Americans from immigrant families: when your family got to the US, did they have greater or lesser social status compared to back in the old country?

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TokyoDrifblim@reddit

I would say it was an upward movement for them. My grandparents have an unusual story when they came here from India, because my grandfather was from a wealthy family and my grandmother was dirt poor. My grandpa actually was arranged to some other woman Who was of his social standing and he did not want to marry her and kind of pissed off both families by calling it off. They weren't living in a mansion or anything but my grandfather had like nice clothes and went to a private school which already put him in like the top few percentage points of wealth in India. When they moved here, I think it might have been a slight downward social status thing to find he was just like everybody else, but my grandmother certainly experienced an explosive upward movement in her social moving here.

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pizzabagelblastoff@reddit

How come he married your grandmother? how did they meet and what drew them to each other?

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TokyoDrifblim@reddit

Called my grandmother and got some clarification, so I definitely misremembered a lot of this. So, my grandfather was arranged by his parents to marry some other woman of a similar social class to him, but he called it off because he did not like her. He had not even met my grandmother at this point. So that was unrelated, but again his mother always viewed that as a huge mistake and was very angry about it right up until she died.

So my grandmother had her own sort of status around town, because while it was allowed for girls to go to school back then, they were essentially expected to drop out before going to high school. My grandmother was determined to get her degree and she stayed in school, being one of the only girls in the entire town to do so, and she earned her high School degree equivalent of whatever they have In India. So at this point, even though she was from a very poor family, she was basically the most educated and therefore considered the smartest young woman in town.

Since my grandfather had called off the previous arrangement, his father set out looking for somebody else and was also aware of the fact that my grandfather was planning to set out for America as soon as he could. With that in mind, he felt that getting his son the most educated woman in town was the right move so he spoke to her parents. So they actually did not know each other previously! My grandma said that her mother had to kind of talk her into it and she agreed to meet my grandfather, but once they met and she realized he was a very kind and extremely intelligent man, and mostly respectful, she was happy with it and she was excited about going to America to start a new life there as well. She said that in retrospect he is very different from how most men in India were at the time, and always treated her as a human.

My grandfather had finished his undergraduate degree in India in engineering And basically right after that they got married. He had gotten a full ride scholarship to come to NC State to get his graduate degree, so he came here for 2 years and worked part-time during that to save up some money. After those two years, my grandmother came over from India and He was able to get an apartment and a full-time job down in South Carolina. I'll stop there because they have a very long and fruitful history here in America but they genuinely lived the American dream. They got the two children they sent off to college, the house with the white picket fence in the suburbs, and they did it all coming here with basically nothing in their pockets.

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pizzabagelblastoff@reddit

That's amazing, and incredibly interesting!! Thank you for following up, this was so cool to read :)

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TokyoDrifblim@reddit

I don't remember the exact story but they sort of just met around town somewhere. I think maybe they both frequented the same store, but I'm not sure what kind of place it was. Might ask them later today. That's a really interesting question about what drew them to each other, it's not something that I've thought to ask before.

So one thing to note is that even though my grandfather was arranged to marry some other woman from his social class, they weren't like actually engaged at this point. So like he broke it off before it was an official thing . My grandfather had also always been planning to move to America, like he spent every year in school in English classes and his undergrad degree which he earned in India he doubled down on English classes so by the time he graduated he was essentially fluent. He knew that in America it wouldn't matter what anyone's social class was back in India so he wasn't really worried about that.

I will say that my grandfather's Father was happy for them eventually, He seemed to get over it after A little while. My mom has told me about the fact that my grandfather's mother absolutely never forgave them. She hated my grandmother With this burning passion because she was poor, She genuinely believed that poor people were inherently inferior in every way and that my grandfather had like spoiled their perfect bloodline by having children with her. Every second she was with my grandmother, which was thankfully not much because she stayed back in India, she abused her horribly. She died screaming about how my grandmother ruined her son's life, which I will attest is not the case. Sad and frankly pathetic how much that gets to people in some places.

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concrete_isnt_cement@reddit

My grandma went from middle class in Norway to middle class in Montana. Her family moved a few years after the end of WW2 because they feared Norway would get invaded by Russia if the Cold War went hot and were still traumatized by the recent German occupation.

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Recent-Irish@reddit

Door 2. Went from slums of Rio to solidly middle class suburban family in the USA.

I am eternally grateful for my father.

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therealdrewder@reddit

You should be. I don't know what level of slum he was living in, but the true slums are desperately poor.

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ColossusOfChoads@reddit (OP)

What was it like for them in the weeks/months that they were freshly arrived, before they moved that high up the ladder?

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Recent-Irish@reddit

I don’t know (I wouldn’t be born for another 10 years) but I know he worked a lot of odd jobs to pay college tuition, graduated and began working 70-hour weeks to save every dollar he could.

Once he moved up and has some breathing room he married my mother, bought a house, and then had some kids.

So yeah my dad’s actions from the late 80s to mid 90s basically ensured that my family wouldn’t be impoverished slum dwellers ever again.

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Yuunarichu@reddit

Lesser for maternal, greater-ish for paternal. My maternal grandma was wealthy in southern Vietnam, when she came here she worked custodial jobs and stuff. My dad's family lived in the rural countryside of Isaan in Thailand. They were incredibly poor. Now one of my aunts lives in a huge house.

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glassycreek1991@reddit

Door 4: profession wasn't respected or compensated in original country. My mom find in the US nurses wre paid well and are still respected today, somewhat.

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sharpbehind2@reddit

Ellis Island, people didn't like Italians, didn't like Catholics. They had a bad time for a while.

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Im-Wasting-MyTime@reddit

Beats being Catholic in Italy and Ireland in the 19th and 20th century. Apparently, all my relatives moved from Ireland that we know of during the 1860s to 1890s ish because the famine was so bad in Ireland and as a result, they were too weak to bury the dead bodies so the animals just ate them up instead. We were originally from Cork, Ireland. My family is kinda split between central Italy and the US. Let’s just say Italy kinda sucked between 1900 and 1945. Lots of our family moved from Italy and settled in upstate New York. No regrets. Italy is doing amazing now. Just visited Ireland for the first time in my life recently and there’s still a bunch of abandoned plots of land. Although, they’re doing much better as well.

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tsukiii@reddit

Kind of similar when they first came over - from poor farmers in Japan to farm laborers in Los Angeles. But several generations on, we’re all university educated “white collar” folks.

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ColossusOfChoads@reddit (OP)

What about race? Upon stepping off the boat, would they have felt 'lesser' than they did back in Japan? Or would it have been a wash? Or, all things considered, would they have felt like they'd moved up a notch?

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tsukiii@reddit

I really couldn’t say, it was like 1907. The economy was very bad in Japan at the time, so coming to the US was probably a step up in terms of survival.

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ColossusOfChoads@reddit (OP)

Yeah, I figure it was the same for my ancestors who came up from Mexico a few years after that. However far down the totem pole they found themselves once they got north of the border, it was better than what they'd fled.

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Im-Wasting-MyTime@reddit

Had relatives come from Italy and Ireland. Apparently, Ireland was in such a bad state in the 1840s, when people died from the famine, they were too weak to bury dead bodies so the animals just ate them instead. All of my relatives from Ireland moved outta there from the 1860s to the 1890s. We don’t have anymore ancestors living in Cork, Ireland due to all of that. We do have some still living in Italy which has improved drastically since the bad days of the early 1900s.

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Im-Wasting-MyTime@reddit

2nd Door: Family is originally from central Italy. My great-grandfather moved to Upstate New York, served in WW1 and had two children but sadly died during the Great Depression in 1937 rather poor at the age of 45 from a severe stroke. His children went on to live long lives. My grandfather eventually started a construction business in 1967 and it is still in operation to this day. He lived to be 79 years old and died in 2013. When he was young, he caught rheumatic fever around the time is father died and then about 10 years later, was diagnosed with a brain tumor around the early 1950s. He had to get treatment and while he was getting treated they tried to draft him into the Korean War however, he was unable to serve due to his doctor advising against it. Thankfully, he successfully recovered in Rochester, New York and lived a long life.

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Push_the_button_Max@reddit

My mom’s family came from México in the 30’s- My Grandfather had an auto shop and did very well until a car fell off the lift onto him. He lost everything while recovering.

They moved here where he was a mechanic for Union Railroad- sent both Kids to Catholic School and University, although he never finished school.

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kaywel@reddit

My grandfather came from rougher working class stock in Wales (eg alcoholic fishermen), snagged a full ride for an engineering education, effectively co-founded a manufacturing company and retired upper middle class.

Undoubtedly being white and English speaking helped, but his brothers who stayed did not have anything like his life trajectory.

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Push_the_button_Max@reddit

I was reading a few years ago that the assumption of generational upward mobility in the U.S. is more myth than reality. That most Americans stay in the same economic class as their parents.

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Push_the_button_Max@reddit

Door 4: -original settlers - My MIL’s family arrived from England in the late 1600’s, settling in New England.

For almost 350 years, the family has been lower/working class.

My In-laws started their own business and did well for themselves, but most of her siblings are still low-wage workers.

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sean8877@reddit

My grandmother's family were Assyrian refugees and managed to immigrate to Sacramento, CA. Apparently they woke up one night to a cross burning in their yard so they took the hint and moved across the country to NJ. They settled in northern NJ and were much more accepted (no KKK), most of the family still lives there today. So I guess my answer is more Door 3.

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WeridThinker@reddit

My family is from China, and our social status remained the same. Middle class to Middle class, but we enjoy the culture and lifestyle of the United States more, we are all happy about the move.

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Ladonnacinica@reddit

Sort of a mixed bag.

I’m an immigrant myself but came over as a young child with my family from Peru. This was back in the mid-1990s.

My mother’s side was poor, like below poverty line poor. She had cleaning up and cooking to make a living. By the time I was born, she was working in a open street market selling fruit. I actually spent my first few years in the market. I learned to walk there and still remember walking around and playing with the other kids. Exploring the place.

My father’s side was a bit better economically speaking. He even had gone to a trade school that was nationally known and his father had a reliable transportation business.

However, Peru hit hard times economically and socially. The rise of Sendero luminoso (a terrorist Maoist group) was at its peak in the 1990s. While the most violent attacks were in southern Peru (we were in the central northern area), there had been attacks in Lima which wasn’t too far away from us.

There was also hyperinflation where even the currency, Inti, was devalued and the government had to come up with a new currency, El Nuevo Sol, and my mom still remembers how at one point it seemed money wasn’t worth anything because no matter what you couldn’t afford things. The prices went shockingly up.

So my dad lost his job and there were lean times. Everyone was leaving to almost anywhere in the world.

So when we arrived in New Jersey on a cold winter day in 1995, it did seemed like a new chapter for us. My dad worked in a factory with a steady paycheck but not too much money. My mom cleaned houses and later became a CNA.

Economically, they were able to afford things they wouldn’t have had they stayed in Peru. But they never owned a house or moved beyond a working class status.

Yet, they don’t regret leaving because my mom said she left for our sake not hers. My brother and I were the first in the family to attend college; I went on to have a master’s degree. There definitely has been a shift economically generationally speaking but we are still immigrants.

While we became US citizens, we are aware some don’t see us as Americans and that could also be racially based (we have noticeable indigenous features) but we also aren’t too removed from poverty. We’ve only been here thirty years.

It’s very daunting when you realized how close you were to living your life in a certain way. I’m barely a generation removed from third world poverty to be blunt. It’s both reassuring and scary.

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pant0folaia@reddit

They went from peasant sharecroppers who were starving and didn’t own land to laborers who owned a home and had enough to eat. The men died young from health effects of their dangerous working conditions, but each generation after them did better than the next. I’m grateful every day for them.

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PlusAd423@reddit

All Americans except Native Americans, and maybe some Mexican-Americans, are from immigrant families. My family went from starving to non-starving.

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Unable-Economist-525@reddit

Native Americans migrated as well, just much earlier.

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PlusAd423@reddit

True, everyone's from an immigrant family except perhaps people who live in the Olduvai Gorge.

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o_safadinho@reddit

The descendants of slaves aren’t “immigrants” in the traditional sense.

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PlusAd423@reddit

Wikipedia says: "Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not usual residents or where they do not possess nationality in order to settle as permanent residents."

They moved from Africa to America and became permanent residents. If the movement has to be completely volitional then most women and children who came here in the past weren't immigrants.

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Heavy_Outcome_9573@reddit

They moved from Africa to America

You mean, They were kidnapped from Africa and brought to America.

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PlusAd423@reddit

They're not native to the Americas. They were kidnapped and brought here. Starvation or the possibility of death drove other people here. Some non-Africans were shanghaied and trafficked here. They are all immigrants, on a spectrum from unwilling to enthusiastic.

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Heavy_Outcome_9573@reddit

shanghaied

Really? We found the racist

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PlusAd423@reddit

Against who, the Chinese?

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Madame_Rae@reddit

Not every school teaches comprehensive or correct information about American slavery, so I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. But I promise you, delivery of slaves to the US and the immigration of non-enslaved women and children to the US were not remotely the same.

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PlusAd423@reddit

Are African Americans native to the U.S.? No. They came here from overseas. Even the person who initially responded to me said they weren't immigrants "in the traditional sense." I agree.

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Kindly-Hippo6547@reddit

I think for my mom it was a mixed bag. She wasn’t from wealth or poverty in Scotland, though at one point when she was younger, her dad left the family and just kinda… left them homeless all of a sudden (her, her older brother, older sister, and her mom). But they recovered from that and lived in I guess middle class?? I’m not entirely sure. When she came to America, she probably struggled at times because she was a nurse and when she was with my biological dad, he leeched off of anything she was managing to make. When she married my now step dad, she again went from not very good financial situation to a better one that was pretty middle of the road. So it’s been ups and downs, but both there and here. Currently? My step dad makes good money, but she racked up a lot of debt from my money hungry bio dad setting her back and her having needed to take out loans, then paying for my college, and now helping me with my apartment rent now that I’m disabled since early 2023 ☹️ I think if my bio dad hadn’t been so unbelievably shitty, I hadn’t gone to college, and I hadn’t gotten sick, she’d likely be reasonably middle class again. She’s been a nurse for well over 30 years now, and so has my step dad, and they both moved to IT for the hospital they worked at, but my step dad doesn’t have any debt issues like my mom unfortunately received. Doesn’t help that absolutely nobody told her about how to set up stuff like retirement and shit when she first came here when she was like 24, so she’s way behind on all that 😭 In other ways though, being white and from a European country means that she has privilege in that regard, and we aren’t DIRT poor, we just struggle sometimes and have to budget/be mindful of expenses often. But I still think we’re doing better than a lot of people around us, so even though we’re right on money, I still am endlessly grateful to have a roof over my head and food in my fridge. A lot of people in the state we live in can’t even say that, unfortunately. 🥺💔

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Unable_Tumbleweed364@reddit

I’m the one who moved my family and it’s a mix but mostly downgrade so I’ll be moving back.

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ColossusOfChoads@reddit (OP)

Back to where?

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Unable_Tumbleweed364@reddit

Australia

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MaterialInevitable83@reddit

Genuine question: why would one move if they were already on the upper crust?

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ColossusOfChoads@reddit (OP)

One of two reasons:

Money. You can make more of it in the States and then live even higher on the hog back in the old country.
Survival. The political winds have shifted and you, your family, or community are on the shit list. The first wave of Cuban refugees, and many of the families who fled post-revolutionary Iran, are two examples. There have been many others over the past few centuries.

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MaterialInevitable83@reddit

Thank you for the reply! It seems that many who originally intend to return settle down and never do, is that your experience as well?

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ColossusOfChoads@reddit (OP)

Some do, some don't. Others hold off until retirement. What I can say is that, in a lot of cases, their US-raised kids aren't too keen on going back to the old country.

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Magmagan@reddit

Niether. My father got a visa get his doctorate in Physics, but it's not like he was on some huge grant. So it was more like, middle (mum) + lower (father) class → lower middle in the US. They were smart and frugal so they managed to travel a lot within the US during their stay.

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Specific-Jury4270@reddit

door 1.

they came from the soviet union with 250 dollars bc that's all they were allowed to take with them and had to re-get their medical degrees. they worked their way back up to success and were amazing doctors until they retired. Now they're just living their life.

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WthAmIEvenDoing@reddit

I really don’t know what their status was in Greece, but when my great-grandfather got to the states, he settled in Memphis and owned a restaurant on Beale St. His cousin lived with him when he first came to the states, and owned a restaurant a little ways down from my great-grandfathers. The cousin was shot and killed by “highway men” while walking home after closing his restaurant. I remember the articles from the paper didn’t even call him by his name - just “Greek Restaurateur” which could have been because they didn’t know his name, or couldn’t understand/spell it, but from what I gathered from my grandmother, they were looked down on as immigrants. Even though he owned a restaurant in the city, my great/grandfather loved to garden and farm. He ended up owning a lot of land in Shelby County, most of which he gifted to the Greek Orthodox Church, who in turn sold some of it to Walgreens for some serious money many years later. I always thought it was tragic how they came here for a better life, and his cousin was murdered for a watch and whatever cash he had in his pocket.

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r21md@reddit

Well my family would've been killed if they stayed where they lived, so I reckon that's probably as bottom of the barrel as you can get.

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ballrus_walsack@reddit

I’m guessing some kind of soccer rivalry.

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r21md@reddit

Think more WW2

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Red_Beard_Rising@reddit

Stayed about the same, I guess. They were 17th century farmers in Germany then 18th century farmers in the US. They kept that up until the early 20th century. Straight off the boat to farm Ohio then Wisconsin.

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Ginsu_Viking@reddit

Door number 2 mostly. Family was mostly small farmers and artisans in Eastern Europe. One went from being a journeyman bricklayer off the boat to owning a major brickyard. There are still houses standing in my grandparents' hometown with his bricks. Another started a foundry with his brother in the 1890s. Unfortunately, he caught tuberculosis and had to sell his share and move to Denver. Foundry remained in the brother's family until 2003. Another came over in 1903 and was working class his whole life. His son, my great uncle, got a PhD in engineering and retired a multimillionaire. Most of the family today is solidly middle class white collar workers, all have at least completed college and some have advanced degrees.

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Swimming-Book-1296@reddit

Definitely door 1. My family was well off and very connected before we moved here. We moved here because my parents divorced and my mom wanted to get away.

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PackOutrageous@reddit

My dad’s family were large rural landowners in Cuba. Cattle and farming. Not “money rich” but certainly affluent. They lost it all when Castro took over and almost his entire family emigrated here in 1961. My dad had a college degree but little language skills. He became a bus driver and did that for 40 years. He worked hard, raised 4 kids and died in the house he owned. What always surprised me was that he never expressed an ounce of regret or anger about the hand fate dealt him. It may sound trite, but it was always more important to him to live free. And he did.

My mom was from the peasant class. She was a cleaner in my grand mother’s house in Cuba and my dad fell for her. She was the only member of her family to move here. My dad hated Castro and the regime so much, but almost every month he and my mom would send money through a broker to her family left there to help them. It’s a tradition we maintain to this day.

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inailedyoursister@reddit

By broker you mean someone "official" or was this one of those underground things?

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PackOutrageous@reddit

It’s taken many forms over the years, mostly under the table. I know that for a long time my dad had friends from Mexico who had family that travelled to Cuba frequently, so it was easy enough to send them money and they would deliver it. Right now western Union works and you’re allowed to send money to family for humanitarian purposes. But western union seems to be intermittent only coming back on line last year and with the vagaries of US policy to Cuba from administration to administration, it’s good to have an alternate. We have guy that charges 20%, so if I want to send my cousin $200, I cashapp him 240. My cousin has the money in had within a day and divides it up to distribute to everyone else.

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inailedyoursister@reddit

Thanks. I was curious what the cost was. That type of underground economy is interesting to me. Appreciate the insight.

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ak47blackjack@reddit

This is a survey

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Trillian_B@reddit

Both 1 and 2. Mom was from a wealthy family of privilege, dad was from a peasant farm with no internal plumbing. Came to the States with literally nothing but their educations. Though they divorced when I was young, they both ended up doing very well, owning multiple businesses and properties. Ironically my mom went back to the old country to retire.

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GArockcrawler@reddit

My great grandparents immigrated from Romania in the early 1920’s. They are from a small town 45 minutes from the Ukranian border. My great grandfather worked as an upholsterer. They lived a middle class life, with a traditional home and 1 car garage in a major northern city.

They got to go back to Romania in the 1960’s. They returned without their luggage. The people “back home” were so exceedingly poor that they felt compelled to leave everything behind for them.

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urmyheartBeatStopR@reddit

Lower but the social mobility in America is higher.

My parent and I are war refugees.

Back in Vietnam my mother was born in a Chinese merchant family. They had a small tiny business. Enough to take care of a small family nothing crazy. My father belongs to a catholic family with 10-11 siblings (one died early), rural/agricultural iirc farmers.

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Hatweed@reddit

My paternal grandmother’s ancestors were part of a minor British noble family who somehow ended up with a land grant in New England in the 1690s. They were pretty well off as far as I could tel, but I couldn’t tell you about any sort of social situationl. They managed a large farm until some point before the Revolution where the land was sold and family relocated to Central Pennsylvania near Lancaster.

My paternal grandfather’s ancestors were Swiss Anabaptists running from religious persecution in the late 1600s, among the first wave of settlers who docked in Philadelphia. Their ancestors today are the Amish, though my family had left that sect by the mid 1700s. They moved out west in the Ohio Country during the French and Indian War and settled the frontier. Been in Western PA ever since.

My maternal great grandfather (grandfather’s side) was a German pharmacist who came to the US in 1919 during the recession in Germany. His brother had come here right before WWI, so he moved in with him, opened a pharmacy and bar, then became mayor of the city they lived in.

My maternal great-grandmother (grandmother’s side) was a very young Polish peasant who fled to the US from the Russian Empire in 1911 with her older brother due to some local turmoil back home that may or may not have killed their parents. We honestly don’t know. She married my great-grandfather (different one from above) in 1930 and lived in West Virginia until she passed away in 1978.

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Bear_necessities96@reddit

From middle to low middle class mostly

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VVG57@reddit

America has more social equality than where I came from.

Back home, our driver leaps out of the car as soon as it stops to open the door. However, he thought of himself as an equal while discussing the Prime Minister and politics.

Interactions with the working class are much less obsequious in the US. I would describe them as mostly pleasant and professional.

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para_diddle@reddit

My family was from Italy, but I never heard of any cruelty or discrimination toward them. My great grandfather was a winemaker from Naples and did very well in life as a new American.

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seen-in-the-skylight@reddit

Oh man, are you kidding? On my father’s side, door #2 all the way!

We’re Jews, and we came from villages in what is now Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia. And man that was bad. Even though some of my family was professionally successful (one of my ancestors was even a chief plasterer on the Tsar’s palace), they constantly faced the threat of horrifically violent pogroms.

We came to America right before things started getting really really bad during the revolutionary days of 1905-17, but the harassment and attacks were always a danger. Of course just a couple generations later and almost all the Jews there were enslaved or exterminated during the Holocaust.

We came to America with literally nothing. My ancestors built businesses, were clever and hardworking, and within three generations our family was solidly upper-middle class.

As for my mother’s side… that’s more complex. Our French ancestors came in like 1720 to what is now Canada (Acadia, not Quebec) and were forced out brutally by the British. And our Sicilian ancestors… well, they came over in the 1920s after some… shady business went south and became, erm… violent. Our family history is literally the plot of the first Godfather movie, with an added dose of fleeing persecution by the fascists. So while they were poor, in Sicily they did have a kind of power and authority.

Like my dad’s side, though, they came over here and built prosperous, peaceful lives for themselves. And, I know for a fact that none of that generation felt they had lost out on anything just because they “family business” wasn’t viable anymore. They wanted to get away from all of that.

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EmpRupus@reddit

Your story brings up an interesting point, that there isn't a clear Door-1 vs Door-2 if you only consider money.

You can be money-wealthy in your home-country, but still persecuted for being an ethnic minority, LGBT+, political dissident against a regime, accused of religious blasphemy etc. and be threatened in other ways.

And when you immigrate, your main change in life may not be upward or downward mobility, but rather being free from those threats.

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ziptes@reddit

Not me but my wife’s family. Polish peasants in German empire and Croatian peasants in the Austro-Hungarian empire. From that to owning a farm here not so long after that, it’s a huge step up.

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jastay3@reddit

I have known several immigrants including the in-laws of both my brothers rather wackily. Status can rise sink or be neutral. For one thing no one knows that someone is an immigrant (people don't wear special clothes for it unless they want to); it only comes when something like job seeking is connected. For instance I once knew a highly educated Liberian who went down status over here simply because there were no "cool schools" in Liberia so no one valued his degrees.

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Griegz@reddit

On my dad's side, my great-grandparents immigrated and my grandparents were the first natural born. My great-grandparents, or at least their parents, were probably born as serfs to the Tsar of Russia.

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c3534l@reddit

Well, I can only speak for my grandparents and greatgrandparents. They absolutely improved their condition. But I can't say for sure they couldn't have done so back in Ireland. In fact, my great granddad was pretty poor during the great depression. So, honestly, I'm not sure what good this survey is. The cuestion shouldn't be whether life improves generally over time, but if immigration was a better choice than staying at home.

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4514N_DUD3@reddit

Greater; they showed up here with nothing but the clothes on their back but no one was sure as fuck persecuting them for their religion and past allegiances.

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Evening_Bag_3560@reddit

Suspected horse thief in the old country

Industrialist in the US

Or so it’s told. The industrialist is easily proved in archival research. The horse thieving has not proven one way or the other.

So overall, a drop in social status, IMO.

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FemboyEngineer@reddit

Definitely scenario 1; we fell into the "upper-crust people, forced to flee to the US due to war & genocides" category. I think that's a big part of why we ended up successful here; immigrant parents from that background have very high expectations of their kids.

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Unable-Economist-525@reddit

Door #2: 16 year old boy fleeing Kaiser Wilhelm I, no property, little money, comes to NYC, and conscripted into the Union Army in the Civil War. Captured, sent to a POW camp in south Louisiana, lost part of an arm to injury and infection. Walked mostly barefoot to Iowa and started his life. Died with quite a bit of land, successful dairy and delivery company, served as head of the county school board for years. His descendants were able to avoid subsequent 20th century European wars, famine, and hardships because of his adventurous choices. I am grateful.

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jd732@reddit

My 4 great-grandfathers came from 4 different European countries in the 1895-1910 timeframe where they were all sharecroppers in Europe. Three of them (Lithuanian, Hungarian, Slovak) became coal miners in Pennsylvania and lived in company towns. I’d say their social status stayed the same. They were cheap labor on both sides of the Atlantic.

My Italian GGF became a baker and owned his own home & business within 15 years. His son married the daughter of the Lithuanian coal miner and pretty much blended into the middle class of the 1930s/40s.

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addictedtotext@reddit

My great grandparents were Danish immigrants and settled in north eastern Montana. Very harsh country that no one wanted. GGpa was one of many children so he had to leave if he wanted family and land etc. There just wasn't enough. GGma was a baby. Her mom had 2 kids by the man of the house she worked in. I think they could keep 1 baby secret but #2 was too much. They are both named after him but that's all we know. She was married off to an older bachelor I Minnesota and later moved to the community she met my GGpa in. They are roughly the same age but GGpa didn't come until he was 19 or so. So my ggma was a better situation since she was "illegitimate".

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Direct-Floor-4420@reddit

I guess Door 2 ish. My mother was middle class and my father was upper middle class from Taiwan and they immigrated to the US decades ago. They recently retired at 65 with a net worth of roughly $9M, so still in upper middle class. Majority of people around us probably don’t know them too well.

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stangAce20@reddit

About the same….Went from middle class in the UK to middle class here.

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ColossusOfChoads@reddit (OP)

to middle class here.

By UK standards?

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alien_from_Europa@reddit

My family stems from the personal hair stylist for the Empress of France. Napoleon III suspected that they were having an affair and the Empress smuggled him into the States. My family started a very successful large hair salon in Manhattan. So what did my brilliant family decide to do with their fortune? They all moved to Wheeling, WV to open a new salon there. Wheeling was marketed as the next NYC. Spoiler alert: it wasn't. My family tree went from wealth to lower middle class.

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ColossusOfChoads@reddit (OP)

I've been watching 'Young Sheldon' with my wife and kid. While I didn't quite hear that in Jim Parsons' voice, it was kinda similar! Wow, that's quite a family tale.

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Direct-Floor-4420@reddit

I guess Door 2. Parents were middle class from Taiwan, came over to the US decades ago and retired at 65 recently with a net worth of roughly $9M, so I guess upper middle class? But most people probably don’t know them too well.

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Fat_Head_Carl@reddit

Both maternal and paternal families made massive economic jumps!

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IHaveALittleNeck@reddit

Lesser on all accounts, through each branch of my tree.

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bananapanqueques@reddit

My dad’s family were indentured Czechs, so great-grandmother coming to the US as a child with a new name and clean slate was eventually upward. Surviving alone as a tween and teen was initially rough. She died middle class but never got to see her family or Czechia again.

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Karen125@reddit

Door #1. My grandmother came from a wealthy British family and married my American grandfather during WWII. Moving to California and becoming a US citizen was not anything she ever expected to do. She was raised with maids, a cook, and nanny. Then she became the maid, cook, and nanny to her own middle class American family. Everyone still laughs about her attempts at cooking a meal.

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Soonhun@reddit

It is mixed. My parents, both from South Korea, met here in Texas after their parents migrated here. My fathers family was wealthy and landowners from the country. Most of their wealth was stolen by the Japanese, but they were still well off and never worried about going without meat. My mother was from a poor family in the slums of Seoul who, with her siblings, couldn't afford school except for the private one funded by churches. In the US, non-Koreans looked at both of them the same. Now, they are solidly upper middle class with a great house.

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bakstruy25@reddit

We went from a lower-middle class family in the DR with a tight community, and our family had a reputation as being well liked. Half of our family was arab, which made us stand out a bit (not in a negative way at all). People knew rumors and gossip about us, they knew who was inheriting what property, which son was following their fathers profession, which daughter was marrying into which family etc. We were 'somebody', to put it simply. That was very important. Not somebody powerful or influential, but still somebody.

When we came to the US we were suddenly alone cramped into basically a tenement apartment building in Brooklyn. We earned more money, and it blew us away that we could buy a TV so easily, but we were very suddenly 'nobody'. We were bottom of the barrel, a poor cramped immigrant family working minimum wage jobs.

So yes, there was undoubtably a massive decline in what could be perceived as 'social status'. The result was that a lot of my family gradually moved back (and then sometimes moved back, again, to the US).

But over time, my family once again became 'somebody'. We became more well known to neighbors and business owners. We dated and married into other families in the neighborhood (including me, I married a girl two blocks down from me lol). Is it the same as the DR? No, of course not. Family, as an identity, is not as important in America. But we aren't as isolated and downtrodden as when we first moved here.

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gidgetstitch@reddit

One side of my mother's family was wealthy when they came here in the 1600s from England. The other side was German Jews that came over from Russia in the early 1800s and were grocery shop owners. They became wealthy over here. One side lost a lot of their money in the Great Depression and became middle class. They other side lost their wealth in civil war and stayed upper middle class.

My father's side is Native American.

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friendlylifecherry@reddit

Mom: lesser version of door 2, she didn't get indoor plumbing until high school but was doing pretty well when she came here

Dad: Door 3, pretty much just a lateral shift, came from working class, still in working class when he met my mom

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Meattyloaf@reddit

Mom's side was higher. They weren't rolling in money by any means but there was some generational wealth that was built. It's all gone now due to poor decisions by a couple people. Wild to have grown up in the harsh poverty that I did when I had family that could've actively changed that. Maternal Grandmother blew all the money on a bowling alley at the end of the 90s. Then what was on my material grandfather side was all used up on legal fees for my aunt and mother and what money was left the family. As for my dad's side of the family it's pretty much stayed the same, poor and big family.

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Joey_Skylynx@reddit

Great Great Grandfather barely spoke a lick of English, and my Great Grandfather, despite knowing English still preferred to stay in a community of Polish-Americans. Most of them came from Clergy/Miners and the tradeoff after coming to the United States was bible sellers and steelmill workers.

Sometimes your family just had unique talents for certain things and sticks to them for sanity.

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MediocreExternal9@reddit

Door 2, but it wasn't immediate. We were poor our first decade in this country, lower middle class the second decade, and now middle class these last 3-5 years. Took awhile to live the American dream and it's still not fully realized.

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_pamelab@reddit

In Germany my great grandfather was an educated miner but he also owned the apartment building they lived in. After getting here, he was a miner and homeowner. I don’t think much changed for them class-wise other than no longer being under the emperor’s thumb.

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MundyyyT@reddit

Door 3, my parents did fine before immigrating & their social statuses didn't change after they got here, the US simply had more jobs in their field that paid them more

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echopath@reddit

Door #2. My parents were war refugees from Vietnam, moving to the US not knowing any English or having gone to college. They worked lower-middle income jobs their whole lives in the US. Now they live a firmly upper-middle class lifestyle because of the opportunities I was born in the US and the income I have now. I even give money to my parents every month.

The American Dream is real and very alive.

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Squissyfood@reddit

Door 3. Financially moved up like crazy but socially we moved down a lot. My mother's side was essentially old money, meanwhile my father's side is still in lower middle class. In the US we are upper middle class.

My father is a colored, technically ESL US citizen now. I think my education and health were significantly better growing up here but frankly my career prospects are stagnating pretty bad nowadays. I do speak enough of mother tongue and have enough connections that returning to the motherland is an enticing prospect...maybe an extended holiday will be sufficient.

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namhee69@reddit

Kinda #1. Grandpa was an academic in Argentina and doing a professorship exchange in the NYC area during the dirty war.

So he wasn’t a celebrity or anything, but was respected there in his discipline, and respected here.

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Alamagoozlum@reddit

My granddad came over from Ireland where his family owned a decent bit of land and a farm. My gran was from Poland. I don’t think her family were very well off. Grandad became a lawyer after the war and they had it pretty good for a while (apartment in the city, nice car and a lake house). Sadly, he died when my mom was young and she grew up on the poorer side.

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CPolland12@reddit

Well… my family got to stop being persecuted, so I guess it’s a massive step up

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Bluemonogi@reddit

I don’t know what the status was in the old country for most of them. I don’t think any were upper class society people. Middle or lower class I guess.

I know my grandfather before he came to the US in 1920 was unemployed, worked as a driver sometimes, was an amateur boxer. I think his family was not rich but I don’t know how poor they were. I think he came to the US because it was hard to find a job there at that time. In the US he went into construction. He operated heavy machinery. He did road work, helped with a dam project, dug basements and swimming pools. He didn’t get rich or own his own construction business but he had steady work and supported a wife and 3 kids.

Most of my ancestors were farmers and came to the US before the 1880’s. They may have had some farmland or worked on someone else’s farm. Some of them definitely owned some land after they came to the US. Their kids all had their own farms. Their kids and grandkids got to go to school. Maybe that would’t have been possible in their former countries.

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iliveinthecove@reddit

They're not from a place where status is a thing. I've never heard anyone in any branch of my family worry about being looked down on or looking down on somene else.

Economically, they were either poor over there and poor over here, but with more opportunities. Or, there were some family that were refugees so their biggest concern was that unlike a lot of the people they had known they weren't dead.

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WitchyNonbinary@reddit

My Abuelo was the first born in the US, we probably had better social status in the US because people in Nicaragua were kinda trying to kill us...

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Furious-Avocado@reddit

Door 3. My mother's family was maybe lower-middle class in Ireland. They came here, were poor for a while, then my granddad worked his way up. ...Then, due to his mental health/addiction issues, they found themselves dirt poor in NYC in the 70s. My grandmother worked 2 jobs and rented out her bedroom to keep a roof over the kids' heads, but they were home alone all the time and it was too dangerous, so she sent them back to Ireland to live with family.

Then, they came back in the 80s (I think?) and worked their way up again. Now she and my aunt and thoroughly middle class in the US.

Moral of the story, America offers far more upward mobility than other countries, as long as your life remains good and stable; however, in the event of severe crisis, there's no safety net, and when you fall, you fall hard.

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GF_baker_2024@reddit

My paternal grandparents came here from Mexico as poor, uneducated migrant farmers. My grandfather was eventually able to get a union job and citizenship, and they eventually managed to buy a small house with a yard in the suburbs. All of their children finished high school or GED and are comfortably working class or middle class (all retired now), and their grandchildren are middle class: about half of us have a bachelor's degree, some of us have advanced degrees, some are business owners, some have held executive positions.

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