An Immigration Conversation; Lady Liberty is Weeping

Unveiling of The Statue of liberty, 1886; Edward Moran, Museum of the City of New York

Though I am usually a glass-half-full person, try as I might, I cannot find anything positive about the current tragic status of immigration in this country. I’m biased. I admit it. That’s because this issue is very personal for me.

My father came here from Sicily in his early twenties, after surviving a poverty-stricken childhood, a stint in the Italian army during World War I, and hunger and mistreatment while a German prisoner of war. Having heard about the boundless opportunities available in that mythical land called America, he was desperate to go there. But he had no connections to help him and no money for passage, so he grasped the only avenue he saw. He came as a stowaway, enduring countless hardships.

A hard worker, once here he embraced the possibilities America offered. Within a fairly short time, he honed his rudimentary barbering skills and eventually was able to open his own shop, while working at odd jobs evenings and weekends and walking miles to and from work whenever he could save a ten-cent bus fare. During this time, he met and married my mother and was thrilled to become the father of an American — me. Eventually, he and my mother were able to buy a home, which soon became the showcase of the neighborhood. People driving by would stop their cars to take pictures of the beautiful rock garden my Dad had built in front and the profusion of flowers surrounding the house. A portion of the backyard boasted a trove of prize-winning tomatoes, zucchini and other vegetables that thrived under the ministrations of my Dad’s green thumb.

After a childhood and adolescence of never having enough to eat, he was touchingly grateful for the land on which he could actually grow an abundance of food, which he fiercely protected from marauding rabbits and woodchucks but happily shared with neighbors. Next to me, his pride and joy was his “fruit salad” baby — a pear tree onto whose trunk he had spliced branches of apple and peach trees, and which bloomed every year, producing a crop of all three fruits.

While enjoying this bounty, his goal of becoming an American citizen remained foremost. Eventually after years of fighting bureaucratic obstacles that were thrown in his path because of his long-ago unconventional entry — and even being classified as an “Enemy Alien” during World War II — his persistence paid off, and he was finally able to achieve his dream of citizenship.

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An Immigration Conversation; Lady Liberty is Weeping

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