"Yet economic struggles have pressured that person to leave behind their friends, family, hometown, social network, native language, and much else. They’ve had an enormous negative impact on that person’s life."

My grandfather who was born in 1900 was sent by his family to the docks in Italy to board a ship to America in 1912 because they couldn't feed him anymore. When he arrived at Ellis Island as a stowaway. they wrote WOP on his back in chalk, which means With Out Papers. He had a train ticket pinned to his jacket, and was sent to work in a brickyard and live in a tent in Pennsylvania at 12 years old. By the time he was 40, he was the superintendent of the brickyard. He owned property, owned and operated 27 oilwell leases, and was the town Justice of the Peace. He had successful children, including sons that went to West Point, Annapolis, and MIT, and daughters that were nuses and teachers. He never allowed Italian to be spoken in his house.

He went back to the Abruzzo in the 1970s, and when I asked him about his old village, he said that the only people who had stayed there were the stupid and the lazy.