A few years ago when I visited the then newly restructured Museum of Immigration on Ellis Island in New York harbor, I made an interesting discovery.
In the lobby of this huge and marvelously equipped museum I pushed the "Albania" button that was provided at the foot of a large map of the United States, among the many others related to all of the nations in this world. The map presented then digital displayed statistics of Albanian immigrants for each state of the union.
To my great amazement I discovered that Albanians emigrated to all of the 50 US states in various degrees of concentration!
For years everyone knew that the largest groups of Albanians could be found in 3 major areas of the US: Massachusetts, New York, and Michigan, but not that some Albanian communities, such as the one in far away Anchorage, Alaska, are also very active.
Today's article in "The American Spectator", entitled "Tirana on the Mississippi", confirms the above. It describes a typical scene at an Albanian cafe/restaurant in the middle of St. Louis, Missouri.
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2 comments:
Drita,
There is my great-grandfather's Ellis Island record!
http://ellisisland.org/search/matchMore.asp?FNM=MITRAG&LNM=SHKURTI&PLNM=SHKURTI&first_kind=1&kind=exact&offset=0&dwpdone=1
Cheers,
~its
Its:
thanks for the reference, which I looked up.
Although I emigrated with my Mom (whose name is also on the Wall of Honor) before the closing of the Island processing center, we landed at the regular port of NY, since we traveled on a US military ship, via Germany. An unforgettable trip which I documented in writing and verbally for Liberty's Island Museum 30 years ago!
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