The United States has always been of two minds regarding immigration. On the one hand, we are a country built upon the immigrant ideal: a "shining city upon a hill" where millions of oppressed peoples from throughout Europe, Asia and the Levant left their countries of birth and adopted a new homeland. On the other hand, immigration has been a continual source of political and social conflict.

In the 50-year period between 1875 and 1925, more than 24 million immigrants - mostly from Eastern and Southern Europe; Russian Jews, Polish and Italian Catholics - resettled on these shores. Like the earlier wave of Irish, these immigrants were poor, landless peasants lacking advanced degrees, possessed few skills and lived in squalid overcrowded slums. But unlike the Irish, these new immigrants spoke no English upon arrival.

Italian immigrants were an especially detested group. Newspapers and prominent politicians such as Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts described Italian immigrants as an "unassimilable mass which drank to excess, lived in filth, and at the slightest provocation went for the stiletto. The remedy was simple: keep them out!"

ANTI-IMMIGRANT supporters of that time emphasized the differences between older and newer immigrants. Germans, they argued, were thrifty and industrious; Italians, however, did not want to learn English, and were clannish and criminal.

By the early 1920s, the call for immigration restriction was so strong that in 1924 the Johnson-Reed Act was passed which effectively closed America's borders.

And it is within this context of anti-immigrant hysteria fomented by the most abhorrent diatribes that two Italians - Tony Tantillo and Anthony Alaimo - made the transatlantic passage.

Born in Termini in 1920, Alaimo arrived in the United States in 1922. Tantillo, who was born in Palermo in 1918, immigrated to the U.S. as a teenager during the depths of the Great Depression in 1932. In addition to their native land of birth, both men shared a similar fate as both would face - and overcome - deeply held anti-Italian prejudice to become decorated veterans who fought valiantly for their adopted homeland during World War II.

A member of the storied 4th Infantry Division, Tantillo made the initial landing on Utah beach on the early morning of June 6, 1944 - D-Day. On the evening of June 5, Tantillo shook hands with British Gen. Bernard "Monty" Montgomery, who asked him where he was from. When Tantillo answered "Augusta, Georgia, sir," Montgomery responded, "I'd like to visit that town one day." Tantillo fought with the "Ivy Division" until he was severely wounded in combat on the outskirts of Cherbourg, France two weeks later.

Alaimo was a bomber pilot on a mission over the Netherlands when he was shot down in 1943. Badly wounded, Alaimo was the only one of his crew to survive the crash, and was taken as a POW. While confined, Alaimo assisted his fellow POWs in a daring breakout - an event depicted in the movie The Great Escape.

AFTER THE WAR, Tantillo and Alaimo returned home and like the millions of veterans of their generation got on the business with raising families and pursuing careers

Tantillo, who met his wife, Clara, at a USO dance while stationed at Fort Gordon, made North Augusta, S.C., his home and founded Tantillo's Grocery on Laney-Walker Boulevard, where he served the community for nearly 50 years. He and Clara helped establish Our Lady of Peace Catholic Church and raised nine children - the youngest who was President George Bush's undersecretary of state for textiles and trade from 1989-1993.

After graduating from Emory Law School in 1948, Alaimo practiced law in Atlanta until settling in Brunswick in 1957. An early stalwart of the State Republican Party, Alaimo was nominated for a federal judgeship by President Nixon in 1971, where he has served the Southern District since. In 2005, Alaimo received Georgia State Law School's highest honor, the Ben F. Johnson Lifetime Achievement Award.

In our current immigration crisis, the harsh treatment meted out at earlier waves of immigrants such as Italians often goes unnoticed. Today these same nativist frustrations on newcomers from Latin America can get the best of us. Tony Tantillo and Anthony Alaimo are a testament to the ability of this country to absorb and assimilate newcomers - their exemplary lives embody the promise that the United States is still is that "shining city upon a hill."