The Pogues - Thousands Are Sailing

A great song by one of my favorite bands and great images from old New York and Ellis Island. My grandfather arrived at Ellis Island from Cork just a few years before WWI and as suggested in the song, was a cop in Philly like many Irish immigrants. (Shocking for an Irish immigrant, isn't it?) My mother's side came over during the famine in the 1860's so I'm still not sure where or how they entered.

It's always a disappointment to me when I hear Irish, Italian, Polish, etc. Americans who bash immigrants considering what our own families experienced. What part of that history do the bashers not see? Do they actually think those immigrants were liked or wanted? And let's not even get into how legal or not that wave of immigration was, because the haters are probably not going to like what they find out either.