Ossining will revisit some of its immigration history over the next week with a visit from the mayor of Sassinoro, Italy. A tiny town near Naples, Sassinoro saw hundreds of residents leave for Westchester during the early 1900s, and the two towns are officially sister cities. On Tuesday, officials will renew that bond with an evening ceremony.

Ossining Mayor William Hanauer said he’s planning to give his Sassinoro counterpart, Pasqualino Cusano, a full tour: village hall, a local firehouse, a boat trip to the Statue of Liberty, and perhaps even a Westchester Municipal Officials dinner.

No one seems to know exactly how many Sassinoro natives wound up in Ossining. But Mayor Hanauer said he’s looked at the list of Sassinoro’s 46 surnames, and the names all look familiar. (Added: Here’s that list, actually 81 names.)

I spoke to members of the Mastracchio family for a 2006 article for The Journal News (that’s Maria Mastracchio in the photo, visiting Ellis Island and holding a photo of her grandfather, Modestino Conte), and learned some of the history between Sassinoro and Ossining:

Thousands of people left Sassinoro, a town near Naples, from the early 1900s to the 1950s, and many wound up in Ossining. They are now officially sister cities.

In 1985, journalist Paolo Mastracchio videotaped a set of interviews with Sassinoro residents who stayed behind.

First he gave the microphone to his mother, Giuseppina Mastracchio. She sat at a dining room table kneading her hands.

“For you, what does immigration mean?” he asked her.

“It means solitude and melancholy,” she said. “Because before in my house, I had many people. It was always like a holiday, because many people were around the table. … Now, there’s no one.”

Watching the video from his cafe in downtown White Plains last month, Franco Mastracchio – Giuseppina’s grandson and Paolo’s nephew – translated his grandmother’s words from Italian to English. Franco Mastracchio, 38, named the cafe that he opened in 2003 after his ancestral home of Sassinoro, although he was born in the United States.

In Sassinoro, agriculture suffered amid a growing population, the rise of fascism and World War II. Waves of people left to work in the United States, Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Uruguay, Australia and Europe. Later they began going to the industrialized areas of the north – Milan, Turin, Bologna.

No one has an exact count of the Sassinoro-born population in Westchester.

By 2000, about 1,200 Sassinoro natives were in the United States, according to a book that Franco Mastracchio keeps in his cafe, written by a priest, the Rev. Pasquale Maria Mainolfi. Only 700 remained in Italy.

“They all hoped to make their fortunes and go back when economic conditions were more favorable,” Mainolfi wrote. “Naturally, many never returned.”

In polls about immigration policy, I try to pay extra close attention to the way questions are worded. There are two polls out that clearly show a majority of support for some kind of legalization program.

A Washington Post/ABC News poll found that 61 percent would support “a program giving illegal immigrants now living the United States the right to live here legally if they pay a fine and meet other requirements.” The percentage was up from 49 percent in December 2007. About 35 percent said no, down from 46 percent in ‘07.

A New York Times/CBS poll gave respondents the additional option of allowing illegal immigrants to stay on as guest workers. About 44 percent said they “should be allowed to stay in their jobs, and to eventually apply for U.S. citizenship. Some 21 percent chose “They should be allowed to stay in their jobs only as temporary guest workers, but NOT to apply for U.S. citizenship. Another 30 percent said they should be required to leave the United States. Support for legalization was much higher among black respondents: 55 percent of blacks favored eventual citizenship, compared with 40 percent of whites.

I heard at least one new chant during this year’s May 1 march for immigrant rights:

Obama, Obama, La gente te llama!

President Obama, the people are calling on you, in other words.

A group of about 200 people got together in the parking lot of St. Ann’s School in Ossining on Friday evening and held a local version of the May Day rallies held across the country. This one was mostly in Spanish, even when Mayor William Hanauer got up to speak. He told me afterward it was the second time he has given an address in Spanish. The first was during his run for trustee.

Hanauer spoke about the village’s diversity and immigrant heritage. Felix Flores, a school principal and parent, talked about the struggles of earlier waves of immigrants and the tendency to scapegoat newcomers. Father Ed Byrne described the church’s efforts to help immigrant workers stand up to employers who mistreat them or fail to pay them. Organizer Daysi Briones (at right in the photo below) called for an end to immigration raids and a means of legalizing the undocumented.

They spoke from the back of a truck bearing the banner, “Legalization, not criminalization.”

(Photos: Angela Gaul/The Journal News)