A modern analysis of my Italian great-grandparents’ journey to the U.S. in the early 20th Century.

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

As long as they are here legally!

Angelina Quarancino stood on the deck of the S.S. Perugia, the Atlantic breeze biting at the face of the three-year-old. Briny August air enveloped the ship and its immigrant passengers. Traveling with her parents, the young toddler made the seven-day journey from Naples to New York via steam ship, arriving at the Port of New York on August 17, 1905. 

A few years later, on April 15, 1910, Michele Rago sailed from Naples to New York on the S.S. Batavia, where he arrived on May 1, 1910 at the age of twenty-one. Unlike the young Angelina, who arrived with her parents, Michele came to the United States alone, leaving behind his family in the town of Albidona, Italy. Nestled on a mountain above the Ionian Sea, Albidona was a village where the beauty of the surroundings far exceeded the economic opportunity.  So, Michele departed for the U.S., promising to send for his family once he established himself. 

Both Michele and Angelina entered the U.S. at Ellis Island, where the Statue of Liberty greeted them from the sea. Upon arrival, each was processed and admitted into the country, and both made their way to Chicago. 

When Angelina came to America, the most recently enacted immigration law was the Immigration Act of 1903. This Act expanded earlier statutes’ list of excludable immigrants (still called “aliens” in the statute, even today) and excluded non-citizens from Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause protections. The statutes from the late-1800s excluded Chinese immigrants, enacted a head tax on incoming immigrants to pay for immigration enforcement costs, and permitted government exclusion of immigrants who engaged in prostitution, along with convicts, lunatics, idiots, and anyone at risk of becoming a public charge. Evidently, Angelina and her parents were found to be none of these things, and thus were allowed into the country. 

When Michele arrived, the legal landscape was largely the same. He was also found admissible by the inspecting officer in New York, although the eugenic-fueled movement against Southern and Eastern European immigrants continued to swell. People like Michele and Angelina arrived by the thousands, altering the ethnic make-up of the European-American population. The Progressive Party and nativists had made preventing non-Northern/Western European immigration a priority, championing stricter immigration laws beginning in the early 1900s. In many ways, Michele and Angelina were lucky to arrive when they did, particularly before the start of World War I and the restrictive immigration laws that it spawned. Both arrived in the United States with legal status, and Michele ultimately became a citizen in 1927. 

Their journey would have been much different today. 

Not to give away the plot, but Angelina and Michele eventually met and married in Chicago (he never did send for that family in Italy . . .) and they are the maternal great-grandparents of this author. Their immigration stories are emblematic of the millions of immigrants who left Southern and Eastern Europe seeking a better life in the United States during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Descendants of these immigrants often proclaim, “My ancestors came here legally! Everyone just needs to wait in line and do it the right way.” But here’s the reality: there was no line. Michele and Angelina simply arrived and walked in (After some standard health tests and checks to ensure they weren’t “idiots” or likely to become public charges). 

While there was some ethnic and racial bias against Italian immigrants, they were ultimately admitted into the country by the thousands, fleeing poverty and strife in Italy. In contrast to the extreme anti-Asian and anti-African immigration racism at the time, it paints a vivid picture of American immigration priorities at the time, a sentiment the Cato Institute aptly describes: 

Before 1921, immigration laws pertained primarily to which immigrants to exclude, while any immigrant not specifically excluded could migrate. However, beginning in 1921 and continuing until today, the opposite has been the status quo: federal agencies decide which immigrants to admit and deny entry to those not explicitly approved.

Today, Angelina and Michele’s journey would have been much more complicated. 

Everyone entering the United States today needs a visa (or form of authorization) to enter the country with legal status (“legally”.) There are two categories of visas: immigrant visas and non-immigrant visas. As the names indicate, non-immigrant visas are for people who do not intend to immigrate to the U.S.; instead, they are arriving for a temporary and specific purpose. Non-immigrant visas include people arriving for study, work, or tourism. 

Since 1989, Italy has been part of the U.S.’s Visa Waiver Program (“VWP”), meaning that Italians are pre-approved to enter the U.S. without a visa for up to 90 days for business or tourism purposes. So in the modern era, Angelina and Michele could have entered the U.S. temporarily without a visa using only their Italian passports. However, a person who comes to the U.S. via the VWP cannot seek other immigration benefits once in the country – at most they can apply for asylum. See 8 C.F.R. § 217.4. Especially notable is that a person cannot enter the country using VWP and then seek permanent residency – the famous “green card,” which is the only immigrant visa available in the U.S. today; that process takes a minimum of several months and in many cases must be completed outside the U.S. at a consulate abroad (called “consular processing.”) 

How might Angelina and Michele obtain green cards today? 

For the young Angelina, she would likely obtain this status through her parents, where she would be considered a “derivative” on their applications. Prospective immigrants can obtain immigrant visas via a sponsoring employer, the diversity lottery, marriage, or through family members already in the U.S. with a lawful status (either lawful permanent residents or citizens). 

The “easiest” immigrant admission category for a green card is family-based, which is the only category without a statutory ceiling on the annual number of green cards that can be issued. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act (“INA”), immediate relatives are restricted to parents, spouses, and children. To be a “child” under the law, the person must be under 21 years of age and unmarried.  As far as family historical records demonstrate, the Quarancino family did not have any qualifying relatives in the U.S. at the time of their immigration. While there are also preference categories for other qualifying relatives (capped at 226,000 visas per year) the Quarancino family did not have relatives in those categories either. 

Next, there are employment-based green cards, which are statutorily capped at 140,000 per year. These preference categories include extraordinary ability; outstanding professors and researchers; multinational executives and managers; advanced degrees and exceptional ability; bachelor’s degrees or shortage occupations (of these, ‘unskilled workers’ are capped at 5,000 per year); special immigrants; and investors. It is highly unlikely that a family of uneducated, poor workers from Southern Italy would meet any of these categories. 

The next category is for diversity immigrants, which applies an intricate formula based on immigration statistics from the preceding five years to determine which countries qualify for diversity admission. Today, Italy qualifies as a diversity country because relatively few Italians immigrate to the U.S. 

While the Quarancino family qualifies to enter the diversity lottery under the modern-day formula, their chances of obtaining a green card from this are still slim. In fiscal year 2021, 11.83 million applicants entered the lottery – but this category is capped at 50,000 visas per year. Based on these numbers, the family has a 0.42% chance of being selected for a diversity visa (technically slightly higher, as each parent could submit their own application and then include the rest of the family as derivatives). To apply for a diversity visa, the applicant must have completed high school, marking yet another element that could disqualify Angelina’s parents from this visa category.

The final immigrant admission category is humanitarian, encompassing refugees and asylum-seekers. The Quarancino family left Italy seeking economic opportunity, which is not enough to qualify them as refugees or asylees. To claim asylum, the noncitizen must have a well-founded fear of persecution or have suffered past persecution so severe that they cannot be reasonably expected to return to their home country. 8 C.F.R. § 208.13 Establishing Asylum Eligibility. While economic conditions in Southern Italy in the early 1900s were dire, they would be not have considered severe enough for the Quarancino family to claim asylum, just as Latin American immigrants seeking economic opportunity in the U.S. today cannot claim asylum based on that circumstance alone. 8 C.F.R. § 208.13.

Unfortunately for the Quarancino family, as analyzed above, their chances of obtaining immigrant visas to the United States in the year 2024 are less than 1%. There are other avenues they could explore to immigrate with legal status, including non-immigrant visas like the F-1 student visa (if either of Angelina’s parents were seeking an education in the U.S., a difficult feat given their socioeconomic background and the general conditions at the time), but this would be temporary and they would need to reevaluate their options to obtain legal status after their student visas expired. 

Much of the analysis above would also apply to Michele, who would face many of the same obstacles. Unlike Angelina, who arrived as a toddler, Michele arrived at the age of 21 and would be responsible for obtaining his own immigration status – which he ultimately did, with far fewer steps and hurdles than it would have taken today. 

Based on historical family documents, Michele waited 14 years from the time he arrived in the U.S. until he filed a “Declaration of Intention” with the Department of Labor. On this form, filed August 29, 1924, Michele renounced allegiance to Italian King Vittorio Emanuele II. Michele filed his Petition for Naturalization on April 1, 1927 (occupation: machine operator) and it was granted. Notably, this form only required two witnesses who could attest to Michele’s good moral character and that he was qualified to become a U.S. citizen. Michele’s witnesses were Pasquale Marano and Antonia Angela, both of whom were Italian immigrants who had become U.S. citizens. This petition was granted by the court without a signature, just a faint stamp certifying that Certificate of Naturalization No. 2503497 was issued on October 15, 1927. And just like that, Michele Rago became a citizen of the United States. An “unskilled” machine operator would have a much more challenging time gaining citizenship today under the various categories available, but such was the way that this author’s great-grandfather – as did thousands of other early twentieth century European immigrants – gained citizenship. 

The analysis above, while tedious and lengthy, only scratches the tip of the immigration law iceberg. Obtaining legal status in the US today without existing family ties, an elite job with an employer willing to sponsor, or other extraordinary ability is, well, extraordinarily difficult. 

As the country barrels into yet another presidential election that will be largely defined by immigration, Americans with European ancestry should bear in mind that comparing our ancestors’ immigration stories to the plight faced by immigrants today is virtually impossible to do fairly. Just like the migrants fleeing poverty (and in many cases, violence) in Latin America today, our ancestors risked everything to come here. But unlike today’s migrants, the European immigrants of the early twentieth century faced infinitely fewer barriers to citizenship – so long as they were not members of an explicitly excludable category, they could enter the country, work hard, and apply for citizenship . . . the American Dream. 

The United States is a nation of immigrants. The only people who truly have any right to this land are Native Americans. The rest of us are here through a combination of luck, fate, and genetics. So, for those who have a great-grandma Angelina, a great-grandpa Michele, or other more distant ancestors who came to this country “legally,” spare some compassion for those seeking to make the same journey today. Had Angelina or Michele attempted to immigrate to the U.S. today, they would face a harsher and more difficult system. It is something that natural-born U.S. citizens should remember the next time a politician promises to build a wall.

Erica Hackett is an alumna of the George Washington University Law School.