The Tragedy of the Excluded Emigrant - 1905

Introduction

The article "The Tragedy of the Excluded Emigrant," published in April 1905, delves into the harrowing experiences of immigrants who, after enduring long and arduous journeys to the United States, were denied entry and forced to return to their home countries. It highlights the emotional, psychological, and financial toll of such exclusions, exploring the stories of those who faced this devastating outcome at Ellis Island.

Women and Childing Passing the Time in the Detention Pen in the Cool and Airy Roof Garden at Ellis Island. Leslie's Weekly, 24 October 1907. GGA Image ID # 14d62dae0b

Down on Ellis Island, in New York Harbor, a great human sifting machine runs every day, classifying, counting, and examining the thousands who reach our shore each year. In judging human character, the inspectors, officers, and heads of departments have become such experts that few undesirable classes slip through the gateway into this land of promise and sunshine.

Despite the eternal vigilance, however, it is physically impossible to judge everyone correctly, and some get in when they should be kept out. Yet frequently, through the police and charities department, a few of them fall again into the hands of the immigration authorities and are speedily deported.

The physicians stand at the head of the line before the medical examiners. It is interesting to watch them sift the good from the suspicious as a shipload of immigrants passes before them in a single file.

Two physicians are always in attendance, and what might escape one the other is sure to detect. The first physician uses chalk freely to mark the clothing of a suspect. When passed along the line to the second doctor, he is turned into an enclosure for further examination, which may determine their admission eligibility.

Close to this line and near the medical examiners is the " moral wicket," at which one or more matrons are stationed. Often, the women or children who have passed the medical inspectors are held up here for further examination.

More than 300,000 women have passed this wicket during the past year, and with a yearly average of approximately this number, someone must be responsible for their moral character before they are admitted to a new life where perhaps more freedom will be granted than they have ever known.

A United States Court composed of an interpreter and several experienced judges is in session each day, composing what is known as the "S. I." or Board of Special Inquiry. All cases to be investigated are brought before them for decision and final disposition.

For the pauper, the contract laborer, and the generally undesirable class, this Board has its terrors, and many a hard-faced criminal, disreputable character, and diseased immigrant is turned back through its decision.

Here on the line comes a flashily dressed French girl. The inspector mentally says, "No good," but he is close-mouthed; to be so is part of his profession. To his questions, she answers promptly but guardedly; she has been told, and does she not know?

Aha! These sharp-eyed men, she will elude them; she has money, yes." How much ? " " Oh, plenty," and out come 500 francs, but with insufficient reason for admission. She is without trade or occupation.

She has only friends in New York, somewhere on West Street; they are wonderful people, oh yes! And she cannot go to them. Why not? Simply because the inspector remembers reading a few days ago that the house where she is bound was raided, and several French girls were taken to Jefferson Market police court.

It is a lousy street anyway and in a tough locality. Her card is marked " S. I," and she is held for further investigation which only results in her being sent back.

Next comes a bookkeeper, so he says. His father gave him money, and he was coming here to make his fortune. The inspector is not satisfied, and he is turned over to the " S. I." Board. But his papers, money, and statements are clear, and he is admitted; they give him the benefit of the doubt, as they always do.

But next in line is a well-built, stocky Pole with nothing in the world but a carpet bag, a few bundles, and a small showing of money. Ambition is written all over his face, and he is admitted.

"Now," says the recorder, pausing momentarily, "see the difference between these two gents. The first duffer will look around for a job, spend time and money to get something to suit him, and keep his job for a short time; then he will give it up, run through his money, borrow from his friends, and then give them all the cold hand. He won't wear well, and his dad knew it when he sent him over, but he was glad to get rid of him. So lots of them are.

Now look at the difference between him and that Pole. He knows nothing but work. Look at his mild but good eyes. He has been brought tip next to Mother Earth; turn him loose from the train when he reaches his destination, and he will dig.

He won't hang around looking for a job, but when the first greetings are over, he will till the soil, and before you or I know it, he will have crops, and that is what he will live on.

He comes from a rugged country, and he is tough, and when you and I go around shivering in an overcoat, he will be going around in his shirt sleeves. That is the stuff we want here, not the first kind, with flabby hands and sapped vitality."

Sure enough, the bookkeeper did not wear well and fell into the hands of the police. Some months later, he was deported under the three-year limitation law, and the country was better for it.

Returning to the "Moral Wicket," every woman claiming to be a wife is stopped at that point. That is sufficient if her husband is with her and she has been legally married. Still, if a ceremony has never taken place, they must be legally married before they may pass in. This ceremony is conducted by the missionaries connected with the various churches stationed on the Island.

Among the great throng of girls that come over each year, many are deceitful, secretive, and positively bad. These are extremely hard to manage.

They have an almost unconquerable tone of savagery. If such a system made up the population of the tenement districts and farming country, anarchists would be bred.

Of course, this class is deported together with the runaway wives, the old and frail, the diseased, and the generally undesirable class that are friendless and without means of livelihood and likely to become a public charge.

It is also unlawful to assist or encourage the immigration of aliens by promising employment or advertising a foreign country, and any alien who comes as a consequence of such advertising must be treated as coming under a promise or agreement.

All foreigners who violate this law are immediately sent back and, if practical, on the vessels which brought them.

The cost for their maintenance while on land and the cost of their return must be borne by the owners of the vessels on which they came. All such precautions are necessary, or otherwise, this country would become the dumping ground for the scum of European nations.

It is acknowledged that many undesirable qualities are admitted. It may prove one of the curses rather than one of the blessings of immigration. Still, the authorities take a broad-minded view of the matter and feel that recovery and regeneration will eventually occur in different environments.

Pauperism excludes more immigrants than any other cause;
disease bars many hundreds annually, and contract violations alone turn back a thousand each year, while the various other causes for exclusion swell the number to several thousand annually who catch only a fleeting glimpse of America and return from whence they came.

Then begins for many the tragedy of the excluded. When the boat reaches the other side, the outcasts are dumped on foreign soil, positively without money and friends and with no means of reaching their old homes.

Indeed, no homes are awaiting them; they have disposed of their farms and furniture or both to purchase their passage to the land where gold is picked up in the streets and the people are all millionaires.

So, they have been led to believe the statements of the oily and glib-tongued steamship agent. He is traveling through Europe in numbers and planting the seeds of unrest in the 'bosoms of thousands of satisfied country folk, who, through his prevarications, are induced to sell their little or all and launch forth into a sea of unknown trouble.

The final tale is harrowing in the extreme, and the untold suffering is known only to those who pass through it. They are shut out of the life they dreamed of; they cannot take up the old life where they dropped it, for their means have been exhausted, and poverty stares them in the face.

To the pauper, the spender, and the wandering Jew, this deportation act in their life drama does not strike with such a blow, nor is the pity felt here that is due to the family or the widowed mother with her raft of small children, who have striven to better themselves and have failed.

This is the actual consummation of the tragedy of deportation, of which the world knows little.

Who is the sorrowful older woman in the corner of the excluded room, with despair written all over her features? She is over sixty years old, feeble, and too old to work.

Ask the missionaries; they have been trying to persuade her children to take her back again, bringing all their moral suasion to bear, but with no effect.

Ten years ago, these girls came over and are now " ladies," two at service and earning good wages, the other married but with no children. The old father at home died, leaving this old mother alone. The children sent for her, and on arrival, they solemnly pledged themselves to care for her while she should live.

Gradually, they became tired of the burden and, within a year, turned her out one cold winter's day, where she was found by the police on a street corner, almost frozen.

Through her tale and the Department of Charities, she was returned to Ellis Island and finally deported—to where?—yes, that is the sad question: to the almshouse, or to the streets of a foreign city as a beggar, penniless, homeless, with no one to care for her and finally to fill an unknown grave.

When two or more girls come over together, and one is excluded, they have to return together because that is the law; the other can come again and probably be admitted.

Two Polish girls, sisters, were recently the objects of the missionaries' care. Jessa Veronica was afflicted with an eye disease which baffled the hospital staff to cure.

Both were deported after being here for seventy-five days. However, the uncle in the West to whom they were going would care for the one and pay all the expenses of the other, but an incurable contagious eye disease debarred them.

Father and mother were dead, and the girls had looked forward to a new and happier life in America. But they were destined to spend the remainder of their lives together until death parted them, for now, the one had to support the other and perhaps became afflicted with the same disease.

Here is a curious case. On the way to the boat, the inspector has a family in charge who are apparently above reason for deportation. But they have to sail immediately for Russia.

The man's face is determined and dogged as he passes the crowd coming off the boat. But one of the passengers recognized him as a fellow countryman and an acquaintance, and in the short conversation that followed, some light was shed on the situation.

He had stoutly maintained before the inspectors that besides his railroad tickets for the West, he had only two dollars and fifty cents, too little to supply food for his family for one day.

He had been warned not to show or tell of his money, for the Americans were thieves and would take it all away. Rather than take any chances, he was returning to Russia, where he could buy another farm and live, rather than have his all stolen here by "pigs."

The inspectors rapidly explained the situation, and the man and his family were admitted. He carried three money bags, the gold contents of which ran above 8,000 roubles.

On a bench in the women's " detained " sits a mother and seven children, all girls, patiently awaiting the father's arrival from Chicago. It is for a final farewell; one child is in the hospital; an incurable, contagious disease has debarred her, and the whole family must return.

They are poor, and it has taken all his little store of money to bring them over. On their return, the child may be put into an asylum or a hospital for incurables. But the chance is against it, and the foreign retreats differ from ours.

Ludwig Molluar and his sixteen-year-old boy were ordered deported; the boy was all right, but the father was an ex-convict. Both have to return. Their case was appealed to Washington, and they decided against them.

The father became despondent, and, rolling himself in his blanket early on the morning of deportation day, he shot himself while in an upper bunk of the excluded room.

Weapons and knives are supposed to be taken from those who occupy this room, but luggage is not always searched, only the person. The father's act favored the boy, for his death broke the law, and he was admitted after the body had been buried.

Here in the women's detained room, we find a pretty Swedish girl decked with flowers emblematic of the bride-to-be. She has come over to meet her lover, who has sent for her.

Several days have passed, and Olaf has not appeared. He had come to this country three years before and had been preparing a farm home for her, and at last, it was ready.

He sent for her, and she came to be married, but five days have passed, and Olaf has not appeared. When the steamer sails, she is sent back. That is the law.

Oh, the grief and anguish of her soul! No comfort can the missionaries give her. Where is Olaf? Olaf was so good. Something has undoubtedly happened. Can she not wait a little longer? No, back she must go; love stories are a drug in the Ellis Island market.

Several days after she sailed, Olaf stormed into the island. Where is she? Sent back! And for what? Telegraph? How could he have been when he was out of his head?

Did the railroad accident not occur, and should they not have known he would come? The authorities felt chagrined. Cable her and wait; that was all he could do, so he waited for three long weeks.

She knew, but the strain was too much for her. At last, the ship came in. All the passengers were landed, but no girl. As the last of the line passed the inspectors, one officer handed the matron some papers, the records of the ship, and among them was one death and burial at sea, Inga Swenson.

Olaf went back to his farm, broken in heart and spirit. The girl he had worked for was gone forever out of his life. With him, he took his grief and some hard feelings against the country that had treated him so badly. The tragedy of this case will live long in the memories of the authorities who dealt with it.

Stowaways add to the list of the deported every year. On the return trip, the ship's papers do not infrequently record a suicide at sea, either by self-inflicted injuries or by jumping overboard.

The ocean cable is an excellent help to immigration authorities. For example, "Vincenso Lorencio, cross-eyed, red-hair, scar on the left cheek, murderer, detain; papers by steamer."

The sifting and sorting go on in the Barbarossa's horde, which numbers upwards of fifteen hundred. No one of that descripion. There is no red hair and no scar. Hold! Here is a crossed eye—and a wicked-looking one at that. "Ah, Vincenso," the inspector greets him.

He doesn't know it's him, but he chances it, in spite of the black hair, black whiskers, and the absent scar. " Take off your hat, Vincenso. The men all do it in polite company.

See, Vincenso, this wig does not fit right. The red hair shows here over the ear." Meanwhile, Vincenso denies his name, protests that he is not and does not know him, all of which comes out right in the washing.

He is held, and on the next steamer comes the " Bertillion record," which tells all of them and a convincing photograph of him. Vincenso will hang on his return and no one will care. He murdered his wife for her money to pay his fare to America. He gets a glimpse of the brightest land but cannot enter it.

Moses Heinstein " calls an attendant at the door of the detaining room. A little hollow-chested, long-bearded Jew with red eyes and prominent cheekbones comes forward with a grip in one hand, a stick and a sack in the other, and despair written all over his face. His family is in this country. He went home to see his old mother in Russia, but consumption debars him from returning now.

He is not a citizen and has never been naturalized, though he has lived here for fifteen years. His business and all his interests center on the East Side, but the final decision is against him; he must go back.

What becomes of him, his wife, and his two children is another story. All this would have been avoided if he had become naturalized, for no bar could have been put up.

"The two gents marked 10," sang out an interpreter at the inspector's desk. The men and their baggage were hustled into a waiting room and, in turn, were brought before the Board.

" Ah, Nicholas Polaska, your wife is not with you." " No, she is coming later." " Coming later, and for what?" " Did you tell her to come or where you were going?" "Yes." "You did, eh, and why this telegram from the Consul, Nicholas?

The next time you leave your wife and children, you better tell them where you are going and make better arrangements for their care while you are away. Both of you go home on the next steamer, and the authorities will see that you do not repeat this little trick."

The Russian boy in a goatskin coat has to go back to Russia. Someone gave him a Derby hat, the first one he had ever had until he landed at Ellis Island.

His heavy shoes are out at the sides, and his other garments are a gray flannel shirt and a holy pair of trousers. The poor fellow's mother died in the steerage on the way over, and the uncle in the West has not replied to the telegram sent him, although four weeks have passed.

Nothing is to be done but to return. He is deported, and soon after, the uncle appears on the island. He was up in the mountains and missed the telegram.

Homeless, friendless, an orphan, and distracted at being thus thrown on the world, the boy ran away at the first port the steamer touched, and from that day to this, nothing has been heard.

Here are two children: an interesting brother and a sister. The father promised to meet them, but he could not find them. He is a nice little chap, and the sister feels the trouble, too; tags are all right and money is enough, but who will care for them when they get to Minnesota?

The patient little Hungarian boy has spent most of his time for four weeks squatting on the floor with his back against the wall, hoping his father will come every day.

He has not told his little sister they must return; she will take it too much to heart. Subsequent inquiry disclosed the fact that the father was killed shortly after the children had started from Budapest, just before he was to start East to meet them. He was in the mountains and alone, and it was weeks before his body was found.

Ah, if the deportation books could be opened and important cases could he followed, what plots for tragedies, what plays based on hard, indisputable fact, would be at the command of the writers of fiction; for many of the cases that pass through the clearing house at Ellis Island are more deeply shrouded in mystery than the plots of the novelists.

And could the whole chain of circumstances be uncovered instead of a corner of the cloth lifted at the gateway? What wonderful and thrilling passages and situations would be revealed for dramatization!

When the last gong of the outgoing steamer sounds, the gangplanks are hauled in when the whistle gives forth its signal of departure. The crowds on the pier and the decks exchange their last messages. Everything looks rosy to the casual observer, for happiness is at its flood tide in this joyful departure scene.

But down in the confines of the ship, another vastly different scene is taking place, one that the happy throng on deck is not a witness to.

The watch is lifted, and the vigilant care exercised to ensure that none of the deported immigrants escape is relaxed. The ship is free from land, and none of the little disheartened band would try to elude the watchful officers now that hope of escape is gone. Many a sigh is heard, and bitter tears are shed among these forlorn outcasts. But their wails of misery do not reach the happy voyagers on deck.

Almost every ship carries its burden of sorrow, more at times than others, particularly on their outward trips, for the unfortunate rejected at the gates are returned to the ports where they embarked. Here, so far as we are concerned, the story ends. But where does it end, and is there an end? That is a question we do not ask for. The answer is long coming.

The brighter side of the picture is shown in the other departments of immigration, where friends meet friends and relatives are again united, but that is a familiar picture.

In the detained room, the tragic play goes on day after day. Its victims hope against hope that at the last hour, someone will intercede for their release.

They and the tales they tell are but a few that take part in the play each year at the very threshold and within sight of the glorious land of freedom on the broad but well-guarded stage at Ellis Island. The whole universe is the audience that witnesses this continuous performance of what may be appropriately entitled " The Tragedy of the Excluded."

Joseph H. Adams, “The Tragedy of the Excluded,” the Home Missionary Vol LXXIX, No. 4, April 1905.

Conclusion

The exclusion of immigrants at Ellis Island was not just a bureaucratic procedure but a deeply traumatic event for those involved. The article sheds light on the profound impact of these exclusions, emphasizing the need for greater compassion and understanding in the immigration process. It calls into question the fairness and humanity of a system that could so easily shatter the dreams of hopeful newcomers.

Key Points

• 🚫 Reasons for Exclusion: Immigrants were excluded for a variety of reasons, including health issues, legal problems, and failure to meet economic requirements.
• 💔 Emotional Toll: The emotional devastation of being excluded after such a long journey was immense, often leading to despair and hopelessness.
• 💸 Financial Ruin: Many immigrants faced financial ruin, having spent all their savings on the journey, only to be sent back without any means of support.
• 👥 Family Separation: Exclusion often resulted in heartbreaking separations of families, with some members allowed to enter the U.S. while others were sent back.
• 🛂 Strict Regulations: The article highlights the strict and sometimes arbitrary nature of immigration regulations that led to these exclusions.
• 🌍 Global Impact: The exclusion of immigrants had far-reaching consequences, affecting not only the individuals but also their communities and families back home.
• 🤝 Humanitarian Concerns: There was growing concern among humanitarians and reformers about the fairness and compassion of the exclusion process.
• 📜 Legal Challenges: Some immigrants sought legal recourse to challenge their exclusion, though success was rare.
• 🏠 Life After Exclusion: The article briefly touches on the bleak prospects for those who were sent back to their countries of origin.
• 🔄 Calls for Reform: The narrative suggests a need for reform in the immigration system to prevent such tragedies from occurring.

Summary

1. Overview of Immigrant Exclusion: The article describes the process and reasons for excluding immigrants at Ellis Island, focusing on those who were sent back after long journeys.
2. Emotional and Psychological Impact: Explores the deep emotional distress experienced by excluded immigrants, many of whom faced despair and hopelessness.
3. Financial Consequences: Discusses the financial devastation suffered by immigrants who, after spending all their savings to reach America, were forced to return home penniless.
4. Family Separations: Highlights the tragic separations that occurred when some family members were allowed entry while others were excluded.
5. Strict Immigration Regulations: The article critiques the rigid and often arbitrary immigration regulations that led to these exclusions.
6. Humanitarian Concerns: Addresses the concerns raised by humanitarians and reformers regarding the fairness and humanity of the exclusion process.
7. Legal and Social Ramifications: Some immigrants attempted to challenge their exclusion legally, but with limited success.
8. Global Repercussions: The exclusion of immigrants had a ripple effect, impacting not just the individuals but also their families and communities back home.
9. Life After Exclusion: The article briefly mentions the difficult circumstances faced by those who were forced to return to their home countries.
10. Call for Reform: Concludes with a suggestion that the immigration system needed reform to prevent such tragedies from occurring in the future.