And to think, immigrants used to bend down and kiss the ground when they landed in the USA!
Now they spit in our eye.
I expect anyone doing the rough Atlantic crossing was going to kiss the ground when he set foot on dry land. Between the danger of shipboard epidemics, the crowded and unsanitary conditions on the ship, the lousy food and the constant seasickness, it's no surprise that any passenger would have been happy to get off the ship. If these students are in fact immigrants, and not born in this country as I suspect, I doubt they'd have understood the significance of arriving stateside at a tender age. For them, it would just be an adventure in a new place their parents had told them about.