American Passage_ The History of Ellis I - Vincent J. Cannato [105]
Now that Williams was returning to Ellis Island, he was eager to get to work on what he felt was the most pressing concern: tightening the sieve that would strain out larger numbers of undesirable immigrants.
Even after leaving Ellis Island in early 1905, Williams continued to be an outspoken advocate for greater restriction. Writing in the Journal of Social Science, he charged that the immigration law was good as far is it went, but failed to sift out “a certain minority of immigrants who are generally undesirable because unintelligent, of low vitality, almost, though not quite, poverty-stricken.” He argued that roughly 25 percent of immigrants currently admitted were “not wanted.” He called them “the undesirable minority of immigrants.” Williams carefully pointed out that he was not against all immigration. “I will say that I have as little sympathy with those who would curtail all immigration as I have with those who would admit all intending immigrants, good, bad, or indifferent,” he wrote.
Part of his concern with this “undesirable minority” was with what he called its “racial effects.” Immigrants flocking to the United States in the early twentieth century were different from earlier settlers and immigrants. “We owe our present civilization and standing amongst nations chiefly to people of a type widely different from that of those now coming here in such numbers,” Williams wrote. Those older immigrant groups largely hailed from northern Europe and consisted “mainly of the rugged types that were kindred to the native stock.” These groups were “as good as the new immigrants are bad,” he told the New York Times after returning to Ellis Island.
Although he questioned whether newer immigrants could ever be assimilated into American society, Williams found it “impracticable to legislate directly or discriminate against any race or locality of Europe as we have done in the case of the Chinese.” Even he understood that any exclusion of Europeans based on nationality or ethnicity, as had occurred with the Chinese, would violate America’s basic understanding of immigration. However, Williams’s emphasis on this difference between new and old immigrants foreshadowed drastic changes to come.
The letter of the law, which Williams deeply respected, forced him to accept even those immigrants he believed would bring down the nation’s standard of living and weaken American democracy. Working within these legal and ideological confines, Williams set out to do what he could to protect the Republic. Seven days after taking over, he distributed the following note to his staff:
It is necessary that the standard of inspection at Ellis Island be raised. Notice hereof is given publicly in order that intending immigrants may be advised before embarkation that our immigration laws will be strictly enforced, and that those who are unable to measure up to its requirements may not waste their time or money in coming here, only to encounter the hardships of deportation.
Williams had now put everyone—from inspectors to politicians to immigrants—on notice. America was receiving too many “low-grade immigrants” and “riffraff,” he insisted. The country’s present laws, in his opinion, kept out “only what may be termed ‘scum,’ or the very worst elements that seek to come here.” William Williams was determined to do something about it.
If Taft thought his appointment of William Williams would quiet the storms at Ellis Island, he was sorely mistaken.
HERSCH SKURATOWSKI ARRIVED AT Ellis Island in late June 1909 with $2.75 in his pocket. The twenty-nine-year-old Russian Jewish butcher appeared to be a desirable