Word: costa
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Most of the Portuguese come to Cambridge with high expectations, hoping to find the ideal of history book America. Maurino Costa, a school teacher in the Azores, came to Cambridge in 1966, leaving behind a respected job in hopes of finding greater opportunity in the United States. At that time he had a vision of the American dream common to most of the Portuguese who come here. Costa, now comfortably situated as an employee of the telephone company with a home in Somerville, found the United States far different from the land of his dreams...
...came to this country alone eight years ago," Costa says. "Six months after I arrived I sent for my wife and four children. Before I came I had an idealistic picture of this country. I felt that everyone in the United States could have everything they wanted, as well as respect for themselves. By the time my wife came six months after I arrived, I realized that things were different than I originally thought...
...idea that I had of the United States--that it was a free country where you could do what you want--changed when I had to look for an apartment when my wife and family joined me," Costa says. "With four kids I was refused again and again, because no one wants to rent to big families. I couldn't believe this type of thing could happen in the United States...
...problems that Costa encountered in language, employment, and housing, are a three-edged albatross around the neck of Portuguese immigrants. They are representative of what Cambridge's Portuguese find when they reach this country. Inadequate living facilities, low paying jobs, and a language barrier that compounds difficulties in every aspect of life, quickly burst the dream-bubble of the new immigrant...
Language is by far the greatest handicap facing the Portuguese in Cambridge. For Costa, who had had previous exposure to English, language was the first and major barrier he encountered. For others--the majority of Portuguese immigrants in Cambridge who have had no prior exposure to English--the problem is even more compelling...