Immigration

[studio1009]

 As part of my downsizing, I decided to look through some of my deceased mother's files.  There was a letter from my paternal uncle with some genealogy information plus his own memories of the earlier generation.

One story that intrigued me was my great-grandfather Lars.  He was born in Berget Tun, Sweden and came to the US in 1885. He worked on the railroad.  He married Josie who immigrated from Moskenes, Norway. He didn't become a citizen until 1917. So he had been in the country, working, getting married, having children as a non-citizen for 32 years.

For him there was no "remain in Canada" or detention.  He just arrived and got a job.  Why is it so hard to fix our "immigration problem"?  Probably because it is a racist system meant to keep out non-whites.

Comments

[fauxklore]

There was a series of restrictive immigration policies starting in 1924 with the Asian Exclusion Act. Not all of those were based strictly on race as many of them primarily affected non-Anglo-Saxon Europeans by, for example, limiting immigration to percentages of Americans already here from a given country. This had huge effects on both Eastern Europeans (e.g. Poles) and Southern Europeans (Greeks and Italians). It's why a number of my relatives went to various Latin American countries (Argentina, Mexico, Cuba).