Struggle Of Immigrants In Oscar Handlin's The Uprooted

America, as we know it today, undeniably was crafted by the hands of immigrants. Although immigration to America proved to be an extraordinarily difficult journey, the long-lasting benefits outweighed the temporary struggles. Oscar Handlin wrote, The Uprooted, in which he stated that first-generation immigrants were victimized, remaining alienated while living in America, even while maintaining their cultural identities. However, John Bodnar countered this position in The Transplanted, wherein he claimed that immigrants balanced their traditional values against the necessities of American life, and made pragmatic choices. Furthermore, Bodnar expressed that new immigrants on the whole adapted capably to America, after initial difficulties. In

Whereas in other nations, social class might have been assigned by heredity, or social caste might be broadcast by an immigrant’s surname, such factors are substantially less important in American society. Assimilating immigrants strove for the same occupational, educational and financial status, as had many of their American predecessors and as a result over time, the majority of immigrant groups were not precluded from moving up the American social ladder. In America, there was no uniform long-established systemic impediment to social acceptance, as each new group faced the challenges associated with being a minority in a foreign land. This phenomenon can be described as, "the remarkable fluidity of a social system in which each new group pushed upward the level of its predecessors" (Handlin, 4). Thus, a constant influx of immigrants, propelling a mobile society frees newcomers of the restrictive class structures from which they escaped in their birth nations. While Handlin argued that immigration caused alienation by means of, “broken homes, interruptions of a familiar life, separation from known surroundings, the becoming a foreigner, and ceasing to belong," even Handlin conceded that these tribulations were mitigated with acclimation (Handlin, 4). Homes were largely not broken apart, as “the wages of the first to arrive found their way back to families at home ...in the form of

However, economic, political, and social alienation were only temporary. Furthermore, the consequences of immigration on the lives of newcomers were over time, largely beneficial to the immigrants as well as to the American society overall. Immigrants became Americans, as [they] “faced a continual dynamic between economy and society, between class and culture. It was in the swirl of this interaction and competition that ordinary individuals had to sort out options, listen to all the prophets, and arrive at decisions on their own” (Bodnar xx). Thus, immigrants were transplanted, not uprooted. They maintained their traditions and culture as they saw fit, and assimilated into the economic, political systems of America so successfully, that they helped to create not just better lives for themselves, but more importantly a better