Dear family who chose to come to the United States,

First, thank you for choosing to cross the vast Atlantic and brave the New World, full of all its wonders and horrors. I’m sure you heard incredible and unbelievable rumors that made leaving your loved ones behind unthinkable. I hope your reasons for leaving were positive, although I know enough about European history to guess that at least a few of you left under some strenuous circumstances. According to my parents, each of you came from France, Ireland, Scotland, England, Germany, Poland, Denmark, Canada, or what is now the Czech Republic. I am not certain of the exact years but I know it was before the 1950s. Some of you probably came in the mid-1800s with the wave of Protestant, northern Europeans, while others came later in the 19^th century and in the early 20^th century with the influx of Eastern and Southern Europeans. I don’t think there was a point in time during that span of history where at least one of your European homelands wasn’t distressed by something. Whether it was an internal revolution, an external war, a food shortage, or a combination of hurdles, I can only imagine what motivated your desires to move so far away, although I hope the motivations were more positive.

Did you achieve that American dream? I know that many of you didn’t get very far west of Ellis Island, but is it because you found what you were looking for in New York City? Or did you just find what you needed to get by? Did you ever regret your choice? If so, what made you push through? Did you ever think about me and the rest of my kin? Did you think you would find yourselves with a great, great, great, great granddaughter anxious to go back to where you started?

When I went to Dublin I wandered through the streets and found my maternal grandmother’s maiden name on a street sign. I wondered what my great, great grandparents would think of the Dublin I got to see. I imagined how different it must have been in the early 18^th century, and I thought about the aspects of the Emerald Isle that they treasured and would want me to see. Are some of those things still there? Does it make you happy to see that you have indeed left a legacy both there and in the United States for generations of your DNA to cling to?

If there was one thing about my travels that I appreciated more than anything, it was the warm welcomes I received pretty much wherever I went. But a few things learned from history classes tell me that you may not have been shown that same kindness. Were any of you made to do the dirty work while others, safely established in the community, turned down their noses and reminded you of your foreign status? What made you determined to prove their demeaning looks unjust? Did you keep on keepin’ on, because there was nothing else you could do? Or did you believe so certainly in your reasons that no one could step in your way?

If you can see what’s going on in the 21^st century, what are your thoughts on how immigrants are accepted in the U.S. today? Are you rolling over in your graves? Or have things not changed as much as we think? Does it make you mad? Does it make you sad? Does it make you proud? Have we, your blessed descendants done right by all of you? Or have we forgotten too much where we come from? There are too many generations between some of you and me for me to be sure that you were not refugees pleading for safety like those emigrating from Syria. There are too many years that I was not alive to know if the people in power in your countries could not help you get beyond the level of barely feeding your families. Or were you the ones at odds with those in power who had enough money to simply start over with the belief that you deserved more?

All of your experiences may have been very different or maybe they were all the same, but the one certainty is that there were people over here already waiting to present you with new challenges, whether you knew to expect them or not. Now a century or two later our living family is returning the favor for you. Does it make you proud to see how some of us stand up for immigrants, because you once stood there before those gates with similar hopes? Or do you shake your heads, because we have not come that far in how with we empathize with those who wish to remain among us after they get here? I have not forgotten who is responsible for why I am here, and I only hope I can pay forward what you started. I think you would be on board with helping to welcome new immigrants to a version of the United States that wishes to offer its new members the types of freedoms and advantages that you once worked so hard to reach, just like them. I don’t know what you wished your legacy would look like, but I hope it makes you proud, even if we haven’t yet done the most that we could. If not, a reply to this letter would be appreciated.

With love and respect,

Your [Insert the correct number of greats here] granddaughter