Immigration Books

Over all this book is based on two historic frameworks, viz., American melting pot (salad bowl, assimliation, etc.), and canadian 'unity in diversity' (the famous phrase Nehru is attributed to).

Contents: Indians in North America; Independence and Conflict;
Immigration to North America; Making a New Life; Keeping the Culture Alive; Human Smuggling and Worker Exploitation; Future Immigration; Famous Indian Americans/Canadians; Glossary;
Further Reading; Internet Resources; Index.

About the book: An overview of immigration from India to the United States and Canada since the 1960s, and particularly since the technology boom of the 1990s when highly skilled professionals came seeking better incomes and opportunities than they could find in their homeland.An overview of immigration from India to the United States and Canada since the 1960s, and particularly since the technology boom of the 1990s when highly skilled professionals came seeking better incomes and opportunities than they could find in their homeland (source publisher).

The strength of the book is in its coverage, which is (by and large) credible, authentic, and from a neutral perspective, by way of illustrating how a community is striking a balance in a foreign, but adapted, home. The contents, in short portray two rays: a) major faiths that have Asian-Indian colors; and b) experiences of people, in their struggle, pains, labor, success (example, IT boomers, technology exporters, or Indian teachers, p. 52) and failure (human smuggling, the picture of an illegal immigrant in American jail on p. 86).

The weakness of the book is it tries to cover too much in a small space, about an immigrant population that is the second largest in the continent. In this sense it is a research work, but useful to a school student. It cannot be taken as a reference work for advanced study.

History and historiography needs facts and figures, which can be corroborated, NOT by way of gossip. An issue relates to few textual / contextual matters. For instance, a picture carries a note of the burnt train that led to the Gujarat riots of 2002, and the note states the train was bombed by a mob (p. 29). A word about the bombing is pertinent. No worthy source has used the word `bombed,' in reporting this riot. There are theories of burning the train from inside, or from outside, NONE says about bombing. This subject is sub-judicial as of this date, and interests all human watchers.

In trying to be neutral, the book however does not highlight the neutral contributors in the North American Mosaic. Many secular and democratic efforts, by educated and enlightened Indians, continue to contribute their might in making the ends meet. The utility of the book would have been enhanced, if it had separate chapters on US and Canadian narratives-because the twain are not identical in many respects, such as, laws, opportunities, treatment towards Multifaith multicultural and multilingual communities, etc. A socio-pysco-lignuist, searching in this book for accent, acculturation, adaptability, and so on, will have to look elsewhere. Vegetarians will be happy to find some food for thought, but Halal foods for Muslims, and Jhatka food for Sikhs is absent. Further, in this book, Canada gets less than 20% coverage. And in cataloging Canadian contributions, missing content includes first, Haroon Siddiqi (the award winning journalist, editor Emiratus Toronto Star); second, Rohinton Mistry is a writer who makes up a part of the Indian diaspora

A misnomer is the title, per se. In America, Indians are natives who are the real Americans (or call them local inhabitants of the continent), and NOT immigrants. The title of the book could be Asian Indians, Immigrants from India-to be precise and communicative-a title not just for publicity stunt.

As a Fulbrighter, and who has worked in identifying bridges across Indo-American cultures for over a decade, my book, Indian Contribution to American Studies (co-author: Dr. Mohammed Burhanuddin. Delhi: Anmol, 1997), has much more to offer in understanding how Indians--even if these Indians do not land in America-are, nevertheless, contributors to the glory that is and the grandeur that is emerging in the West.

Furthermore, Amazon.com offers an excellent opportunity to compile bibliographies. My Listmania (or bibliography), on "Immigrants" is a useful list of books for those who are looking for similar titles): www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/listmania/list-browse/-/D0GU65VVJ6CO/ref=cm_aya_av.lm_more/002-0928635-8893604

See my other lists: www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/cm/member-fil/-/AF9SY5YLN3JDX/ref=cm_aya_bb_lm/102-6017208-1038532

Thanks to author Calavita, American society may remember the forgotten braceros, the close to 5 million Mexicans who came to this country between 1942 and 1964 to feed us all during and after WWII. The contribution made by the braceros should be recognized as we embark in the new millennium. Get the book and bring justice for the braceros.

The point here is that plently of people do not migrate even when economics would seem to suggest migration should sky rocket. The works concentrate on European regions or generalize across the globe--but the point is important and suggest we don't always focus on the "big" picture when we talk about migration -- someone always stays home. For US scholars working on Mexican/US migration this is crucial stuff to consider

Me gusto la manera que la autora siendo espanola, radicada en Estados Unidos desde hace 3 decadas, tiene una vision amplia de lo que pudiera ser este pais en 10 anos si el gobierno estadounidense continua protegiendo la inmigracion ilegal, los que vivimos aqui nos vamos haber en un gran peligro del comunismo que es lo que persiguen los mexicanos radicados en este pais apoyados por las organizaciones de izquierda con complicidad de las organizaciones hispanas maxicanas, desplazando al norteamericano, al afro americano y al inmigrante legal en los empleos, como si el mundo fuera estupido en creer que los norteamericanos no trabajan en la construccion. Tratando de cambiar el idioma,la raza y la identidad de Estados Unidos a los que los mexicanos llaman "la reconquista'

This text is truly working from the ground up. Despite its being one of the world's largest diasporas, the case of the lebanese "in the world" is one that has yet to be sufficiently explored. Khater's text attempts two things: to piece the history of the Lebanese migration, and to analyze how migration "works" theoretically. In all of this, Khater even ties together a compelling narrative on gender in the Lebanese migration network. The result is an ambitious book that is a great starting point in understanding Lebanese history, and its connections to all of the world. My hope is that Khater will continue to pursue the Lebanese migrants, and write a second volume.

This is an excellent book for second generation Brazilians who would like to learn more about the Brazilian expereince in the US. It has a fantastic range of subjects.

Originally published in 1932, Ireland And Irish Emigration To The New World: From 1815 To The Famine focuses upon the emigration of Irish men, women, and children between 1815 and the great potato famine of 1845/46. Historian William Adams focuses upon the roots of that vast emigration movement and provides a detailed historical account of the economic, social, and political factors underlying the early pre-famine migration waves. This reprint edition from Clearfield Company is highly recommended for academic and community library Irish History and American History collections -- and has much to commend it to the attention of genealogists needing a background introduction into the historical context of their researchers with respect to pre-famine era Irish emigration to America.

If you are of Irish descent (and are proud of it) and live in America, you should own and proudly dislay a copy of this book. It is a beautiful pictoral presentation of how the Irish immigrated, integrated, and adjusted to life in this country.

By a quirk of fate I can be found in the two page picture of the Murphy family reunion of 1988 on pages 188 and 189.

W.A. Murphy -- 10/07/00

She is a wonderful author. Her insight is terrific and the depth of her research is impressive.

The Irish in Australia is a general history of the contribution of people of Irish birth to Australian national life and character first published in 1986 by New South Wales University professor of history, Patrick O'Farrell. The fifth paperback edition published in 1993 contains 362 pages with two prefaces, eight chapters - the eighth a new one on the "The New Irish - an updated bibliography, 21 useful pages of additional reading sources and an index.

The book is a rich chronicle based on primary and archival material noteworthy for its geographic scope as well as its leverage of study the author has done for other work he has published on Irish migration. He describes his sources as small, no doubt one of the reasons he pursued his research on a global basis at several points in Australia and at others in Belfast, Dublin and Rome.

Caution is recommended to readers who might infer too broad a meaning to the book's title, assuming it suggests the Irish in Australia were a homogenous community. On the contrary, O'Farrell weaves a complicated saga of people from Gaelic-Catholic, Anglo-Irish and Ulster Protestant traditions - seasoned with a few Irish Jews and Quakers - engaged in three areas of almost constant conflict.

* Conflict between distinct, separate and essentially poor Irish-Australian cultural factions;
* Conflict, "often bitter, sometimes violent," between Australians of Irish birth and the Australian establishment;
* Conflict, "often hostile and sometimes most indignant in its refusal to accept the Irish as true and proper Australians" between the Australian Irish and non-Irish communities.

The parameters of Australia's early foundation were marked by English and Irish extremes. Of the two national ancestral groups, O'Farrell claims the Irish have been the more dynamic force in the evolution of Australian national character.

O'Farrell uses extensive data to explain Australia's foundation as a British penal colony. He reports just over 40,000 mostly Catholic convicts were sent to Australia directly from Ireland by 1853, 26 percent of them women. Of the convicts sent from England, he cites estimates suggesting perhaps 8,000 were Irish-born and a similar number were of Irish ancestries. Irish social rebels, those convicted of crimes of protest against poverty and landlordism, were about 20 percent of the total. The rest can be described properly as ordinary criminals, mostly thieves. O'Farrell undoubtedly offends select conventional wisdom that upholds Irish convicts as honorable victims of gross injustice, social oppression and national persecution, or as heroic rebels. "The facts," he writes, "seem otherwise."

One of the strongest personalities in the formation of the Australian-Irish community was Cardinal Patrick Francis Moran, Archbishop of Sydney from 1884 to 1911. Known for his discipline, dignity and pride in Irish identity, Moran advocated inclusion of the Australian-Irish into the British-run colonial society as themselves, not as imitation Anglo-Saxons. Careful to avoid any appearance of Irish nationalism, Moran stood for the richness of Irish culture, making no apologies for what was Irish. Polished and refined, Moran made it clear, "Australia must swallow the Irish potion neat." Moran's stance framed one side of the continuously simmering conflict between the English colonial administration and the new Australian-Irish population. On the other, the establishment insisted de facto membership in society was dependent on the Irish abandoning their identity. The Australian-Irish would have none of it.

Along with Cardinal Moran, about 2,000 mostly Irish Catholic priests arrived in Australia in the 19th Century and waged a holy war to capture the Australian wilderness of indifference, neglect, heresy and sin. Precisely because the Australian-Irish Catholic laity was so dominated by their exuberant, sometimes belligerent clergy, they were saved from the political tribalism and clannishness into which the American Irish fell. The immigrant priests established Irish Catholic symbols everywhere by building hundreds of churches, schools and convents throughout the country. Their presence and impact was ubiquitous.

Perhaps because of the strong emotion in much Irish poetry and song as well as the long economic and political struggle against Britain, there are several theories for the genesis of free Irish emigration to Australia. O'Farrell acknowledges many, but cuts to the chase with a thesis of common sense. He says the best left Ireland for Australia, not the worst. "It took initiative, resourcefulness, capacity and also, obviously, money."

The first free Irish in Australia built their image in the outback. Many experienced farmers arrived from Ireland between 1860 and 1880, finding immediate opportunity in affordable, plentiful land. Many originally non-farming Irish immigrants gravitated to these quickly successful Australian-Irish agrarian communities, investing their wages from first jobs as common laborers and miners into farms of their own. This combination of real and nouveau Irish immigrant farmers built sizeable Irish communities around the major cities in New South Wales, Victoria and the other colonies.

As time passed, Irish migrants gravitated more to Australia's cities, grouping together beneath the structures of neighborhood, parish church and school, workplace / work role, political party and sports. However, O'Farrell makes it clear the urban Irish in Australia did not retreat into ghettos like many of their emigrant countrymen in the U.S. and England. They maintained their communities, but considered themselves Australian-Irish, not just Irish, and strove to function as fully bona fide members of Australian society.

Useful data are plentiful in this book. We read that 342,842 Irish "free" immigrants arrived in Australia and New Zealand between 1851 and 1921, with 101,000 landing in the Victorian gold rush decade of 1851-60. This compares to nearly four million Irish who left the Old Sod for North America. Very few Famine refugees went to Australia, mainly because of the distance and greater expense of the journey. O'Farrell maintains the Irish people who went to Australia and New Zealand were "a much more accomplished, venturesome and happy lot than those the Famine had dumped on America." It is also true, however, that the Irish arrived relatively late in America, a country already settled and an environment more closed to them than was the case in Australia. Ironically, Australia was seen by many Irish as offering greater opportunity than America, where the urban ghetto - much like what they knew at home - awaited them.

O'Farrell refers to the celebration of St. Patrick's Day in Australia several times, explaining its various forms as a religious saint's feast day, a political statement, a social holiday and a boozy down-market street party. Occasionally it was all four, but most often it balanced precariously between an excuse for a drink-up and a lightning rod of both general public and Irish-Australian disapproval for its divisive, irrelevant rowdiness. Cardinal Moran took control of St. Patrick's Day observances during his tenure, trying to bring a sense of balance, sobriety and respectful Australian-Irish character to it. Sadly the celebration remains most famous for excessive drinking, brawling and otherwise objectionable behavior of many participants.

Several lay individuals played prominent roles in sustaining the Australian-Irish community. J.G. O'Connor, who had arrived in Australia from Ireland in 1841 at the age of two, became Sydney's premier Irish social chairman for over 40 years in the last half of the century. He acted under the mantle of the Hibernian Australasian Catholic Benefit Society, founded in Victoria in 1871 and spread rapidly throughout Australia and New Zealand in the 1880s. Neither a nationalist radical nor a man of great means, O'Connor was the quintessential hale hearty, well met Irishman, always promoting an Australian-Irish cause to raise money. The Hibernians continue their preservation of Irish heritage, loyal support of the Catholic Church and good works for the less fortunate today.

The Australian Irish, then and now, take great pride in their sporting life. Sport allowed them to create instant heroes to help fill their needs for self-esteem. One of the most famous was Australian-born boxer Les Darcy who came to fame in Sydney in 1914. O'Farrell describes Darcy as "a pure and simple hero, a good boy who loved and looked after his mother, went to daily Mass, said the rosary - and won: the power in his fists came straight from God." At his death in 1917 at age 21, Darcy was discussed by some as a potential nominee for canonization as Australia's first saint.

O'Farrell explains how single Irish women immigrants often outnumbered Irish men in Australian cities. Bachelor Irish men in the cities tended to work at inferior jobs with low status and realized their inability to offer a woman much more than a life of drudgery and poverty. Their alternatives were to defer marriage until they accumulated sufficient wealth or not marry at all. As a result, many Irish female immigrants as well as first generation Irish-Australian women never wed.

This resulted in substantial age differentials between husbands and wives in the early Australian-Irish community. It also meant Irish-Australian widows of means as well as spinsters were not uncommon in Australia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Irish immigrants didn't carry nearly as much of their homeland to Australia as one might assume. The Catholic school system where many Australian Irish sent their children competed with public schools in examinations. The priests and nuns who ran the schools were thus forced to load their syllabi with state-mandated classes on top of religious instruction, attendance at Mass and various other church events. "There was no room in the school day for Irish culture," O'Farrell writes. In addition, Irish Catholic Australians didn't want their children studying and embracing Irish culture. Most regarded the study of Ireland as irrelevant in their new situation as Australians.

"The Irish in Australia" by Patrick O'Farrell is a well-researched, comprehensive work written in a pleasant style describing the conflicts faced by people of Irish birth who emigrated to Australia. It bridges the great distance between Ireland and Australia with well-documented demographics as well as numerous stories of colorful Australian-Irish personalities from all corners of society. It includes numerous comparisons of the Australian-Irish immigrant experience with that of the much larger group of Irish emigrants to the United States. It provides entertaining and informative insight into Australia's rich Irish character and must be considered a premier source on Irish migration.

"The Irish in Australia" has been honored with the New South Wales Premier's Award for non-fiction and the Ernest Scott Prize for Australian history.