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[quote=Anonymous]OP, it might be helpful for you if you could spend some time finding out more about your grandparents and great grandparents. There are a lot of free sources for genealogy research and that could help you discover more about who they were, where they came from, and what led them to leave their countries of origin and come here.

I couldn’t have known most of my immigrant ancestors because they were mostly a few generations back. Some died fairly young, before their grandchildren were born, so little chance for passing down family stories. But, through genealogical research, I’ve been able to learn a lot about where they came from and why they wanted to emigrate.

And the reason was pretty much the same for them all. They were grindingly, shockingly poor. They were from at least three different European countries but the conditions were similar in all of them: poverty with no real opportunity to rise out of that state. One branch of the family lived in an area that was so well known for its poverty that a famous novelist of the time used it as the locale for his extremely poor characters.

So, I’m pretty sure I know why they came here- they were just hoping for a better life, as cliched as that sounds. And they were still very poor here for a number of generations, but being poor here was tons better for them than being poor back in the “old country.”

So, OP, don’t assume that your ancestors came here on a whim, or for better weather. It’s more likely that they were escaping from poverty in a place that offered little to no opportunity to better oneself. Truly, that’s how most Americans with immigrant ancestors came to be here. 
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