Once upon a time: Promised land

“Send them to me, the homeless, driven by the storm” is written at the base of the Statue of Liberty. The multicultural world of America came through immigration. Our new magazine USA is part of the United States. History of World Power.

The list of haulers is very long. Mary, Otto, Francesca, Melanie, Fritz, etc. A total of 3789 were recorded in New York Harbor at the beginning of the 20th century. The author of these lines can only guess whether one or the other of them is related to him. They came from Germany, Denmark, the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, and Switzerland, and the names of their ships were recorded. They were a few thousand of the twelve million immigrants eagerly waiting to see the iconic Statue of Liberty in the New World.

In 1892, when most of the immigrants from Europe poured into the United States, immigration officials opened the Ellis Island Transport Camp here at the southern tip of Manhattan. The documents and health of the immigrants were examined in a hall with 5,000 people, in a brick building with four negative towers. A decision was made as to who was allowed in and who was not. 98 percent can stay. But if someone had an infection or was found to be very weak at work, they were sent back, and sick children over the age of twelve who had to return home, perhaps alone, as determined by the parents. Hence Ellis Island was also called “Tear Island”.

About 40 percent of Americans have ancestors who were abducted through the halls and corridors of Ellis Island, highlighting the years 1892 and 1910. The faces of most of the newcomers were frightened, people were tired of being dumb and dead, they carried bad suitcases and sometimes only the boxes with their belongings, the clothes on their bodies were mostly only with them. There was only hope in them.

They were Irish, Hungarians, Ukrainian and Polish Jews, Italians from Buglia, they became Americans. The individual and pluralistic community of immigrants reached a new and integrated community, ultimately a national identity. How did this process begin? How did immigrants from different cultures become integrated and integrated beyond their individuality, and how did they become “true Americans” without completely abandoning their identity in terms of appearance? How did the United States teach every generation of immigrants the basic American values?

Carefully nurtured myths of the American will, the uniqueness of the American type of man, the sense of work and the land of individual freedom were the means used. The success myth of “the luck of the talented” aims to unite newcomers and swear allegiance to a country that can bring them joy and success. On the whole, climbing is possible with personal commitment, and then the individual transforms it from rags to wealth regardless of race, religion or culture. He can be proud of being a new “American”.

This identity has been largely at odds with Anglo-American, WASP (white Anglo-Saxon Protestant) culture, immigrant adaptation, and ideas of cultural diversity from the very beginning. There was a solution to this: Americanism was seen as a high-level identity in cultural self-image, which included individualism and cultural diversity.