Why Do People Come to America? Is it Worth it for Them and for Us?

"Gold". I'd be rich. What if Josh was wrong, is there really streets paved with gold in America? He could be kidding, how my family would be happy to be wealthy. Josh's family was leaving to night by boat, leaving to America."Harvey, go clean Mr. Rogers wagon now!" Harvey got up from his straw bed to go clean Mr. Roger's wagon.
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The door opens and closes as Jackie's father comes home. He puts his coat away and the smell of potato cream soup roams around the room. Jakie and her two little brothers come running toward their father.
"So papa , how much money did you make today?" Jakie asked.
"Well Jacqueline, today was an upsetting amount. Each week I earn less and less money then what I was first getting." Her father responded.
"Well, then what are you going to do about it?" She challenged him.
"We are moving. Moving to America." Her father concluded.
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When my my father could not take it, he tried to leave. After hearing about Josh's family making it to America, Josh sending me a letter about how great it was, and he also gave me a coin which he earned. My father wanted a chance for a better life, he didn't want me to work for Mr. Rodgers and cleaning his stuff my whole life. So now my family is packing up our possessions to leave in the middle of the night, the whole family quitting, no longer working for Mr. Rodgers. We didn't have much belongings and I'm the only child so getting all of us and the stuff on the boat wasn't hard for us.
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Ellis Island, full of immigrants all over but mostly Europe, were around getting off boats and getting ready to pass through. Two families from Italy that just unloaded themselves off of boats were Harvey's family and Jackie's family. Now arriving to America deciding to live in New York for both economic opportunity and stories about America being the Golden Land. Jackie was holding her brother's hands so they won't run off while her mother held their belongings and her father took care of the papers to pass through Ellis Island.
Harvey was sitting on the floor with his family's belongings while his parents organized their papers. Harvey spotted a Italian girl who came out of the same boat as him struggling to control her two younger brothers as they wanted to run near the boats. She was yelling at them to behave themselves, Harvey wanted to help her but he was too shy and didn't want to leave his belongings unattended.
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As they settled in their new home (New York) in tenements they were adjusting and also assimilating in. Harvey lived in the same tenement as Josh but both Harvey and Jackie lived in Little Italy where it was more like home and easy to communicate with each other. They both have to start school soon to help out their parents speak English but as they settled in a question started coming up in their minds: Is it worth it to move to America?
Living conditions in tenements were horrible. During the summer it was really hot but in all seasons it was always dirty. There was only one bathroom for the whole tenement and there was very small space, one to two bedrooms for each family, so families with a lot of members were cramped in their living spaces. Both of Harvey's and Jackie's father were working but still getting little pay from work so Harvey and Jackie were working too (child labor). Getting jobs was hard because the "native" people in America wanted the immigrants out. Families of Harvey and Jackie lived in America from generation to generation (to modern times) never going back to their homelands to live.




In today's world people are still coming over here to America either for a new start in their lives, an opportunity to be successful, have a better education, because their relatives live here, or for more freedom such as artistically. But was it really worth it back then for the immigrants to come and for us now?
If you think about it, it was hard settling in and earning money (no streets were paved with gold) but did these immigrants leave back to their homelands? Most of them did not. And if you look around at the people near you, they are all from different races. Without immigrants how do you see the world today? Without immigrants America would not be as a great of a country it has become. Without immigrants we might not be here today because most of America's people are made up of immigrants ( even if you are an U.S. citizen, your ancestors or early relatives were probably immigrants). No one exactly living in America right now or back then is truly a real American you can say, because you know how the Native Americans were the first people living on America before the Europeans started to find America. Well, in some history it says that Native Americans didn't originate from America but more from some where between Iraq or Africa and then they traveled through Asia to Canada and down, from an ice bridge. So to say, the answer to: was it really worth it coming to America has to be yes.