Immigrant Experiences In The New Homeland Analytical Essay by Top Papers

The paper discusses how the phenomenon of migration is millennia old; people of all cultures have frequently sought to move from their native land to a new place. The paper explains that sometimes they did it for economic reasons - because harvests and crops were failing in their homeland, as was the case with the great immigration of the Irish to America as a result of the Irish Potato Famine in the mid-nineteenth century. The paper looks at how the experience of this group of immigrants is movingly described and richly illustrated by William Griffin in his book "The Irish Americans: The Immigrant Experience". The paper also notes that sometimes people fled political turmoil or oppression, as the Jews did from Europe during World War II or many people from South America did in the last thirty years, and still others moved to new countries to improve the opportunities for themselves and their children. The paper discusses how in antiquity, Greeks from various cities sailed across the Mediterranenan Sea to found new colonies. The paper relates that in Sicily, they left a testimony to this cultural transfer in the shape of magnificent temples that still stand at places like Paestum or Agrigento and reveal how the Greek colonists placed a stamp of their identity on the new soil.