Aliens or Americans? Part 4

[Sidenote: Chief Ports of Entry]

How do immigrants obtain entrance into the United States? New York is the chief port of entry, and if we learn the conditions and methods there we shall know them in general. The great proportion coming through New York is seen by comparison of the total admissions for 1904 and 1905 at the larger ports:

Port 1904 1905 New York 606,019 788,219 Boston 60,278 65,107 Baltimore 55,940 62,314 Philadelphia 19,467 23,824 Honolulu 9,054 11,997 San Francisco 9,036 6,377 Other Ports 22,702 24,447 Through Canada 30,374 44,214

[Sidenote: The Floating Gateway]

The proportion for New York is not far from eight tenths of the whole.

Hence it is true, that while the "dirty little ferryboat _John G.

Carlisle_ is not an imposing object to the material eye, to the eye of the imagination she is a spectacle to inspire awe, for she is the floating gateway of the Republic. Over her dingy decks march in endless succession the eager battalions of Europe's peaceful invaders of the West. That single craft, in her hourly trips from Ellis Island to the Battery,[13] carries more immigrants in a year than came over in all the fleets of the nations in the two centuries after John Smith landed at Jamestown."[14]

[Sidenote: Human Storage Reservoirs]

Reading about the arrivals at Ellis Island, no matter how realistic the description, will not give a vivid idea of what immigration means nor of what sort the immigrants are. For that, you must obtain a permit from the authorities and actually see for yourself the human stream that pours from the steerage of the mighty steamships into the huge human storage reservoirs of Ellis Island.[15] We know that however perfect the system, human nature has to be taken into account, both in officials and immigrants, and human nature is imperfect; much of it at Ellis Island is exceedingly difficult to deal patiently with. Hence, from the very nature of things and men, the situation is one to develop pathos, humor, comedy, and tragedy, as the great "human sifting machine" works away at separating the wheat from the chaff. The tragedy comes in the case of the excluded, since the blow falls sometimes between parents and children, husband and wife, lover and sweetheart, and the decree of exclusion is as bitter as death.

[Sidenote: Make Yourself an Imaginary Immigrant]

To make the manner and method of getting into America by the steerage process as real as possible, try to put yourself in an alien's place, and see what you would have to go through. Do not take immigration at its worst, but rather at its best, or at least above the average conditions. a.s.sume that you belong to the more intelligent and desirable cla.s.s, finding a legitimate reason for leaving your home in Europe, because of hard conditions and poor outlook there and bright visions of fortune in the land of liberty, whither relatives have preceded you.

Your steamship ticket is bought in your native town, and you have no care concerning fare or baggage. A number of people of your race and neighborhood are on the way, so that you are not alone.

[Sidenote: The Ship's Manifest]

Before embarking you are made to answer a long list of questions, filling out your "manifest," or official record which the law requires the vessel-masters to obtain, attest, and deliver to the government officers at the entrance port.[16]

[Sidenote: Numbered and Lettered]

Your answers proving satisfactory to the transportation agents, a card is furnished you, containing your name, the letter of the group of thirty to which you are a.s.signed, and your group number. Thus you become, for the time being, No. 27 of group E. You are cautioned to keep this card in sight, as a ready means of identification.

[Sidenote: The Voyage]

Partings over, you enter upon the strange and unforgetable experiences of ten days or more in the necessarily cramped quarters of the steerage--experiences of a kind that do not invite repet.i.tion.

Homesickness and seasickness form a trying combination, to say nothing of the discomforts of a mixed company and enforced companionship.

[Sidenote: First Experiences in the New World]

Your first American experience befalls you when the steamship anchors at quarantine inside Sandy Hook, and the United States inspection officers come on board to hunt for infectious or contagious diseases--cholera, smallpox, typhus fever, yellow fever, or plague. No outbreak of any of these has marked the voyage, fortunately for you, and there is no long delay. Slowly the great vessel pushes its way up the harbor and the North River, pa.s.sing the statue of Liberty Enlightening the World, that beacon which all incomers are enjoined to see as the symbol of the new liberty they hope to enjoy.

[Sidenote: Ship Landing]

At last the voyage is done, your steamship lies at her pier, and you are thrust into the midst of distractions. Families are trying to keep together; the din is indescribable; crying babies add to the general confusion of tongues; all sorts of people with all sorts of baggage are making ready for the landing, which seems a long time off as you wait for the customs officers to get through with the first-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers.

At last word is given to go ash.o.r.e, and the procession or pushing movement rather begins. You are hurried along, up a companionway, lugging your hand baggage; then down the long gangway on to the pier and the soil of America.

[Sidenote: Unnecessary Cruelty]

It is not a pleasant landing in the land of light and liberty. You have been sworn at, pushed, punched with a stick for not moving faster when you could not, and have seen others treated much more roughly. Just in front of you a poor woman is trying to get up the companionway with a child in one arm, a deck chair on the other, and a large bundle besides.

She blocks the pa.s.sage for an instant. A great burly steward reaches up, drags her down, tears the chair off her arm, splitting her sleeve and sc.r.a.ping the skin off her wrist as he does so, and then in his rage breaks the chair to pieces, while the woman pa.s.ses on sobbing, not daring to remonstrate.[17] This is not the first treatment of this sort you have seen, and you feel powerless to help, though your blood boils at the outrage.

[Sidenote: Unpleasant Beginnings]

As you pa.s.s down the gangway your number is taken by an officer with a mechanical checker, and then you become part of the curious crowd gathered in the great somber building, filled with freight, much of it human. Here there is confusion worse confounded, as separated groups try to get together and dock watchmen try to keep them in place. Many believe their baggage has been stolen, and mothers are sure their children have been kidnaped or lost. The dockmen are violent, not hesitating to use their sticks, and you find yourself more than once in danger, although you strive to obey orders you do not understand very well, since they are shouted out in savage manner. The inspector reaches you finally, and you are hustled along in a throng to the barge that is waiting. You are tired and hungry, having had no food since early breakfast. Your dreams of America seem far from reality just now. You are almost too weary to care what next.

[Sidenote: America's Gateway]

The next is Ellis Island, whose great building looks inviting. Out of the barge you are swept with the crowd, baggage in hand or on head or shoulder, and on to the grand entrance. As you ascend the broad stairs, an officer familiar with many languages is shouting out, first in one tongue and then another, "Get your health tickets ready." You notice that the only available place many have in which to carry these tickets is in their mouths, since their hands are full of children or baggage.

[Sidenote: Medical Inspection]

At the head of the long pair of stairs you meet a uniformed officer (a doctor in the Marine Hospital Service), who takes your ticket, glances at it, and stamps it with the Ellis Island stamp. Counting the quarantine officer as number one, you have now pa.s.sed officer number two. At the head of the stairs you find yourself in a great hall, divided into two equal parts, each part filled with curious railed-off compartments. Directed by an officer, you are turned into a narrow alleyway, and here you meet officer number three, in uniform like the second. The keen eyes of this doctor sweep you at a glance, from feet to head. You do not know it, but this is the first medical inspection by a surgeon of the Marine Hospital Service, and it causes a halt, although only for a moment. When the person immediately in front of you reaches this doctor, you see that he pushes back the shawl worn over her head, gives a nod, and puts a chalk mark upon her. He is on the keen lookout for favus (contagious skin disease), and for signs of disease or deformity. The old man who limps along a little way behind you has a chalk mark put on his coat lapel, and you wonder why they do not chalk you.

[Sidenote: Examination of Eyes]

You are now about ten or fifteen feet behind your front neighbor, and as you are motioned to follow, about thirty feet further on you confront another uniformed surgeon (officer number four), who has a towel hanging beside him, a small instrument in his hand, and a basin of disinfectants behind him. You have little time for wonder or dread. With a deft motion he applies the instrument to your eye and turns up the lid, quickly shutting it down again, then repeats the operation upon the other eye.

He is looking for the dreaded contagious trachoma or for purulent ophthalmia; also for disease of any kind, or any defect that would make it lawful and wise to send you back whence you came. You have now been twice examined, and pa.s.sed as to soundness of body, freedom from lameness or defect, general healthfulness, and absence of eye disease or pulmonary weakness.

[Sidenote: Detention Room]

[Sidenote: The Wicket Gate]

As you move along to the inclosed s.p.a.ce of your group E, you note that the lame man and the woman who were chalk-marked are sent into another railed-off s.p.a.ce, known as the "detention pen," where they must await a more rigid medical examination. One other inspector you have faced--a woman, whose sharp eyes seem to read the characters of the women as they come up to her "wicket gate;" for it is her duty to stop the suspicious and immoral characters and send them to the detention rooms or special inquiry boards. Thus you have pa.s.sed five government officers since landing on the Island. They have been courteous and kindly, but impress you as knowing their business so well that they can readily see through fraud and deception.

[Sidenote: Entrance Examination]

The entrance ordeal is not quite over, but for a little while you rest on the wooden bench in your E compartment, waiting until the group is a.s.sembled, all save those sent away for detention. Suddenly you are told to come on, and in single file E group marches along the narrow railed alley that leads to officer number six, or the inspector who holds E sheet in his hand. When it comes your turn, your manifest is produced and you are asked a lot of questions. A combined interpreter and registry clerk is at hand to a.s.sist. The interpreter pleases you greatly by speaking in your own language, which he rightly guesses, and notes whether your answers agree with those on the manifest.

[Sidenote: The Ticket System]

As you have the good fortune to be honest, and have sufficient money to escape being halted as likely to become a public charge, you are ticketed "O. K." with an "R" which means that you are bound for a railroad station. You see a ticket "S. I." on the lame man, which means that he is to go to a Board of Special Inquiry, with the chances of being debarred, or sent back home. On another, as you pa.s.s, you notice a ticket "L. P. C.," which signifies the dreaded decision, "liable to become public charge"--a decision that means deportation.

[Sidenote: The Three Stairs of Separation]

All this time you have been guided. Now you are directed to a desk where your railroad ticket-order is stamped; next to a banker's desk, where your money is exchanged for American money; and finally you are motioned to the right stairway of three, this leading to the railroad barge room.

Here your baggage is checked and your ticket provided, a bag of food is offered you, and then you are taken on board a barge which will convey you to the railroad station. You have left your fellow-voyagers abruptly, all save the railroad-ticketed like yourself. Had you been destined for New York, you would have gone down the left stairway and been free to take the ferryboat for the Battery. If you had expected friends to meet you, the central stairway would have led you to the waiting room for that purpose. Those three stairways are called "The Stairs of Separation," and there families are sometimes ruthlessly separated without warning, when bound for different destinations.

[Sidenote: Careful Supervision]

The officers, who have treated you courteously, in strong contrast to the steamship and dock employees, keep track of you until you are safely on board an immigrant car, bound for the place where your relatives are.

Your ideas of great New York are limited, but you have been saved by this official supervision from being swindled by sharpers or enticed into evil. You are practically in charge of the railway company, as you have been of the steamship company, until you are deposited at the station where you expect to make your home. You are ready to believe, by this time, that America is at least a s.p.a.cious country, with room enough in it for all who want to come. At the same time you will admit, as you recall some of your fellow-pa.s.sengers in the steerage, that there should not be room in the country for those who ought not to come--not only the diseased and insane, crippled and consumptive, who are shut out by the law, but also the delinquent and depraved, whose presence means added ignorance and crime. You only wish the inspectors could have seen some of those shameless men on shipboard, so that in spite of their smooth answers they might have been sent back whence they came, to prey upon the innocent there instead of here. Now that it is all over, you shudder for a long time at night as memory recalls the steerage scenes, through which your faith in G.o.d and your constant prayers preserved you.[18]

[Sidenote: The Alien's Chance]

In such manner the alien gains his chance to become an American. What he will make of that chance is a matter of grave importance to the land that has opened to him the doors of opportunity and liberty. Having seen how the immigrants get into the United States, let us now see how they are kept out. When we know what the restrictive laws are, and how they are enforced or evaded, we shall be in a position to judge as to their sufficiency, and the need of further legislation.

_II. Governmental Regulation_

[Sidenote: Evasion and Violation]

The United States has some excellent immigration laws, the best and most extensive of any nation, as one would expect, since this is the nation to which nearly all immigrants come. The trouble is that every attempt is made to evade these laws, and where they cannot be evaded they are violated. The laws are of two cla.s.ses: 1. Protective, in favor of the immigrant; and 2. Restrictive, in favor of the country.