Italian Immigration to the United States
Alessandra Di Benedetto (January, 2000)
A FAST-US-2 U.S. Institutions Survey Paper
FAST Area Studies Program
Department of Translation Studies, University of Tampere

The aim of this paper is to portray the major aspects of a chapter of both Italian and American history: immigration of Italians to the United States. This paper will not include every aspect of this rich and complex phenomenon in depth, but will offer the main aspects in a simple and brief way. In particular, it will focus on immigration during the 1880’s more than in the present, because today the Italian migratory wave is much weaker than in the past.

Immigration to the United States: the four waves

Ever since its founding in 1776, and even before then, the United States has attracted immigrants from around the world. Millions of brave-minded people of many different nationalities set out from their native countries, without knowing what was to come.

For the poor and oppressed people of many countries, immigration to the U.S. has long been considered as an alternative to starvation, death, or a life full of hardship and suffering. However, the main reason for immigration has been economic opportunity – the lure of a better land or a better job. The decision to buy a ticket to the country of dreams marked the end of one life and the start of new opportunities.

Landing in the New World, with new opportunities ahead . . .

There were four major periods of immigration.

The first wave (1600’s-1820)

The first wave began with the colonists of the 1600’s and reached a peak before the Revolutionary War in 1775. Most of the early colonists came from England. Many were convicts transported from English jails. But most immigrants hoped for economic opportunity. Most immigrants arrived in Philadelphia, the main port in the colonies.

Wars in Europe and America slowed immigration during the late 1700’s and early 1800’s. Newcomers included Irishmen fleeing English rule and Frenchmen escaping the French Revolution.

During the early 1800’s, New York City began to replace Philadelphia as the nation’s chief port of entry for immigrants.

The second wave (1820’s-1870’s)

The second major flow of immigrants started in the 1820’s and lasted until a depression in the early 1870’s. Between 1830 and 1850, some 2.5 million immigrants, most of them from northern and western Europe, arrived in America. About a third were Irish who sought escape from a potato famine that struck Ireland in the mid-1840’s. Most of the Irish had little money, and so they stayed where they arrived, on the East coast. Many German farmers had enough money to migrate to Illinois, Wisconsin, and Missouri, where land was inexpensive. Norwegians and Swedes soon followed, settling in Minnesota, the Dakotas, and Wisconsin.

The third wave (1870’s-1960’s)

Until the 1870’s, most immigrants came from northern and western Europe. But by the early 1880’s, immigration patterns were changing. The U.S. economy suffered a depression while that of Germany and Britain improved. German and British immigration to the United States then decreased. But arrivals increased from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, China, Canada, and Southern and Eastern Europe.

Beginning in the 1890’s, the majority of arrivals were from southern and eastern Europe. From 1881 to 1920, people from every area of the world entered the country. The end of the World War I saw still another wave of immigrants from war-stricken nations coming to America.

Between 1930 and 1965 there was a temporary decline. During the Great Depression, immigration to the U.S. dropped sharply. However, during the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, the United States received thousands of refugees from revolutions in Hungary, Cuba, and China.

The fourth wave (1970’s-present days)

The most recent wave began in 1965 when amendments to the Immigration and Nationality Act ended quotas based on nationality. The amendments provided for annual quotas with a ceiling of 170,000 immigrants from the Eastern Hemisphere and 120,000 from the Western Hemisphere . The act established a preference system for the issuing of visas that strongly favored relatives of U.S. citizens and permanent resident aliens, as well as people with special skills. Wives, husbands, parents, and children of U.S. citizens could enter without being counted as part of the quota. In 1978, Congress replaced the separate quotas for immigrants from the Eastern and Western hemispheres with a single annual world quota of 290,000.

The 1965 amendments produced major changes in patterns of immigration to the United States. The percentage of immigrants from Europe, Canada, and Central America dropped, while that of immigrants from Asia and the West Indies leaped dramatically. The attraction of America now seems stronger as ever. Unlike in the past, however, today’s immigrants do not come from Europe, but from Asia and Latin America. Today, the largest groups of U.S. immigrants come from Mexico, the Philippines, Vietnam, the Dominican Republic, China, India, Cuba, Ukraine, Jamaica, and South Korea (Multimedia Encyclopedia 1998 World Book, Inc. "1998 World Book").

America has become a mosaic of people and culture. The traditions of many different nations have formed the American culture of today. U.S. culture constantly changes and adapts to immigrants, just as immigrants adapt to it. The nation remains, in the words of sociologist Nathan Glazer, "the permanently unfinished country." (Portes, A.- Rumbaut, R.G. 1990, p. 12)

Italian Immigration

Among the peoples who shaped the social fabric of the U.S., the Italians played an important role.

Italy is traditionally a country of emigration. During the 1880’s, however, emigration became a mass phenomenon. The flow increased as a result of improved national and transatlantic transport facilities, the economic crisis both in the Southern and Northern Italy, and the growing demand for labour in North America. The U.S. was the largest single recipient of Italian immigrants in the world. In 1850, fewer than 4,000 Italians were reportedly in the U.S. However in 1880, the population skyrocketed to 44,000, and by 1900 to 484,027 (Source: dossena.virtualave.net/apulians.html).

During 1900-14, Italian emigration reached its peak. During World War I, emigration ceased, but in the following years thousands of Italians left Italy. After the U.S.’s immigration acts of 1921 and 1924, emigration declined. Fascism, which was hostile to emigration, and World War II almost eliminated emigration, which however, increased again after World War II. The pattern of emigration changed after Italy’s entrance into the European Economic Community (1957). The average of people going to the U.S. dropped severely (Collier’s Encyclopedia, volume 13, p.368).

The reasons for the Italian mass emigration

Italy never colonized parts of America as did Spain, France, and England. Instead, many Italians started coming to America in the 1880’s to escape from poverty at home.

Initially, most emigrants hailed from Northern Italy. However, as time passed, most emigrants came from the South. With this shift also came an increase in those leaving the nation. Between 1898 and 1914, approximately 750,000 Italians emigrated each year. From 1906 to 1915, as many as 2 million Italians emigrated. The reasons for the mass emigration of the Italians were many, and there were also differences in the reasons that made people emigrate from the south and north of Italy. The standard of living became worse in the whole of Italy between 1870 and 1900, especially in the countryside. Disease and starvation were the main causes of migration. Food had become the biggest cost for an Italian family. Many peasant families spent about 75% of their money on food. Despite the high cost, this food often did not contain enough nutrition to sustain a person (A. Lyttelton 1997, pp.238-240).

In the North, the population suffered from pellagra, a disease which often resulted in insanity and death, whereas in the South, fatal malaria plagued the nation’s residents. At first, malaria only struck in the coastal areas, but this changed as deforestation, erosion and flooding enabled the malaria to spread. The conditions which people endured in these areas were unbelievable as 2 million Italians died each year (Maldwin A. Jones, 1976, pp 193-216).

To make matters worse, the agricultural system of Italy was not modernised, and there was little hope of improving the situation. During this time, Italian agriculture was hurt by the increasing number of products from America that invaded Italian markets. The price of wheat and other products fell. There was no alternative than to emigrate. As the journey became easier, few people hesitated to leave their homeland.

Peculiarities of the Italian immigration

General trends in the Italian migratory waves can be outlined.

• Immigrants were not an undifferentiated mass; they represented specific regional and occupational groups. They also tended to come from specific regions and work in specific fields.

Entrepreneurs and workers tended to concentrate in large areas that provided thriving markets and sources of labour. Therefore, they settled mostly in New York. More than half of the emigrants from Molise and Abruzzo, two heavily working-class regions, worked in construction and excavation trades in Pennsylvania, as they had in Italy.

Thus, to a certain extent, the pattern of distribution of Italians in America mirrored the regional differences in Italy.

• A peculiarity of the Italian migrants was that most of them lived in the countryside in Italy, but once in the U.S., they became urban. Most Italians went to live in the big cities, especially in the North-east of the U.S., because they did not have enough money to move farther.

However, if many Italians did not go beyond the Atlantic shores, some others pushed on to the West Coast. Inland states, such as Ohio, Indiana and Illinois were already inhabited by the first colonists. Groups of settlers, especially Germans arriving before the Revolutionary War, could find abundant cheap land in the West. Therefore, those Italians who wanted to work on an independent farm, had to shift to the West Coast. Indeed, California still represented a Frontier land. Furthermore, it provided a familiar climate and environment.

• What often occurred in the U.S. were Italian enclaves. They were called "Little Italy" and still exist in many cities today. Unlike the Irish, the Jews, the Germans, and the Poles, who dispersed themselves in other immigrant groups, the Italians remained in their clusters.

• Italians adapted more slowly to the new country than other immigrant groups, such as Irish and German, because they had a different background (for instance, the climate and the language) from the new cultural environment. That is why once a group settled in a certain area, the new arrivals established in the same area. Most Italians tended to settle in a community made up of people from their native land or even their native village, so that friends or relatives could provide shelter and assistance. This accounts for the high concentration of Italians in certain American regions and their absence in others.

The two charts below show that still today, as in the past, Italians are mostly concentrated in the North-East and in California. The figures clearly show that their presence in the southern and central states is almost imperceptible.

ITALIAN-AMERICANS LIVING IN THE U.S. (1990 CENSUS)
States with more than 15% of pop. or more than 1 million Italian Americans

STATE	ITALIAN AMERICANS	% OF POPULATION
New York	2.9 million	16%
New Jersey	1.5 million	20%
California	1.5 million	5%
Pennsylvania	1.4 million	12%
Massachusetts	845,000	15%
Connecticut	630,000	20%
Rhode Island	200,000	20%

U.S. CITIES WITH THE MOST ITALIAN AMERICANS (1990 CENSUS)

RANK	CITY	ITALIAN POPULATION
1	New York, NY	1,882,396
2	Philadelphia, PA	497,721
3	Chicago, IL	492,158
4	Boston, MA	485,761
5	Pittsburgh, PA	316,351
6	Los Angeles/Long Beach, CA	308,409
7	Detroit, MI	280,051
8	Cleveland, OH	179,733
9	Rochester, NY	170,910
10	Washington, D.C.	163,440

• As in many other places in the world, Italians in America clustered into groups related to their place of origin. For example, the Sicilians resided in New Orleans, the Neapolitans and Calabrians in Minnesota, and mostly northern Italians in California. However, most of the Italians were concentrated on the East coast, in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, just where they had disembarked. Other business-minded groups decided to move away from the towns of arrival and look for new economic opportunities elsewhere than in the port cities.

To understand why Italians were so clearly divided in different groups, one needs remember that until 1861, Italy was not a consolidated state. Only when Italians arrived to America did they realize what the concept of nation meant. "They became Americans before they were ever Italians" (Ascoli, p.101).

Italians came from a nation that struggled to become a state. They lacked political consciousness, because they lacked national consciousness. For instance, Sicilian peasants identified with their village, not with Italy. The center of the migrant’s concern remained his hometown. No matter how long they lived in the host country, they continued to think of the problems and needs of their home town as paramount.

New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco

New York

Italians first settled in the Five Points neighborhood of New York, i.e. the most notorious slum at the southwest corner of what is now Columbus Park. The district teemed with gangs, prostitutes, criminals and street urchins. However, so poor were the immigrant Italians in Italy that their lives in "Lamerica" was regarded as progress.

In New York, one could trace back to the region or even to the villages from which the inhabitants came, according to the areas or even the streets on which they lived. Northern Italians settled in Greenwich village and what is now Soho; Southern Italians populated Little Italy (location map). From the south, Little Italy has lately been colonized by Chinatown; in the north, it now hosts boutiques, bars and restaurants. In the late 1990’s, what remains of Little Italy is Mulberry Street, with its numerous cafes and restaurants.

Philadelphia

Most but not all Italian immigrants were peasants or labourers, some were artists. This latter category concentrated in Philadelphia.

Philadelphia’s first Italian immigrants arrived in the mid-eighteenth century and established a new community, one of the first "Little Italies" in America. Italians found Philadelphia attractive because the city was the cultural, economic, and political center of North America in the early 19^th century. There, the earliest Italians found a generally warm welcome, because of the high regard in which Americans held Italian culture (Brady, citing Juliani).

San Francisco

A study on Italian immigration to San Francisco (Dino Cinel, "From Italy to San Francisco", pp.13-43, Stanford University Press, 1982), shows that only four Italian provinces supplied most of the emigrants to that city: Genoa, Lucca, Cosenza, and Palermo. Emigrants from larger cities such as Genoa and Palermo were familiar with trade business, or industrial skills. Others were vine growers or found work on farms, where they picked berries and harvested sugar beets. Despite their prosperity, not many of these workers remained in the countryside, even though those who did were successful with their vineyards and market gardening in California. Another important activity to many Italians was fishing.

The Italian family

Another factor that distinguished the Italian emigration was that the number of men who left Italy was much higher than the number of women.

Italian men came to America just to earn money, rather than to settle and begin a new life. A few Italians did return home, but it was usually just to get married or to visit. But eventually many Italian men decided to settle permanently in America, so their wives and children joined them. As a result, the image of Italian families became more common in 19^th century America.

The "family" included all those relatives whom Americans would consider very distant cousins, aunts and uncles, e.g. what would commonly be referred to as an "extended family".

The institution of the family was a strategy to survive. Family members were expected to suppress their individualism and to work for the family. The family was the economic unit in which each member had a specific role.

Every member of the family was supposed to help the family. Daughters and sons cooked, cleaned, gardened, and looked after younger brothers and sisters. Aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandmothers often lived in the same house.

This was often to the detriment of personal mobility. One was not supposed to abandon his/her family. As a result, it was very difficult to attain a higher position on the social ladder, simply because economic and social mobility often required spatial mobility.

The typical first generation parent ridiculed American institutions and nurtured in his children a sense of mistrust and cynicism regarding the outside world. Any aspiration to go far from one’s family was regarded as something shameful and disloyal. Thus, personal mobility was impeded.

To understand this peculiar attitude, it is useful to take a glimpse at Italy’s history. Italy was very often invaded and colonised by different peoples. What enabled Italians to survive a history of invasions and conquest was the family. To Italians, the only social reality was family life. It was the only means of protecting, isolating, and defending themselves from the outer world. The main social institution was always the family, regardless of which government was ruling the country.

Even when Italians migrated to the U.S., the concept of family did not change for them, even if it underwent some changes with time.

The Italian migrant usually had high social and familial stress. He was supposed to return to buy the land that he once sharecropped and to marry the girl of his dreams, who would be as virginal as when he had left for America, or take up again with a wife he had not seen for many years.

He planned to be away for a certain amount of time in search of money for the family. In turn, his family often envisioned a certain period that it should take him to achieve his goal. A sojourn longer than expected caused anxiety for all the family: his wife, the aging parents and the daughter awaiting the dowry. A Southern Italian woman could marry only if she had a dowry. It was the symbol of her family’s well-being and the major factor for marriage

Italian immigrants were men far away from loved ones and familiar places. They feared failing to bring their families to the social and economic level they expected to rise to.

They still worked to send money home; they still intended to marry someone from their village (very often the one whom they or their families had chosen before they left), or to return to their wives.

If they were young men, they worried about the girl they chose before leaving. If they were husbands and fathers, they worried about their wives’ morality. The failure was perceived both in terms of personal and social dignity.

The stereotypical Italian woman, in turn, was dominated by an oppressive father and husband. However, her role in the family and society changed along with immigration.

In Italy, since she had to work and act on her own in the place of her husband, for the first time she made decisions for the family and administered the money that her husband sent to her. She enjoyed a freedom never experienced before.

In America, the immigrant Italian woman felt a less powerful pressure of motherhood; in fact she had fewer children than her mother had. On the other hand, the economic responsibilities were intensified. She saw an increase in her economic opportunities for her and a new place in the family. She participated in family decisions as long with her husband, who was no longer the only breadwinner of the family.

Italians in America

In 19^th century America, the Italians competed with the Irish for the same occupations, and as the number of Italians in the United States increased, they began to dominate many of the occupations that were earlier controlled by the Irish.

Italian women competed with Jewish women in the clothes industry. They worked in various industries, such as woollen mills and shoe factories.

Starting from the bottom of the occupational ladder, most Italians worked in the worst kinds of professions, such as shoe shining, rag-picking, sewer cleaning, and whatever hard, dirty, dangerous jobs others didn't want. Many were garbage collectors. Others were miners or built railroads.

Generally speaking, they did not want to get involved with social and political leadership in order to devote themselves to their families. This explains why in New York city, basic positions in the Fire Department, Police Department and Sanitation Department were often filled with Italians and why the top positions in these services and in private corporations were largely free of Italians.

Italians frequently lived in the worst slums, or were crowded together in construction camps or railroad wagons. In the cities, they lived in the worst apartments. They worked at least ten hours a day, seven days a week. Even children worked at an early age, as they did in Italy, even at the expense of their education. Schools were seen by parents as something to be avoided. They saw attend school as lost days of work. Children were seen as an economic resource. However, they were eventually forced into schools which they legally had to attend until the age of 16.

Social life of Italians in the U.S.

Italians lived in ghettos in which the chief places of social activities were the church, the social clubs, and the cafés. Italians met regularly in these clubs and societies to engage in a wide spectrum of social activities ranging from music and literature to politics.

There were two different types of cafés: coffee-houses and café-chantants, which were also called café-concertos. The café-chantant was a coffee-house where, besides coffee, alcoholic beverages were also served. Here the Italian working class used to meet on Sundays. Those cafés proved to play an important role in the community life. They were a place of entertainment, where on Sundays some musicians with a singer accompanied by a guitar and mandolin played well-known folk songs and music.

Italians and religion in the U.S.

The customs and Catholic faith of Italian immigrants were often feared by the "original" populations within which the Italians lived. As Catholic immigrants (Italians, Poles, Hungarians and Slovaks) became more and more numerous in 19^th century America, Protestant Evangelists feared that Protestant America would be submerged. Indeed, such a large number of Catholic believers would have greatly affected the American society. Most Evangelists believed that Catholicism was an oppressive, superstitious and aggressive religion which would enter the public schools.

Non-Catholic people were suspicious of Italians, because they rarely went to church as real Christians were supposed to do. Instead, they practiced their own folk religion outside the church. For instance, Evangelists feared so much that Catholics would fall into anarchism or socialism that they invested a lot of time and energy in the attempt to evangelize the increasing number of Italians in the American cities. By evangelizing the Italians, they would have defended the traditional American ideals -- democracy, individualism, industriousness, thrift, and patriotism -- and served the nation as well as God. Very few Italians converted to Evangelism.

Even so, the Catholic faith has adjusted to the United States. Originally the services were performed in Latin, but as time passed, it became more and more common to use English in the churches, even though services were supposed to be performed in Latin.

The Italians were not the only Catholic people who settled in the U.S. Irish people arrived before the Italians. Consequently, when the Italians arrived to the U.S., there were already Catholic churches. The Italians largely resented this Irish-dominated American Catholic Church, so they seldom attended Irish churches.

Italian immigrants were unwelcome in the pre-existent Irish churches, because the Irish were trying to preserve their identity. Why? Apart from the Catholic religion they both practised, the Irish and the Italians did not share almost anything else. They had very different cultures. As a result, the Italians formed their own parochial schools and built their own churches.

Treatment by other Americans

Italians were treated with some respect but not much and formed their own communities. Italians were looked upon as different from the older generations of immigrants and were often viewed as people of lower class. By the early 1900’s many newspapers defined the Italian race as inferior and degraded, because they usually lived in the worst areas of the towns. They also aroused suspicion because of their attitude toward religion. Unlike the Irish who were also Catholic, Italians did not go to church. These are the main causes one can trace back to in order to understand why Italians were stereotyped as prone to crime.

Even today, Italian-Americans still have to fight bias, bigotry and defamation. Usually in American movies, Italians are painted as persons who use foul language, speak broken English, and think of nothing besides violence and crime. These films create a negative portrait of Italians, who are then treated with less respect by others.

74% of Americans believe that most Italian-Americans are in some way associated with organized crime. Movies such as Married to the Mob, My Cousin Vinny, The Freshman, Prizzi’s Honor and many more help to account for this prejudice.

Yet a recent FBI study found that fewer one-tenth of one percent of the 25 million Italian-Americans in the United States were associated with organized with crime (web source, attribution lost).

Accomplishments of Italians in America

Italians introduced America to pizza, pasta and opera.

Made from a flat, yeast bread baked with melted cheeses and tomatoes, the dish is called "pizza." Today, pizza is delivered to the doors of American homes throughout the country, but back then it was a way for immigrants to have a slice of home in their new country.

The Metropolitan Opera became one of the finest opera companies in the world under the legendary leadership of its manager, Giulio Gatti-Casazza (1869-1940) who brought to its stage a brilliant array of singers, including Enrico Caruso, Rosa Ponselle, Amelita Galli-Curci, Beniamino Gigli, and Ezio Pinza as well as the conductor Arturo Toscanini. Gatti-Casazzi managed the Met from 1908 to 1935.

Besides, one could mention a lot of Italians among Hollywood’s stars. The following represent highlights of these contributions.

Hollywood's first sex symbol and the first "Latin Lover" of the silver screen was Rudolph Valentino.

Frank Sinatra, the Oscar, Emmy and Grammy-winning legend was known as "The Voice".

Among the many Italian Americans in Hollywood is the legendary father-and-son team of Carmine and Francis Ford Coppola, who won four Oscars in 1975 for The Godfather, Part II.

Sylvester Stallone, Jimmy Durante, Frank Capra (one of Hollywood's most gifted directors) and Joseph Barbera (the man behind Tom and Jerry, Yogi Bear, The Flintstones, The Jetsons, The Smurfs and Scooby-Doo), all also have Italian roots.

Conclusion

Italians have enriched American culture from religion to opera.

At the worst, one thinks of them as mafia-related people. Indeed, still today they have this prejudice to contend with.

However, apart from this shadow, one can find Italian footsteps in many aspects of American culture. They brought pizza and pasta to America, both of which have left such a deep mark upon American minds that people very often think of Italians only as restaurant-owners. The Italian gastronomic culture permeated the American cuisine. The presence of Italian self-styled restaurants and pizzerias on almost every corner of all American towns witnesses the high regard in which Americans hold Italian food.

However, the Italian influence is not limited only to the myth of its cuisine; it also involves many cultural fields.

For instance, none would doubt the impact on show-business of such well-known actors, such as Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Sylvester Stallone, not to mention some directors like Frank Capra and Francis Ford Coppola who all have Italian roots.

The Italians contributed to shape American society since they were one of the most highly-represented ethnic groups of the Southern Europe who settled in the U.S. Being an ethnic group very different from the first settlers, Italians were regarded as suspicious. Their conception of the family and of the woman distinguished them from the others. This led to a different approach to the American society. They started to perceive themselves as a nation only when they arrived to the U.S.

There they began a new life where the weight they gave to the family remained as important as it was in Italy. What changed more was the role of the woman. Italian women gained more freedom than she had in Italy.

Thus Italian immigration both enriched and was enriched by American culture. Immigration resulted in a mutual exchange of culture: a phenomenon that nowadays is so broadly discussed both in the U.S. and in Italy.

The experience of Italian immigration provides a good example of how deeply the arrival of a new people can affect the culture of another nation.

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Bibliography

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Original dated 27 January 2000; Modified 01 August 2001