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THREAD. I challenge most Americans to provide their family's immigration documents on command. Was grandpa a stowaway? Grandma changed name?
My godmother has two birthdays because the immigration clerk in NY mistook "13th" for "30th" due to her Jamaican accent and wrote it wrong.
My mom's name was completely misspelled on the ship's manifest from Guyana to London and garbled again in NY. It was 1960. No one checked.
Both were naturalized US citizens, but could I prove it? Do I have papers to prove it? Nope.
How many Schwartz's became Smiths at Ellis Island? How many Jiroslavs became Jims? How do you prove you're American if you're not Native Am?
What about Cuban-Americans who fled during Pedro Pan with just the clothes on their backs and a name pinned on. Do they have documents?
By the way how come all the blank avis challenging me in this thread are mistaking "your" for "you're?" Et tu, bottae?
