American Passage_ The History of Ellis I - Vincent J. Cannato [149]
In another case, a forty-year-old English businessman named Louis Fairbanks arrived in Boston in December 1908. Although he first claimed to be single, Fairbanks later admitted he had a wife in England who suffered from consumption and bronchitis. He also admitted he had taken up with another woman, with whom he had a child. In contrast to Vera Cathcart’s case eighteen years later, immigration officials declared that since ecclesiastical courts in England had declared adultery a crime, they were justified in excluding Fairbanks on the grounds of moral turpitude. Straus agreed and Fairbanks was deported back to England.
Sometimes women could use the moral turpitude clause for their own benefit. Sarah Rosen had married Julius Rosen in Russia in the mid-1880s. A few years later, Julius left for America, and by the late 1890s he was joined by Sarah and their three children, Becky, Mary, and George. According to Sarah, four days after she arrived with her children, Julius deserted the family and left for England. There, Julius married again and had two more children. Julius claimed he was forced into his marriage with Sarah by an uncle, and that the marriage was illegal in Russia because Julius was under the age of eighteen.
More than a decade after he abandoned his family, Julius Rosen returned to the United States. A few months later, Sarah Rosen wrote a plaintive letter to William Williams at Ellis Island regarding her husband. Her children were now fourteen, twenty, and twenty-three. She had managed to raise them by herself and attain some measure of prosperity. The family lived in Brooklyn and ran a stationery store. Sarah appeared to own some real estate, and she believed that Julius’s return was motivated by money.
She complained that Julius was making her life miserable and bothering her family. “I am not seeking any revenge,” Sarah wrote, “all I desire is to be left alone, to continue to support my little family, and not to be interfered with.” She wanted Williams to deport Julius on the grounds that he was a bigamist. “It seems to me that my husband is not a proper person to enjoy the liberties in this country, and I ask that you take steps to force him to return to the place he came from,” she asked Williams. She even provided Williams with the addresses that Julius was known to frequent.
A few weeks later, Julius was taken to Ellis Island. He continued to claim that his first marriage was illegal and that he had done nothing wrong by remarrying. Augustus Sherman, acting in place of William Williams, argued that the legality of Julius’s marriage to Sarah was a moot point. “If legal, he has committed bigamy; if illegal, he is the father of three illegitimate children,” Sherman wrote. Either way, Julius was guilty of a crime of moral turpitude. He was ordered deported.
Officials in Washington upheld the decision to deport Julius Rosen. However, Rosen hired former congressman William Bennet as his lawyer. Bennet took Julius’s case all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled against him. Julius was finally deported in February 1914. While living in Canada, Julius would request permission, through Bennet, to enter the United States many times over the next decade. Even though Julius’s second wife had died, the government still considered him a bigamist and he was barred from ever entering the country and bothering Sarah or their children.
These cases show immigration officials struggling with how to enforce the moral turpitude clause. They tried to interpret it in a broad manner while upholding community standards that encouraged marriage, rather than cohabitation, especially when children were involved, and discouraged extramarital or premarital sexual relations.
Oftentimes, the moral turpitude clause covered more than just sexual relations and could sometimes place Ellis