Ellis Island: Place & Paradigm

1. Ellis Island: Place & Paradigm Vincent DiGirolamo Baruch College

2. Alfred Steiglitz, The Steerage, 1907.

3. Return Migration for Various Nationalities, 1908-1924 Group Emigrants Percentage Jews 52,000 5.2% Irish 48,000 10.1% Scotch 40,000 11.1% Germans 121,000 15.9% Ruthenians 29,000 16.7% French 64,000 18.1% English 153,000 19.1% Scandinavians 101,000 20.5% Lithuanians 35,000 25% Poles 321,000 39.7% Greeks 176,000 47.4% Croats & Slovenes 115,000 50.1% Russians 111,000 50.5% Italian 1,140,000 54.7% Slovaks 128,000 55.5% Magyars 150,000 64% Rumanians 64,000 65.9% Others 727,000 40.1% Total 3,575,000 33.5%

8. Ellis Island: Place and Paradigm Introduction: Steiglitz’s Steerage I. Missing Birds of Passage 2. Strangers in the Sieve 3. Exotic Exceptions a) Africans b) Asians c) Mexicans 4. Vanished Indians 5. The Myth of New Immigrants 6. The Poverty of Push-Pull Conclusion

9. Annie Moore, first immigrant processed at Ellis Island, 1892.

10. Frank Beard, “The Stranger at Our Gate,” One Day Magazine, 1896.

11. Restricted Classes • 1875 Some Asian women • 1882 Chinese laborers; lunatics, people likely to become public charges; convicts • 1885 Contract laborers • 1891 Persons suffering from a loathsome or dangerous contagious disease; felons; polygamists; persons guilty of moral turpitude • 1901 Anarchists • 1903 Epileptics • 1907 Children unaccompanied by a parent; tuberculosis patients; people with mental or physical defects likely to affect their ability to make a living. • 1910 Women imported for immoral purposes • 1917 People who can’t read some language; Asians except Japanese & Filipinos • Asians except Filipinos 1950 Communist Party members; people who might engage in activities prejudicial to the public interest or would endanger welfare or safety of the U.S. • 1978 Nazi war criminals

12. “You don’t realize what you are doing. You kill people without a knife. Does money make you a person? A person who has a mind and hands and has not $25 cash is not a person? Has he to be killed? Here is the free America. People how much do they suffer until they come here. If you would have conscious in you would not do such things. You think that they are not people but animals… I do not see what do foreigners do harm.” Anonymous Student, P.S. 62, n.d.

16. Chinese Immigrants in Oregon, c. 1900. African American Homesteaders in Nebraska, c. 1889. Mexican Immigrants near Chicago, 1917.

17. “The Race” –– Oklahoma Land Rush, Sept. 16, 1893.

18. Immigration by Origin: Leading Sending Countries & Regions, 1871-1930 Italy 4.6 million Austria-Hungary 4.1 million Germany 3.6 million Russia 3.3 million Britain 2.8 million Canada 2.6 million Scandinavia 2.2 million Ireland 2.2 million Asia 952,000 Mexico 736.000 Source: 2001 Statistical Yearbook of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 2003.

22. Russian Spy Anna Chapman, deported July 2010.

23. Algerian man Ruthian woman Photographs by Augustus Frederick Sherman, 1905-1920 Guadeloupe woman German stowaway

27. “Welcome to the Land of Freedom,” Leslie’s Illustrated, 1887.

29. Immigrants Excluded from the U.S. by Cause, 1892-1954: 219,000 Likely to Become Public Charges 175,000 Attempted Entry w/o Inspection or Proper Documents 82,000 Mental or Physical Defectives 42,000 Contract Laborers 16,000 Stowaways 14,000 Unable to Read 12,000 Criminals 8,000 Immoral Classes 400 Subversive or Anarchistic 41,000 Other 610,000 Total