ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS on the iron range

A wave of hatred for illegal immigrants is sweeping across our country. I know all the reasons for this hatred; and I would probably be a part of it were it not for my grandparents.

My grandfather came to this country and the Iron Range from Italy in 1917. It was 25 years before he took night classes and received his citizenship.

My grandmother came to America in 1917. She never became an American citizen. Therefore, they were both illegal immigrants just like many of their Italian friends.

One could say that they didn’t contribute to the American society:

They paid very little to the food industry.

Their entire yard, like a lot of other Iron Range yards, was a garden; there was no lawn at all. They grew almost everything they needed including the spices for their delicious spaghetti sauce. They raised a cow and bought a pig and some chickens from their neighbors. Venison supplemented their diet to a large degree.

By winter, their basement shelves were filled with canned tomatoes, beans, and other garden produce. Earthen crocks were filled with beef and pork and sealed with grease. Spices were dried and put into Gerber baby food jars which were then screwed into their covers that were nailed to the bottom of a board above the kitchen stove. There was wine, a lot of wine, fermenting in barrels in the basement.

They didn’t pay anything to the automobile industry.

My grandfather never own a car and walked five miles to work at the Mesabi Chief mine each day. He would hide his .22 single shot rifle and his picking bucket along the way. Then on the way home from work, in season, he would pick berries or mushrooms or shoot a partridge or a rabbit.

They didn’t pay a penny to the hospitality industry.

There was no time for play. I can’t remember their ever leaving town to stay a week by a lake. There was no time or money for that kind of thing.

They didn’t pay anything to the oil industry and very little to the power company.

Their life was a life full of work. While raising her seven children, my grandmother had to find time to can those garden vegetables on a wood-fired kitchen stove. She had to use a handle to lift off one of the circular surface covers and put the wood into the stove. The fire had to be kept just right for the canning.

My grandmother also baked bread, five loaves at a time, in the wood-fired oven. When she set the bread out, she wouldn’t let any of her kids eat the fresh bread until the previously baked five loaves were gone. They complained that they never had a chance to eat fresh bread.

All their meals were cooked from scratch on the wood-fired stove. Lacking any guidance about balanced diets and what foods are good or bad for longevity, they believed in one way of eating: meat, potatoes, and home-made pasta of all kinds. Grampa lived to be 94; Gramma to 85. Their kids grew strong and healthy and lived, and are living, long lives.

They never assimilated into the American culture.

The Italians were scorned by the white, Anglo-Saxon, protestants who comprised the upper class of the town. So my grandparents associated with their Italian friends who also lived on the Italian fourth street in Nashwauk.

So my grandparents were illegal aliens on the Iron Range. They didn’t contribute much to the American economy and they didn’t assimilate into the prevailing American culture. They never learned how to speak English. But if their children tried to speak Italian, they were told in Italian, “Stop it. You’re in America now. Speak English”

You people who go about preaching the gospel of hatred for illegal immigrants... based on what you have just read, would you have sent my grandparents back to Italy?

If you would have sent my grandparents back, America would be the worse because of your decision.

My grandparents’ seven children and their extended families have assimilated completely into the American culture. They have assimilated so completely that some of them have forgotten their roots and are openly and loudly critical of illegal immigrants.

My grandparents’ four boys were all in the service in WWII and Korea. Their extended family members have collectively spent millions of dollars boosting the American economy through taxes and purchases of goods. They have worked in the trades and in the professions. They have contributed immensely to America. They are all patriotic Americans.

In my opinion, the first and maybe the second generation of today’s illegal immigrants will be the same way as my grandparents were. They won’t assimilate into the American culture. But given time, even the immigrants with strict religious convictions will assimilate and enjoy the freedom and opportunity to succeed that our country offers.

It is inconceivable to me that today’s illegal immigrants will try to turn America into the same kind of country and culture that oppressed them so much that they fled. My grandparents loved the Iron Range and their freedom from fear. They would never have advocated for changing the American form of democratic government into Italian fascism.

Joseph Legueri is a retired teacher, writer, and tinkerer who lives in rural Gilbert, MN.