From Ellis Island to JFK: New York's Two Great Waves of Immigration (review)

Nancy Foner, an anthropologist who has written widely and well about Jamaicans both in the West Indies and as immigrants in New York and London, and about immigrant health care workers in New York, in the work at hand assays a broad comparison between a few New York City immigrant groups in two periods: the first decade of the twentieth century and the very recent past. Her focus is on just two groups in the first period-Eastern European Jews and Italians-and a broader mix in the second-"from the Dominican Republic, from China, from Mexico, from Jamaica. . . . Asians, Latin Americans, and West Indians . . . mostly people of color (p. 1). Each of her eight chapters treats both eras. They examine: who came and why; residence patterns; employment; the employment of women; prejudice; transnationalism; education; and a concluding retrospect and prospect. As she concedes, many important topics-including religion, politics, community, and nativism-are thus ignored.

Supported and co-published by the Russell Sage Foundation, the book seems to be aimed at correcting negative stereotypes of contemporary immigrants. She emphasizes the positive aspects of the present immigrant experience while demonstrating the essential similarities of the immigrant experience in both eras.

Almost all comparative studies are stronger on one aspect of the comparison, and Foner's work is no exception. When she is writing about contemporary immigrants and their problems-particularly Jamaicans and Dominicans--her prose often has an immediacy and vigor that is lacking when she focuses on the early decades of the last century.

Readers of this journal will be particularly interested in the way that Foner treats Jews. Many will be disappointed. Despite the obligatory reference to Abraham Cahan-four in fact-there is very little about the complex dynamics of the various Jewish communities in the earlier period and, annoyingly, the "Eastern European Jews" of the introduction become, almost without exception, "Russian Jews" in the rest of the text. Although there are a significant number of Jews in the contemporary mix of immigrants in New York City, they are all but ignored. The one index reference to "Jewish immigrants . . . contemporary," says it all: "see Russian immigrants" (p. 328). The terms "refugee," "asylee", and "refusenik" are not in the index, and I don't believe are mentioned in the book.

Also disappointing is the treatment of contemporary Asian immigrants. Despite several passages about Chinese women in the garment industry, Foner fails to understand what Xiaolan Bao pointed out sometime ago, that although often misrepresented by their union, the ILGWU, now in a new guise, the fact that these women get health insurance and that most of their husbands are in non-unionized occupations that do not provide it, is crucial to family survival.¹ Instead, she cites a Chinese male "expert" for the statement that "compared to garment, restaurant jobs are more stable and remunerative, thereby allowing men to fill the role of principal family breadwinner" (p. 95).

It would be easy make more specialist complaints. But this book was not written for specialists. It is clearly intended for the "general reader," and certainly most of its basic assumptions and premises jibe with the views of most specialists. Immigrants have contributed significantly to the growth and development of the United States and continue to do so. Carl Wittke's phrase about immigrants--"we who built America"--continues to be true. If From Ellis Island to JFK helps to implant that truth in the consciousness of more Americans, it will have served a noble and useful purpose.