'Destination America': Walking In the Shoes of Immigrants

Fang-Yi Sheu, a star dancer with the Martha Graham company, left Taiwan -- a free country -- 10 years ago because there were more opportunities in the United States. She still feels homesick and guilty, and we hear from her proud but heartsick parents back home.

The daughters of Ferdows Naficy, who brought them from Iran in the 1950s so she could get an education and they could grow up liberated American women, instead found themselves tugged back. Mahnaz became an Iranian government official credited with securing rights for women under the shah, and Farah threw her lot in with the ayatollah's revolution against the shah. Both ultimately had to flee for their lives -- back to America.

Of all those who came seeking freedom to worship, the Hasidim were among the more reluctant. The very liberties that drew so many were a deterrent to these tightknit traditional Jews: American-style freedom was the path to intermarriage, liberal values, a cultural "death sentence," they feared. But the Holocaust left the Hasidim little choice.

"It took years for them to realize they could actually live the way they wanted to and not feel like outsiders," says the grandson of a Hasidic rebbe.

That meant selective appropriation of American culture while maintaining core values. So we see Hasidim in Brooklyn with sidelocks and cell phones. There's a scene of a member of the community playing traditional melodies on an electric guitar held behind his head, like Jimi Hendrix.

That's America: land of last resort as often as land of opportunity. At least you're free not to buy the whole dream.

Destination America (two hours) airs tonight at 10 on Channel 26; the second two-hour installment airs Oct. 26.