Whether they arrived by boat in the sixteenth century, train in the 1920s, or on foot yesterday, the immigrants and the helpless on American soil have been taken advantage of for centuries.
One parallel in American history that can be drawn based on Vivian's personal story in Orphan Train by Kristina Baker Kline, is indentured servitude. Dating back as early as 1607, poor Europeans were able to take the journey to America through a well-off American settler, usually a farmer, who would pay for the passage and supply a home and food in exchange for a certain amount of years of unpaid work. This is similar to Vivian's story of being "adopted" by the Byrnes and later the Grotes for the sole purpose of serving as an extra hand, with a home, clothes, an education in return, not to be treated as one of their children. And similar to indentured servants, when her time was served (when she became an adult) she would be free to live on her own.
Another group that can relate to Vivian's strife is today's illegal immigrants. After coming to America undocumented, the immigrants must find some form of "under the table" work to sustain themselves, and usually a family. This desperation to make money often results in immigrants taking a much lower pay than the average American worker would, and many employers take advantage of that opportunity. Like Vivian as an orphan child, immigrants face prejudice and are sometimes deemed unwanted or useless. And similar to orphans, illegal immigrants are in a sense nomads, wandering until they find somewhere they are accepted, and where they can make a suitable life for themselves.
History has a habit of repeating itself. Though Vivian's story in Orphan Train is fiction, it is based in the reality that oppression awaited the Europeans being brought into indentured servitude, the city orphans forced to board a train to an unknown destination, and today, for illegal immigrants who cross the border, unsure of what lies on the other side.
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