Descendants of Illegal Immigrants, Check in here!

[hedgehog]

My grandmother snuck into the country from Ireland by entering from Canada at Niagara Falls about 1920. Then she brought over her sister and two brothers.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

1. My ancestors snuck over before the Revolution.

They never even got green cards.

[Redstone]

2. Good post subject. I don't know about the Irish side of my family, but the Indian side

didn't check with La Migra, that's for sure.

(American Indian, that is.)

Being an Indian, may I hereby take this opportunity to welcome all imnmigrants to this place that used to be ours? Hell, the Indians were always moving around and settling here and there, why not everyone else? This country can use all the immigrants it can get, in my opinion. Every single immigrant I've ever met, legal or illegal, has been a hardworking asset to America.

Redstone

[EFerrari]

43. Our people have been traveling this continent since time immemorial

They're not going to stop that with a wall.

lol

[bouwob1]

3. my

mothers side came over on the mayflower. quakers not royalty :(

[kineneb]

4. hmmm... no papers here

most of the ancestors arrived before Ellis Island:

Maternal gradma's family: English, arrived before Revolution
M-grandpa's family: German & Swiss- before 1860
Paternal grandma' family: German & Norwegian - before 1880
P-grandpa's family: Acadian French - before 1860

[RB TexLa]

5. a couple that would not have been granted entry snuck in

Of course the Anglos didn't mind when they were helping to build NYC.

[YOY]

6. Kinda tough when the Ellis Island days had different standards in early 20th century

Which was, as far as I can tell, show up and we'll process you through or reject you.

I've got my grandfather's Ellis Island story close to my heart. A chillingly similar version to Primus' "American Life" song. Just take out "Sicily" and put in "Italy"...

"In a town in southernmost sicily
Lived a family too proud to be poor
In the year that fever took father away
They hastened for american shores
Now a mother and her son are standing in line
Its a cold day on ellis isle
And they look to the statue of liberty
For the boy we have american life"


Showing up without papers got you a big W.O.P. written in white paint on your suitcases. Hence the slur for Italians "Wop."

[Bridget Burke]

7. Well, my Irish grandparents came legally....

But all they had to do was show up at Ellis Island & pass physicals. No expensive Immigration Lawyers, quotas, jumping through hoops, etc.

There's a story of some grand-uncle smuggled out of Galway in a cattle boat because of Trouble with the authorities. Over there, that is.

Don't know the details on the other side of the family. I suspect my maternal grandfather's people were famine-era Irish. But they lived in Detroit--awfully close to Canada. My maternal grandmother's people (Scots Irish) were here even longer. But--the farther back you go, the looser the "rules" were.

[hedgehog]

9. Good point - most of my family just dropped in off the boat.

The first one here, my dad's great-grandfather, got off the boat and put on a Union uniform before he ever got off the dock. He survived the Civil War and moved to Oil City, Pennsylvania where he helped develop the oil industry (by which I mean he worked on the drill sites!)

[blondeatlast]

10. Same here on both sides. Imagine how different this debate would be

if "legal: immigration were as simple as it was then.

But of course, it's about legality, not (I'm not supposed to use that word...)

[hedgehog]

11. I like Aasif Mandvi's comment on the latest immigration policy:

we've replaced "Give me your tired, your poor" with "What can brown do for you?"

[SoCalDem]

24. I recently found out that MY Irish relatives came via canada too

They "might" have been undocumented..but I don't know for sure.

[Blue Belle]

8. My great grandmother snuck in from Canada too!

She lived in constant fear of being deported back to Germany (this was during WWII).

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

12. My Irish grandmother, with 4 kids, no husband, came over in 1919 to "steal" floor scrubbing jobs.

[hedgehog]

13. My grandmother worked as a house maid.

She got an hour off on Sundays to go to Mass!

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

14. My 11 great grandfather snuck into Massachusettes

on some leaky tub called the Mayflower. Don't believe the Wampanoags gave him permission to settle there. But he did move out to Cape Cod and hung out with Massasoit's family.

[mediawatch]

19. wow

anybody keep any diaries? I love history. I bet your family could tell some great stories!

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

20. His story is known to many

he was Stephen Hopkins, and he first headed to the New World in 1611, when his ship was wrecked in Bermuda and he led a rebellion against the ship authorities. Talked his way out of the hangman's noose and eventually landed in Jamestown, where he made friends with the Natives, only to be kicked out by the non-Natives and bounced back to Europe again. He was hired by the people setting up the Mayflower company because he knew the language and customs of the Natives (remember they had planned on landing near Jamestown). He was the one who made the connection with Squanto and then Massasoit. Some of the folks who arrived in 1624 also preferred the Native way of life and went to Cape Cod, where one, Gabriel Wheldon, I believe, married Massasoit's niece. Meanwhile, Plymouth condemned them and banished them, which apparently meant little; later the whole kit and kaboodle of them were assimilated into the settlements in Barnstable County.

[Kber]

15. My grandmother fled Nazi occupied Europe

She was a Belgium Jew. She and her family walked across Spain to Portugal, boarded a ship for Cuba, paid someone to issue them Cuban passports and entered the US that way in 1945 while we were still severely restricting Jewish refugee immigration.

(The trip took about 2 years start to finish.)

[jaysunb]

16. My African ancestors did not have proper papers

but, there was cotton to be picked....:evilfrown:

[Blue_Tires]

41. +1 more

[NightWatcher]

17. You all are illegal immigrants, and I dont fault you one bit

My father's people are Muscogee (Creek). I dont have a problem today with the immigrant movement- it's a simple reaction to ancient conditions. When things got bad in one place, smart people moved to "greener pastures". Today "greener pastures" just happens to be what the US government calls the USA. The people that are "illegal" today have deeper ties to this area than anyone. Texas, Arizona and other southern US states were originally inhabited by ancestors of the Hispanic "illegals".


No Man Is Illegal. It is not illegal to exist and try to feed yourself by working hard.

[hedgehog]

18. That's a very good point.

Which brings up another point: are we better off if young unemployed Mexican men come here to work, or if they stay home in Mexico perhaps to listen to a politician demand that the US return the lands seized in 1848!

[Sabien]

45. same as Hawaiians

Exactly cousin...it's just like if the USA decided to call the native Hawaiians illegal immigrants all of a sudden.
:eyes:

[etherealtruth]

21. My family immigrated to Canada

... from Scotland and Ireland in the 1700's ... My grandparents all slipped across the border into the US in the 1920's

[proud2BlibKansan]

22. My ancestors couldn't afford the fare

so they snuck onto a ship in Ireland and snuck off when the ship docked.

[Jed Dilligan]

23. Indentured servants, a couple through Ellis Island

No one "illegal," but I'm down.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

25. Doesn't the fact that the were indentured...

more likely than not mean that they were criminals?

[SoCalDem]

26. Most likely just poor.. The "master" paid their fare in exchange for work

in the "new world".. After a specified time, the "debt" would be worked off..(in theory)

[Jed Dilligan]

27. Not at all

People sold themselves for a certain period to buy passage across the Atlantic. My understanding is that criminal vagrants were sometimes sent as "bound apprentices," with a different legal status from indentured servants.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

28. What were the percentages of indentured servants...

that were criminals sentenced to "transport" by the crown?

[Jed Dilligan]

29. No idea. But a lot of them were just plain poor. nt

[blogslut]

30. Mine came from Germany in the 1830's

I really don't know what the laws were then.

I will say that in the 80's I knew quite a few refugees that were escaping the (US FUNDED) death squads in El Salvador. There is nothing in this world more humbling than watching a 19 year-old mother write letters to chldren she may never see again.

When those Bush bastards brought up the "Salvador Option", I knew what they meant. And whaddaya know? Iraq is polluted with death squads.

EDIT: "I" key is dying.

[eridani]

31. Grandfather snuck in through Canada in 1910

He was dodging the WW I draft at the time.

[The Backlash Cometh]

Timing is everything.

According to my dad, his father came via Mexico, and though not technically an illegal alien, he didn't become a U.S. Citizen for several decades. Not sure exactly about the timing, but I was told there was a shortage of men to work the fields, so I think it happened during WWI.

[DU GrovelBot]

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[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

34. So, are you the son of some Japanese factory robot? -nt

[noamnety]

33. At least one of mine snuck in to avoid an arranged marriage

I guess a lot of DUers think her "proper" choice would have been to stay and be given away as property for a man she didn't love to be able to force himself on her. That would have been "legal."

[FloridaJudy]

35. Yo!

My grandparents were about to be deported as "over quota", when they were allowed in by a legal loophole (which has since been "fixed"). They came in through the Angel Island refugee camp in San Francisco Bay, recently declared a National Historic Landmark. I'm pretty sure they were housed in the nasty-looking little barracks in the distance, and not in the elegant-looking adminstrative quarters in the forefront of the photograph.



I have a great deal of sympathy for other illegal immigrants. I've noticed that most of the folks I see spewing hateful comments about immigrants don't look much like American Indians to me.

[Richard Steele]

36. The 2 Steele brothers came here in the early 1700s. I doubt any of the natives had invited them. nm

[uppityperson]

37. mine were legal but 1 was a bigamist, does that help?

couldn't legally marry in USA, though did.

[DIKB]

38. Proud descendant

of a "Mojado"

From my grandparents:
2nd generation citizen from Mexico (illegal), 3rd generation from Mexico (illegal) + 2nd generation from England (legal immigrant), and american indian (original residents).

[starroute]

39. My dad told me his father had snuck in illegally

The family had gotten from Poland as far as England but for some reason couldn't continue on directly to the US. So my grandfather went to Canada first, worked his way down to New York City, and then brought his parents and siblings over.

I'm not as sure as I used to be that he was strictly an illegal immigrant, since he does seem to have gotten legitimate immigration papers. But at the very least, it does appear to have been a somewhat dodgy procedure.

[REP]

40. Grandfather; 1917

My paternal grandfather entered Canada legally with his family after escaping the pogroms in Russia but entered the US illegally. On my maternal aside, we've been here since 1607.

[Chulanowa]

42. I'm damn proud of having nary a drop of "legal" blood in me!

First off is my Choctaw ancestry. I would imagine that a group of people who were legally below most sorts of bovine for the longest damn time could qualify in this little survey. Mine were part of the Mississippi band, that didn't go to Oklahoma, so I guess you could call them "illegals" for that, too.

On my Fathers' side, the first person in America was a Welshman aboard a British naval vessel, who abcsonded sometime during the war of 1812. On my mothers', Irish stowaways at the turn of the century, smuggled into the port of Mobile Bay.

Shipjumpers, stowaways, renegades, and all sorts of the down-and-out.

[hedgehog]

44. My children come from a long line of draft dodgers on both sides!

My husband's family came over from Germany to get away from serving in the Kaiser's army. I wish I had thought to record the stories some of the older folk remembered their parents telling about those times! My grand dad came over when the British were talking about expanding conscription during World War I.

[johnaries]

46. Well, since the Native Americans didn't invite us here,

wouldn't that be almost all of us? :shrug:

[mitchum]

47. Just say NO to cheap labor

My ancestors were already here

[pingzing58]

48. mitchum, you're native american tribe and reservation please? n/t

[mitchum]

49. I said my "ancestors" (not me)...nice try, though...

[krispos42]

50. My Italian and German sides came here legally...

The American Indian side was here already, but the English side, well, that has yet to be determined. I don't even know WHEN they came over. Could pre-date the country!

My mom's friend is a Daughter of the American Revolution and can trace her heritage to the 17th century.

[Bigmack]

51. Both sides were illegals...

One set of grandparents from Ireland, the other from France.

Canada first, then they just "appeared" in the US. Niagra Falls must have been a freeway for illegals.

I looked up the census rolls early in the 20th century and could not find my mother's French parents and family... by name. There was, however, a family living in their home town with a different name and the same exact number of boys and girls - same ages - as my grandparents'. I'm proud to say that my family has a history of not telling "the man" the truth.