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Book navigates crosscurrents of immigration
By CARL HARTMAN,For The Associated Press AP - Wednesday, May 27
"American Passage: The History of Ellis Island" (Harper, 487 pages, $27.99), by Vincent J. Cannato: They used to hang pirates on a small island in New York harbor, near where the Statue of Liberty now stands. Today, after 63 years as a testing station for would-be immigrants, Ellis Island has become a huge memorial for millions of Americans whose forebears successfully passed through it.
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It's also a reminder of a pressing contemporary issue: How to control immigrants when as many as 20 million may have slipped through present controls and are living in the United States illegally.
In "American Passage," Vincent J. Cannato navigates the crosscurrents of immigration since the 1700s, illustrating his tale generously with odd facts and highly readable stories.
Annie Moore, 15 and from Ireland, was the first to arrive when the new station opened in 1892, escorting brothers Antony, 11 and Philip, 7. Three years later, she married another immigrant. They produced 11 children and their descendants have Irish, German, Italian, Jewish and Scandinavian surnames.
Next year came Israel Beilin, son of a Jewish cantor from Siberia. As Irving Berlin, 25 years later, he wrote the first version of "God Bless America."
Russian-born Emma Goldman, America's most prominent anarchist, was deported after a jail sentence for opposing the draft in World War I. As she left the island, she acknowledged to a young Justice Department official named J. Edgar Hoover that he'd given her as square a deal as he could.
Besides anarchism, causes for deportation included feeble-mindedness, disease and an obscure category called "moral turpitude."
Vera, Countess of Cathcart, arrived in the 1926 as a first-class passenger. She aroused suspicion by listing herself as divorced. She had left her husband, Britain's Earl of Cathcart, and fled to South Africa with the Earl of Craven, who was married to someone else.
Craven promised to marry her but ran off with another woman and then returned to his wife, caring for her in New York when she fell ill. Vera asked why he wasn't deportable, too. While tabloids and officials explored the problem, he fled to Montreal.
Eventually, a judge ruled that Vera could stay. She had written a play and brought it with her, called "Ashes of Love." It was produced and closed after a week. She spent her time at Ellis Island writing a new one and left after two months.
Still, fewer than two out of every 100 arrivals were turned back.
For most of its career, Ellis Island was a political football. Businesses and farmers valued immigrants as low-cost labor. Labor unions wanted to keep immigration down and wages up. Traditionalists worried that people from eastern and southern Europe lowered social standards.
Congress finally set up a quota system. American diplomats abroad issued entry visas _ or refused them _ to potential immigrants, taking the responsibility from inspectors on Ellis Island. The buildings served to hold Communists, suspected Communists, enemies and suspected enemies during and well after two World Wars, leading to charges that the island was being used as a concentration camp.
It was closed in 1954.
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