Italian Immigration In The 20th Century

The ethnic group that I belong too is the white American ethnic group. To be more specific, my background is mainly Italian so people may consider me Italian-American. Most of the Italians immigrated to the United States in small percentages. Most of the immigration occurred in the 20th century during the years of 1880-1960. Many of the Italian immigrants came from southern Italy with very low education. The main reason for Italian immigration was because of the poor economic conditions in Italy during the 20th century. The Italians settled in specific areas where they can all interact with each other and be away from other ethnic groups. Since they were not educated they mainly performed manual labor. The Italian immigrants were subjected to severe anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant discrimination and even violence such as lynching. A small amount of the immigrants only wanted to come to America to earn money, and then go back to Italy.
They were also forced to surrender any contraband, and had a tight curfew. Many Italian Americans were classified as “enemy aliens” during this time due to heavy security because of the war. Other than having a tight curfew and having contraband taken away, many Italian Americans were arrested and detained, eventually they were forced to stop speaking their native language; Italian. Throughout the war, Italian Americans were tried with Double Jeopardy, institutional discrimination, and other forms of discrimination. Thankfully, Italian Americans were only discriminated against mainly during the first two years of world war two, so they did not experience many things such as Redlining, reverse discrimination, and environmental justice