My Immigrant Story (by Todd Smithline)

My immigrant story.

This is me in front of the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side on my last trip to New York. It's a pilgrimage I like to make as by the luck of history my great-grandfather Maurice lived next door at 98 Allen Street from 1895 to 1905. According to an inspector's report from 1901, our family was one of 22 living there at the time with "nothing disorderly" to note.

Maurice had arrived Port of New York (Ellis Island) from Riga, Latvia in 1892 at the age of 20 and his wife Rose followed the same path one year later. They started a women's coat business and moved to Brooklyn, where my grandfather Philip was born.

The same story was playing itself out on my mother's side of the family, with Coleman immigrating from the Russian Empire, likely Lithuania, at the age of 15. He married Dora and they landed in Boston, starting a successful carpet business and having a large family that included my grandmother Edna.

Maurice, Dora and Coleman got on a boat and did the very hard work to give me and their other descendants the greatest gift in the history of modern economies: birthright United States citizenship.

Immigrant.

Is there a more American word?

But my immigrant story isn't just a hundred years old. It's also brand new. Making some minor adjustments for mode of transit, my wife, Alexandra Smithline, traveled the exact same path. Coming to the US, achieving academic and professional success and becoming a United States citizen, all on her own.

Maybe like me you wonder what you would say if you could have coffee with one of your ancestors (for me it would include suggesting to Coleman that when his friend Louis mentions he's going to LA to make movies, maybe consider a life beyond the carpet business).

But the one thing I cannot imagine telling any of them is that I didn't do my part to help those who came next, or tried to close the door behind me.

Immigration is the single greatest engine of productivity ever discovered and the DNA of my family and country.

Immigrant.

It's the most beautiful word I know.