President Obama’s changes to the immigration status of millions of illegal immigrants has caused the expected firestorm of controversy. I have previously criticized the decision to withhold the details of the plan until after voters went to the polls and I continue to view the changes as an assault upon the doctrine of separation of powers. While I have always recognized the wide latitude given to presidents in the past in prioritizing enforcement, this is an open circumvention of Congress to achieve by executive fiat what was denied in legislation. However, I have also been thinking about the families themselves and my own family’s history in coming to this country. Many Americans are finding themselves taking journeys of their own — retracing the often harrowing steps of their ancestors in coming to this country in looking for a better life.
With the release of the President’s new immigration measures, much of the national debate has focused on the constitutional implications of a president unilaterally ordering such sweeping changes. For the millions of immigrants, the new legal status means a new home and future. For those looking to the future, the immediate past is often a place to escape from; a prior identity shed at great cost and effort. However, that is likely to change as it has for so many American families when descendants find returning to the past is the only way to fully understand their own identity. That is a voyage that I took last month to retrace the steps of two people who came in the last massive immigration wave at the turn of the twentieth century. My journey took me to a small village on a mountain in Sicily. It took me to Cianciana.
My grandparents — Dominico Piazza and Josephine Moscato — came to this country from Sicily when the Statue of Liberty was still a relatively new addition to the New York harbor. They saw that statue from the decks of different wooden ships.
Finding answers about Cianciana proved a bit more perilous than a spin on ancestry.com. The roads in the Agrigento Province were built for carts so that two cars barely fit and the series of switchbacks leave you with what seems the choice between a front-end collision or a dive hundreds of feet off a cliff. The burning of fields being cleared adds a menacing smell and glow to trip. Then suddenly Cianciana appears like a time capsule with terracotta roofs and stone houses nestled into the side of the mountain.
First settled in 1269 and then rebuilt after an earthquake in 1646. The village remains much as it has always been. At night, the streets become full of people chatting for hours. Old men gather in coffee clutches as smoke waifs down the main street from the roasting of chestnuts. Children have the run of the town – scurrying around in packs into restaurants and stores.
Walking down the main street, I was called over by a group of old men who heard that my grandfather was named Dominico Piazza. They then proudly produced an elderly man, Dominico Piazza. While we could not confirm concretely that he was relative, he bore a striking resemblance to my grandfather. We were surrounded by men probing for other names from my family like Moscato and La Corte. In the end, it really did not matter. To them, a Ciancianese had returned home. Home. It meant something different here. Despite being half Irish and half Sicilian, they viewed this as my home and my return as completely obvious and inevitable.
The response continued wherever we went. A pizza shop owner, Maddalena Chiazza, would not let me pay for our meal when she discovered that I was a “paisan” returning home. Maddalena lived near Toronto, Canada and returned with her family to her father’s village. I asked her why she decided to stay and she looked perplexed by the question – as if I had asked about something incredibly obvious and evident. She simply said “we built this. Of course, we came home.”
It soon becomes clear that Americans return to places like Cianciana for the same reason that their relatives once left them: to find something essential. In the early 1900s, my grandparents came to find a life and escape dire economic conditions. It must have been a journey that was both exciting and terrifying that journey must have been for the families of my grandparents which never ventured beyond the nearest village: first to Palermo and then to New York and ultimately to Ohio.
The voyage back for so many to places like Cianciana is motivated by a similar pull to a distant place for something essential. We sense that part of who we are can only be found where we began. Where our ancestors sought a future in America, we seek a past in the old world.
Over 700 years, the world has changed around it but Cianciana remains the same in its pace and its people. On Sunday, we went to the main church and watched women bring their breads from long cuddura to twisted mafalda to loaves of pane siciliano to baskets of little Rosette rolls. The church smelled heavenly as the local priest blessed the bread laid before the statue of St. Anthony and the women returned home with blessed breads to feed their families.
There is a profound sense of belonging in this place – a feeling that is lost in the transience of modern life. This is their place. We built it, as Maddelena said. “We” is not used in the immediate but the generational sense. It is passed along to children as more than their legacy. It is their identity. This is why, when you come back, they remind you that this is your home; this is where you are from. We are all proud to be Americans, but part of that identity resonates in different lands.
On my last night in Cianciana, I sat with my wife Leslie next to the little fountain in front of the 17th Century Holy Trinity Mother Church where my grandparents were baptized. They found something wonderful in America but they also left something wonderful behind. It was left but not lost.
None of this, of course, offers any answers for the immigration debate. However, for those new seeking to remain in this country, they will discover that they left more behind than misery or poverty. Their descendants may find, as I did, an inexorable pull to these places in search not of a future but a past.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University.
SWM, Jeb and W wouldn’t win the Republican nomination nowadays for President with these anti immigration groups of rightists.
Amnesty
Syllabification: am·nes·ty
Pronunciation: /ˈamnəstē /
Definition of amnesty in English:
NOUN (plural amnesties)
1An official pardon for people who have been convicted of political offenses:
an amnesty for political prisoners
the new law granted amnesty to those who illegally left the country
MORE EXAMPLE SENTENCES
1.1An undertaking by the authorities to take no action against specified offenses or offenders during a fixed period:
a month-long weapons amnesty
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/amnesty
swarthmoremom – “Inga, The smart ones like Jeb Bush do. W was well received by Hispanics also. The new tea party crop is much more anti immigrant and plays to the xenophobics. Mo Brooks might play well in the south but not in too many other places.”
You are so full of it. Right on cue you start using the “anti-immigration” narrative. Show examples of people who are? What most people are against is illegal immigration, but you refuse to put that word in because you want to be diss-honest about the debate. Grubber would be proud.
Squeeky Fromm, Girl Reporter – You are such a racist hater!
Inga, The smart ones like Jeb Bush do. W was well received by Hispanics also. The new tea party crop is much more anti immigrant and plays to the xenophobics. Mo Brooks might play well in the south but not in too many other places.
swarthmoremom – “Inga, it won’t cause resentment as it is a welcoming gesture. When a culture is appreciated it brings nothing but good will. That is my experience.”
Yea, most people love when another group get preferential treatment. What color is the liberal sky?
There is an aspect to El Presidente’s decree that nobody else has thought of. The Immigration Roll Out is going to be worse than the Obamacare rollout. Think about this:
How can anybody tell how long an UNDOCUMENTED worker has been in the country??? How can anybody tell if someone has been here 4 years, and thus ineligible for the new plan, or 5 years and eligible??? What keeps someone from crossing the border today, and then claiming they were here for 5 years? Nobody knows. They are UNDOCUMENTED, Duh!
This means that there is no way to estimate how many immigrants will actually get the new benefits. The estimates of 5 million may double to 10 million. Illegal aliens are already using forged documents and forged ID’s, so it isn’t like they are afraid to fib. What’s the worse that could happen. . .they get deported or something???
Who is going to certify how long they have been here, and how will they certify it. They can’t ask employers because if they admit to hiring illegal aliens, then they are subject to fines and criminal sanctions. They can’t ask people who hired illegal alien nannies and housekeepers, because the employers will be liable for the back taxes, and possible criminal fines.
There is going to be massive fraud in the certification process. This is one of the problems Obama has created by going it alone, without debate.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
SWM, and the goodwill of Hispanics might be something the right should actually care about if they ever want to win another national election.
Inga, it won’t cause resentment as it is a welcoming gesture. When a culture is appreciated it brings nothing but good will. That is my experience.
Jim, saying the President should be “jailed” isn’t hateful? Seriously? I call it as it is, hatefulness and bigotry. Jailed for what?
No it won’t cause resentment Jettexas, my family did it the legal way and I’m not at all resentful that these immigrants can have a modicum of security now.
swarthmoremom – “jettexas, Well, maybe you would feel differently if the feds were knocking at your door ready to take you away from your children.”
Inga – “SWM, they can say whatever crazy statements they want, but history will prove them to be the bigots and haters they are.”
And…. There you go. the cog goes “click”.
swarthmoremom. . . if I came here illegally, then that’s the law. Think Mexico lets Americans go there illegally? Heck no, their thrown in jail. Then they gripe about how their citizens are treated in America whom are here illegally! I live in Texas and have to pay for these people’s schooling and hospital bills. They get 3 free meals at DALLAS ISD and their families come to school to get the food and take it home. So don’t give your holier than thou diatribe. I live with the results of this mess!
Hispanics in Texas love Hillary Clinton but she could carry the state. The only republican that could compete with her for the hispanic vote nationally is Jeb. Read an article that stated that Texas has become a magnet for conservatives and they are moving in. Meanwhile more liberal people are moving out so the state will always remain red.
I seriously doubt that the noise coming from the right media outlets and politicians will be encouraging Hispanics to vote Republican in droves. The entrenched anti immigration stance by the right will only drive Hispanic voters away.
They will be paying into the social security system, only if they reach a certain threshold of income. I agree some are hard workers but what about the ones who have done it the legal way. That will cause resentment amongst them.
I’ve booked in too many illegals into jail that have been strung out on drugs, drove drunk, charged with assault and are part of underground sex slave trade of young girls. Some just simple assault or public intox and just trying to raise their families but why spend their hard earned money and what little money they make on alcohol.
SWM, they can say whatever crazy statements they want, but history will prove them to be the bigots and haters they are.
jettexas, Well, maybe you would feel differently if the feds were knocking at your door ready to take you away from your children.
Nick Spinelli – “Mexicans work ethic is above reproach. They have entrepreneurial skills, strong families, and strong religious beliefs. That is why they will never be enslaved Dem voters. They still need to come here legally, not illegally. I stand w/ the vast majority of all US citizens on this, many being Hispanic.”
Nick, I disagree, True they are hard workers (I saw that during my time in CA) but I would believe that blacks would have been in better shape today had the govt. not stepped in and made them wards of the state. Ol” Hill will be able to go around saying how wonderful it was what the Dem’s did and how the evil Reps and conservatives hate Mexicans and are racist in 2016.
Enjoyed this. (You write beautifully.) Thanks JT.