Moving to a new home in a faraway place in the early twenty-first century can be complex, difficult, and expensive. Like immigrants of the past, twenty-first-century families who are thinking about immigrating need to plan ahead. They have to take care of things like shipping their belongings, finding a new home in a suitable neighborhood, and finding schools and health care facilities. Anyone migrating to a different country has a mountain of paperwork to do. If they move to a country in which they do not already know the language, there is much more to think about.

The act of moving has evolved greatly over the years. Today's immigrants are following in the footsteps of the earlier immigrants who overcame obstacles that are difficult for us to imagine. The hardships they endured in...