Today’s Immigrants Discover Century-old Newcomer Stories

On Saturday, June 26, 2010, 115 of Riis Settlement’s immigrant participants and their families filled two buses destined for the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island Immigration Museum. Boarding the Statue Cruises ferry from Battery Park City, immigrants of all ages ventured first to the Statue of Liberty, enjoying the famous landmark so many newcomers glimpsed a century ago as their welcome to a new country and changed life.  Some participants explored the museum at the Statue’s base, while others enjoyed the grounds over lunch in the shadows of the monumental Statue.  The ferry then brought the visitors to Ellis Island, now home to the phenomenal Immigration Museum, where many spent the day examining the history of immigration in the country they now call home.

One month later, on July 21, 2010, a small group of summer ESOL students visited the Lower East Side Tenement Museum for a Shared Journeys workshop entitled “Our Immigration Histories.”  Led by museum educator Judy Levine, the group visited 97 Orchard Street, one of the most famous tenement apartments in New York City, and home to over 7,000 immigrants from 1863-1935.  The group entered the apartment of a Sephardic Jewish family from the Ottoman Empire (now part of present-day Greece) and met a costumed interpreter playing 14-year-old Victoria Confino, who lived in the tenement in 1916.  Participants enjoyed comparing their own experiences as immigrants to the lives of those who came to this country from foreign lands nearly 100 years ago. Alison Egic-Millán, Director of Immigrant Services, explained, “As immigrants better understand those who came to America before them, they see a reflection of their own experiences.  Discrimination, language barriers, poor working conditions, family separation and reunification were common experiences for newcomers 100 years ago, just as they are today for many new to the United States.”