History can be seen as a continuous migration of people throughout the world. America is a land of immigrants with the melting pot continually being fed new ingredients. The 1990 United States census reported that 1,110,373 people claimed at least partial Greek ancestry. This paper will attempt to give some insight into the immigration of Greeks to America.

The earliest Greeks to come to America were sailors. Greek sailors, such as Theodoros, Petros the Cretan and John Griego, who sailed with Christopher Columbus, were enlisted in the crews of Ferdinand Magellan and other Spanish expeditions to the New World. The most famous of these Greek sailors, Juan de Fuca, alias Apostolos Valerianos, discovered the straits separating Washington state from British Columbia, Canada.

The first time that Greeks came to America in large numbers was to the settlement of New Smyrna. In 1766, Dr. Andrew Turnbull, a prominent Englishman, obtained an order from the British King granting him 20,000 acres of land in Florida, later increased to 101, 400 acres, approximately 75 miles south of St. Augustine. Dr. Turnbull named his colony Smyrna after the town in which his wife, the daughter of a wealthy Greek merchant, had been born.

Turnbull felt that, based on the nature of the soil and the climate in Florida, Greeks, especially those from the islands, would make ideal colonists. He correctly reasoned that they could easily be persuaded to emigrate if they were guaranteed freedom of religion and had their travel expenses paid. He also knew that many Greeks would gladly accept almost any opportunity to escape the Turkish yoke.

In 1768, the Greek colonists, together with some Italians, set sail in six ships from Minorca, the designated meeting place. Of the 1,403 who began the journey, 1255 lived to see the shores of the New World.

Many more soon died as a result of the harsh conditions that existed in the new colony, which had been intended for only five hundred people. The Greeks of New Smyrna found themselves in a vast swampland, infested with mosquitoes carrying malaria. There was also danger of death by starvation, as food was scarce and there were hardly enough provisions for everyone. After just five months, 450 people were dead; a total of 964 people died in the span of ten years. The colony was officially disbanded after in 1777, and the remaining colonists moved to nearby St. Augustine.

After the disaster of New Smyrna, Greek immigration to the United States came almost to a complete standstill. During this time, Greece was still under the command of the Turks. After the Revolution of 1821, however, Greek immigration slowly commenced once again. A few merchant sailors, mostly from islands like Chios and other prosperous areas such as Asia Minor, made the journey to America. Dozens of immigrants who survived the Greek Revolution were bought to the United States by American missionaries. They actively recruited Greek boys, many of whom were orphans of the massacre of Chios in 1822, for immigration to America. Many of these orphans achieved great success in America.

Greek immigration to the United States in the nineteenth century, nonetheless, was not even sufficient enough to be called a movement. In 1848, for example, one Greek arrived in New York's port compared with nearly 100,000 Irish and about 50,000 Germans. According to Annual Reports of the United States Immigration and Naturalization Services, a total of 85 Greeks immigrated to the United States from 1821-1850, 31 journeyed across the Atlantic between 1851 and 1860, when Greeks began settling in New York, and 72 Greeks immigrated to the United States from 1861-1870. The principle reason for this low immigration during this time period was that the Greeks, after 400 years of foreign domination, wanted to enjoy their newly acquired independence. They wanted to work to rebuild the country to its state of former glory by redressing the damage sustained during centuries of neglect by the Turks.

By the late 1800's, however, Greeks began to flock to the United States by the thousands in search of more prosperous lives. During this time, the economic conditions in Greece were deplorable. Stephos Zotos explains in his book:

"Four centuries of slavery, of pillages and looting on the part of the Turkish occupants had kept the Greek people in a state of real stagnation. There was no progress, or economic development. Greek families did not perhaps starve; however, under the constant pressure and persecution of the Turks, the Greeks had little opportunity to acquire the economic assets that bring security and dignity to human beings."

In the late nineteenth century, there was relatively no trade or industry in Greece. With an almost entirely agrarian population, the country found itself in an economic deadlock between 1882 and 1883, when, in conjunction with the calamity suffered by the stock exchange, there was also agricultural devastation. In 1899, there were further economic crises when, as a result of speculation and extensive crop failures, there was a critical decrease in the value of the drachma.

The economic adversity in Greece coincided with the industrial expansion of the United States, and the Greeks became aware of America’s need for cheap, unskilled labor. Between 1880 and 1900, 95% of Greek immigrants to the United States were men between the ages of 18 and 35; from 1890-1910, approximately 75% of the adult male population of the city of Sparta left to make its fortune in America. They were influenced by tales, largely embellished, of marvelous wages and excellent living conditions in the letters of those who had already left. Poor Greek farmers compared these descriptions with their own lives of poverty and concluded that success was assured in America.

From the time of the War of Independence of 1821 until 1945, 432,048 immigrants from Greece arrived on the shores of America. The number of Greek immigrants to America, although small in comparison with other European countries, was substantial in relation to the population of Greece; from 1821-1934, almost one tenth of the total population of Greece emigrated to the United States. The exact numbers are hard to agree upon, as America's numbers did not include Greeks from unredeemed areas, or ethnic Greeks who emigrated from countries such as Turkey, Egypt, Albania, Romania, Bulgaria and Russia . It is estimated than an additional 156,000 Greeks immigrated to the United States from European Turkey and another 205,474 came to America from Asia Minor. The Greek government, moreover, never kept statistics. Initially, the government encouraged emigration, but when it peaked in 1907, with 36,580 people leaving for the States, the government tried in vain to discourage further mass departure through newspaper reports describing the hardships faced by Greek immigrants.

Source: US Immigration and Naturalization Service, Annual Reports

Although Greece did not take any official measures to restrict emigration, the United States did. It instituted a literacy test in 1917 and established a quota system in a series of Immigration Acts, beginning in 1921. Prior to their admittance to the country, immigrants were screened at Ellis Island. Prospective immigrants underwent physical examinations and were asked questions about their financial status, their social convictions and their past. Only a few hundred Greeks were rejected yearly at Ellis Island; those who did not qualify paid to go back to Greece, or, if they could not afford it, were detained on the island in hopes of reconsideration.

Before the early 1900's, the overwhelming majority of these early immigrants from Greece were men, mostly unmarried, whose primary goal was to earn enough money to secure themselves, and the families they had left behind, financially. Almost all intended to return to the homeland once this goal had been accomplished. In fact, during the days of mass migration, approximately 10,000 returned every year! Between 1908 and 1924, almost 50% of those who had immigrated to America returned once again to Greece. More than 20,000 Greeks left America to fight in the Balkan Wars. Others simply left because they had become disillusioned with America.

Undoubtedly, these immigrants faced many problems upon their arrival in the United States. No one was allowed to meet them at the docks, but very few had relatives or acquaintances already in America to welcome them, in any case. With little or no money, they were left to find a way to survive amongst a people who spoke a language unlike any they had ever known.

Essentially, these immigrants were uneducated and unskilled, and many fell victim to the padrone system. A padrone would employ a newly arrived immigrant and provide him with food, lodging and a small salary. The immigrant would work to repay his padrone, usually for the payment of his passage to America. Taking advantage of the immigrant’s ignorance of the English language and American laws, padrones kept immigrants in a state of perpetual debt and created longer and harder working conditions for them. The practice of padrones was eventually outlawed by government regulations.

Not all Greeks depended on padrones for employment. Many of the immigrants of the late nineteenth century engaged in petty street trades, such as selling cigars, flowers and sweets. In 1901, there were 1,500 roving Greek salesmen in New York. As time progressed, Greeks worked in liquor and candy stores, shoeshine parlors, theaters, real estate, vegetable shops, ice cream shops, and in the fur industry, especially in New York. They became restaurant owners, grocers, confectioners, tavern-owners and florists.

Many Greeks, unskilled as they were, engaged in more physical forms of work. In 1907, 30,000- 40,000 Greeks labored in factories, railroad and construction gangs, and as Maria Ekonomidou stated in 1916, during her trip to America, a majority of Greeks worked in coal mines and on the railroad lines. The Utah Fuel Company employed thousands of Greeks; about 300-400 Greeks worked in each of the companies' coal mines. Also, many Greek immigrants worked in textile manufacturing, in mills such as those in Lowell, Massachusetts.

Greeks, especially those in the aforementioned areas of work, faced great discrimination. They were often barred from labor camps for "whites" and were compelled to perform more hazardous tasks with other racial minorities. A group of Greek lumber workers was exiled from Washington in 1912 and an entire Greek section in South Omaha was burned down in 1909. In Idaho, Greeks could not live in most neighborhoods and were restricted to segregated sections in some public places. In California, one restaurant displayed a sign professing: "Pure American. No Rats. No Greeks." Dan Georgakas says that: "As far as most Americans were concerned, the Greeks were the scum of Europe... The racial antagonism towards the Greeks was omnipresent."

Unintentionally, Greeks spurred anti-Greek sentiments with their reluctance to learn English and accept Americanization. The early Greek immigrants contributed little to American character and culture in an attempt to retain their own culture. In time, they began to establish the rudiments of society that they had abandoned in Greece. The first, and most important, of these institutions was the Church.

The Church has long been the point of convergence for Greeks. One of the primary concerns of immigrants was to build churches around which the community could be molded. The first Greek Orthodox Church in America was built in 1886 in New Orleans; the second was constructed in New York in 1891. The Church continued traditions and kept alive the "spark of patriotism." In time, the Church also provided education for the children of the immigrants, teaching them to read and write Greek. By the end of the First World War, 130 Greek Orthodox Churches were built in more than ten cities.

Another element of society imported from Greece was the coffeehouse. The hard-working immigrants had little opportunity for entertainment except for what was offered at the coffeehouse. They sat around little tables, talking politics, smoking cigarettes and reading the local Greek newspaper, or playing cards while exchanging news and gossip and drinking a thick, heavy Turkish coffee. Occasionally, there was a traveling Greek shadow-puppet show or a dancer and orchestra who would entertain the immigrants. Ekonomidou explains the allure of the coffeehouse to the immigrant as a nostalgic reward: "In the sound of the lute, in the sound of the violin, his bitter soul fluttered with wings into the past. His fatigued mind was seeking his beautiful village."

Greek immigrants also grouped together in various organizations, mostly based on the islands or provinces of Greece from which they came. Surprisingly, the main goal of the most popular of these organizations, AHEPA (American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association), was the americanization of its members. These organizations were of great importance because they brought the Greeks together, helping them gain a sense of importance and decreasing the isolation and alienation they felt. As early as 1905, there were 100 Greek organizations in the United States, 30 in New York alone.

Most of the organizations initiated by the early immigrants have long since been dissolved, replaced by others set up by modern Greek immigrants to the United States. These immigrants have come to America in search of a life better than what they had or could have in Greece, the same reason as their predecessors.

Peter Doulis immigrated to New York in 1966. After talking to some relatives living in New York, he became convinced that his two young children could have a better future in America. The parents of Peter Pitsakis, who immigrated to Philadelphia around the same time, also believed that immigration to the United States would be in the best interests of their family. The Immigration Act of 1965 eliminated the quota system and gave preference to immigrants with familial ties already established in the United States. In comparison with earlier immigrants, most modern immigrants have friends or relatives already living in the United States to embrace their arrival into the country and to aid them in the process of assimilation. They tend to settle near family members or acquaintances.

In 1986, Giannoula Tsoflias and her husband brought their two young daughters to New York. They settled in Astoria, home of the largest Greek community in America . She says that she knew that the migration was necessary for the welfare of her daughters, but she also wanted them to be exposed to as much of the Greek element as possible. New York has long been the cultural capital for the Greek language in America.

New immigrants to the United States tend now to be better educated than earlier immigrants. Many students from Greece, such as James Doulis, come to America to further their education, usually to go to college. Asked why he came to America for a college education, George Antoniou, another college student, responds: "I knew if I came here I could finish my studies and find a good job afterwards. Getting accepted into college in Greece is very difficult, and for you to find a good job-any job- that has something to do with what you studied is almost impossible."

Possibility- the opportunity that America offers- to be free; to receive an education; to earn money; to move up the social ladder; to be somebody- is the lasso that has roped in millions of immigrants to the United States since its infancy. All immigrant groups, regardless of their ethnicity, strive to free themselves from the burdens their countries place on them and to conquer the hardships of assimilation into a new homeland. It's the courage that these people demonstrate in immigrating to America that makes our country the "land of the free and the home of the brave."

[Maria Doulis was a New York High School junior when she researched and wrote this award winning paper]