Robert++Schepis

**My Family Immigration** My grandfather's parents ( my __great__grandparents) were born in Galicia, Spain and moved to Cuba for job opportunity in the early 1900's and my greatgrandfather became the supervisor of a tobacco factory. My greatgrandparents then moved to Tampa, Florida because the tobacco company moved to America to avoid taxes on their products. By moving to America they didn't have to pay taxes for selling their foreign products. My grandfather was born in 1915 in Tampa, Florida as the second youngest of five children; his name was Robert Vincent Lado (I 'm named after him). The tobacco factory fell into bad shape when some bad tobacco was bought and ruined business. Because of the loss of the factory my greatgrandmother became homesick so they decided to move back to Spain. My grandfather was around seven or eight when they left. My granfather's family lived in Spain for twelve years.While in Spain the Spanish civil war had begun and Franco had taken over the area my grandfather lived in. My grandfather and his siblings were elligible to be drafted in the army even though they were technically American citizens. They had to escape from Spain by hiding in barrels aboard a Norwegian cargo ship to America. My grandfather was about 21 years old when they returned to Tampa. Not long after that WWII broke out and my grandfather and two of his brothers tried to enlist in the army. My grandfather unfortunantly discovered he had tuberculosis when taking the army physical and couldn't enlist. He was sent to a rehab center in Texas where he recovered for six to nine months. My grandfather also got a masters degree at the University of Texas and then later got his doctorate from the University of Michigan. In 1960 my grandfather was one of the early founders of the Georgetown University School of Languages and Linguistics and he was Dean until 1973. In 1977 my grandfather retired and made his own language school LADO International College.  My grandmother was also from Spain from the same town in Galicia that my grandfather was from. They knew each other from childhood. She married my grandfather in 1950. My grandfather was an American so they should have been able to move into America, but since it was the [|McCarthy Era] she was not given a visa to enter the USA and had to wait almost nine months to join my grandfather in Michigan. During the McCarthy Era any person from a country considered to be unfriendly was not allowed to immigrate from that country to America. Franco was the Dictator of Spain at that time and he was friends with the Dictator of Italy, Benito Mussolini, and that's why Spain was considered unfriendly. This is why my grandmother had to wait six months to get into America.



Picture from: [] Bibliography/sources: John Lado Margaret Lado Rosemary Lado []