MB Civic

By David D’Alessandro  |  May 15, 2006  | The Boston GlobeTHE MAIN source of protein left in the small mountaintop village was wild blackbirds. As they were consumed faster than they could procreate, there was little food and little choice. Vincenzo, 20 years old, uneducated, and frightened, climbed into a donkey cart and left his parents and the village for the first time.

The winding and rocky dirt roads of the Basilicata region of Italy were best traversed by donkeys and horses in 1909. Yet, hundreds of thousands of poor, desperate Southern Italian peasants took 10 days by horse or donkey cart or even longer walking to the port city.

Like the Irish and Eastern Europeans before them, many Italians had to leave their impoverished homeland to survive, to find work, to send money back to those who could not or would not emigrate. Some went to other European countries. Others to South America. Most came to the United States.

The Naples harbor was brimming with ships preparing to cross the Atlantic. Vincenzo, alone, with a few bags of unshelled nuts, cheese wrapped in cloth, and some fruit, boarded the steamship Duca Degli Abruzzi with 1,800 passengers, 1,700 of them, like him, in third class. The ocean voyage would be twice as long as his trip from Gorgoglione village to Naples.

Packed tightly with others in steerage, Vincenzo immediately succumbed to seasickness. Ill the entire time, he prayed that New York Harbor was closer than it really was. Arriving at Ellis Island on Oct. 25, 1909, he was deloused, interviewed, given official papers, and transported to the Brooklyn docks, where a distant cousin took him by train to a small city in upstate New York where he dug ditches, worked in a restaurant kitchen, and slowly learned some English.

Well, you know the rest of the story. There are millions like Vincenzo’s. He saved enough dollars to send for his Gorgoglione fiancee. They married in 1912, had four children, one who died at 9 and another at 12.

Vincenzo and Madalegna opened a small grocery store, bought the building, built a house, opened another grocery store, bought a few rental properties, became citizens, and sent their only surviving son to serve during World War II and then to college.

One in 50 million stories about American immigrants. Which brings me to my point.

Unless today’s anti-immigration zealots are related to someone named Red Cloud, Crazy Horse, Pocahontas, and such, they do not have genuine native standing to declare who should and should not be allowed to stay or enter America. Virtually all of us are related to immigrants. I am pretty certain, while loath to admit it, that even certified Mayflower types are descendants of immigrants.

This country is all about immigrants — their hopes, their dreams, their desire to just have a chance. They built this country — every bit of it.

Even as some of the rest of the world casts a negative eye toward America, we have always had the distinct differentiation that millions want to live here — and we have accommodated so many.

We should, of course, be vigilant about undesirables and terrorists. We must have reasonable controls on immigration volume. Yet in the fervor, we seem to ignore what would have happened to us if America had deported or banned our forebears.

If my grandfather, Vincenzo D’Alessandro, could not have boarded his ship or had been told to leave, I probably never would have had a chance to attend college, run a large company, or send my own children to college.

Where would you be?

When my grandfather first saw the Statue of Liberty, he could not read the plaque which, in part, says:

”Give me your tired, your poor,/ Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,/ The wretched refuse of your teeming shore./ Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me,/ I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

If we listen to all these immigrant descendants who are clamoring for severe restrictions on who goes and who stays here, we will have to change Lady Liberty’s plaque to read:

”Now that we have ours,/ who cares about you?/ Go away!”

David D’Alessandro is a former CEO of John Hancock Financial Services.