The Italian Imigrants

many an(prenominal) of these immigrants emigrated from the Southern incite of Italy where not only were economic conditions the worst, but many a(prenominal) of the lands employ for farming and agricultural production had become unsuitable for much(prenominal) exploits, "The regions of Southern Italy, from which almost migrated, may well have been the most impoverished areas in all of Europe. These people were mostly farmers, animate in nonproductive, agricultural regions. The once fertile soil that had existed in the past, was now nothing more than clay and rock. Over the centuries, intense drought, erosion and poor soil management practices had gradually low-spirited the land of all its top soil and vital nutrients" ( wee 1). A massive earthquake that killed more than a hundred mebibyte people also pushed many to search for a advanced homeland. Other factors that pushed emigration were the fact that the Italian government industrialized the country at the expense of the citizens and production of foodstuffs had declined in the ripe 19th and early 20th centuries which caused a high breaker point of malnutrition among the people.

At about the same time when these push factors were development in Italy, so numerous pull factors were occurring in the States that made it the choice of most immigrants. America was rapidly growing its industrial base ever since the end of the Civil War. By the early 1900s there was a great need for incapable and skilled labor and the

"Early Migrations From Oriolo, Calabria To America." http://members.aol.com/Glilli/bindex.html Aug. 3, 1998: 1-3.

The ending of World War I brought with it an incomparable level of racism and isolationist thinking in America. During the 1920-1950 dot more and more immigration quotas and federal legislation were enacted in order to reduce the number of immigrants of foreign nationalities arriving in America. The quotas were levied on each country that might have immigrants coming to America. They were oftentimes based on the perceived desirability of the immigrants and the country from which they emigrated. The countries of westerly Europe were often favored more than those of Southern and east Europe.

During this period the Italian immigrants banded together in an elbow grease to retain some cultural identity and uniformity, but the absolute majority of them were willing to become assimilated into the American way of life. However, this was also a period during which America was not keen on cosmopolitanism and because of this, many of the children of these immigrants were forced to mature rapidly with a dualistic plight of trying to fit in with American children while rest true to the values and beliefs of their parents. This caused a great deal of face-to-face conflict in the children and in the Italian immigrant home, "The major traumas berate in the immigrants earliest years. He was not allowed the more relaxed and slow-moving adjustments that normal individuals enjoy as they move from infancy into adulthood. recent Italians in America, forced to mature rapidly, dressed, talked and thought like persons a generation or two older than they were. Yet they could not be fully responsive to the enduring values of their fathers. This rive causes them to be trapped between destructive hypocrisies and contradictions" (Cordasco 106).

"Italian." http://www.familytreemaker.com/00000375.html Aug. 3, 1998: 1.

Many of the immigrants from Italy did not come to America,
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