My girlfriend was born and raised in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. She’s visiting her father right now, and she says the entire area is almost completely Chinese!
It’s right near Leif Ericson Park (where her Dad lives) and she said you can go walking to the park, back to Scatturo’s, then to the Fort Hamilton train station, back to the park, and you’ll see virtually no white people or hear people speaking English.
It’s strange, when she was a little girl the area was Italian. Her grandparents were from Sicily and that’s where Sicilians went when they left Ellis island...to Bay Ridge. There’s even a social club still there for people from Sciaca, Sicily, where they were from.
The BIG difference though is when they came over they WANTED to be Americans! The Chinese and Arabs moving into Bay Ridge do not become Americans, they don’t learn our language and they have no intention of becoming asimmilated.
I remember one year we walked from her house near Faico’s to her aunt’s house in Bensonhurst, the day before Independence day. EVERY single Italian house was flying the American flag, while not one single Chinese house or Arab house was flying the flag. It was like they were living in their own country, not America.
She went shopping at The Great Wall, a Chinese market, and every person there bought their food with food stamps, excepet for her and an Italian guy, who paid cash.
When her grandparents came over, they had to be sponsored and show they were able to make a living. One was a jeweler, one was a cabinet maker, so they let them in. Now, apparently, not only do you NOT have to speak English, but you can apparently get on welfare the moment you come over here.
She saw a van pull up to the Bay Ridge library and people came out, social activists, with forms for the immigrants to fill out, giving them all sorts of government aid.
Why on Earth are we allowing this??? Don’t we have enough poor people in this country that we need to support without letting in millions more than have no intentions of ever becoming Americans??
Ed
Revisionist post-WWII myth. The Italians and Poles actually migrated to segregated enclaves where they continued to speak the language in the first generation. My GGrandmothers never even learned English. They didn't have to, being that they settled in an ethnic ghetto.
The big difference between the old school Eye-ties and Poles is that they frequently had three generations in the same neighborhood, including those who were more Americanized, such as your GF. The Chinese tend to start in rentals, buy a house, move from that house to go to suburbia (Tenafly, NJ being a good example) and then rent out the house to other immigrants.
The Chinese and Arabs, whatever their faults, are more educated than the Italians who came all those years ago and, especially in the case of the Chinese, are more financially successful in the first generation. They truly are the "new Jews" in many ways. You won't see too many fat second and third generation Chinese sitting around in wifebeaters talking about how "duh naybahood has changed."
Italian-Americans (I be half Italian myself, family with roots in Salerno and then Jersey City) have a tendency to idealize the past, and have "blockage" when analyzing new groups coming in.
The Chinese and the Arabs came here legally, build businesses, and push their kids to go to college. I see no problem with that, although I am worried about the caveman religion that the Muslims practice. Maybe their children and grandchildren will join our secular future, but I am not holding my breath in that regard.