, John Muir, Eddie Van Halen, Wyclef Jean, Joni Mitchell, Emma Goldman, Marcel Duchamp, Mariano Rivera, and Hedy Lamarr.
The proposed mass deportation/zero immigration policy of Donald Trump et al would be a disaster for the United States – economically, culturally, socially, and, yes, politically. It is a policy based on bigotry and emotion, not common sense and reason. None of what promises – overtly – is achievable, and what it promises covertly – a White America – is gruesome, insane, and, frankly, anti-American.