American Passage_ The History of Ellis I - Vincent J. Cannato [233]
Keeping in mind these deeply conflicted ideas about immigration, modern Americans must find their own compromise, one that takes into account the fears and concerns—legitimate or not—of nativeborn Americans, while respecting the rights and humanity of those who arrive at our borders. The United States cannot open its doors to the entire world, but it cannot close its borders either. A successful immigration policy will keep the gates open to continue our long history of welcoming strangers who in turn help build this unfinished nation, while reassuring native-born Americans that the laws are being enforced and social dislocations that arise from immigration are minimized.
If Americans are not reassured that immigration is taking place in a legal and orderly manner that is beneficial to the economic well-being, social cohesion, and national security of the nation, then the entire ideal of immigration is at risk. That elusive balance is what Americans have to debate.
Before the rise of national quotas in the 1920s, the debates of the Ellis Island era—in which restrictionists supported some kind of immigration and their opponents favored some kind of restriction of undesirable immigrants—tried to find that balance. We can see that same dynamic playing out in our own time. Legal scholar Peter Schuck, a pro-immigrant liberal, admits that, “the tension between liberalism’s universal aspirations and our need as a society to achieve the degree of solidarity that effective activist government requires must be resolved at some level of exclusion.” On the other side, restrictionist conservative Mark Krikorian supports a “pro-immigrant policy of low immigration, one that admits fewer immigrants but extends a warmer welcome to those who are admitted.” Where to draw that line of exclusion? The devil, of course, is in the details.
As the United States yet again comes to grips with this question, it will have to do it without an active facility like Ellis Island. Rather than passing through something like Ellis Island, today’s immigrants enter the country through airports like JFK or LAX, or pass across the Canadian and Mexican borders. The decision to allow immigrants entry into the country is made at American consulates abroad, not at immigration stations at American ports, although increasing numbers of immigrants are bypassing the cumbersome visa process and entering the country illegally.
In this new era of mass immigration, is it not too far-fetched to ask whether Ellis Island will go the way of that other once-totemic symbol of the American founding? One hundred years from now, will Ellis Island seem as quaint, distant, and unrepresentative as Plymouth Rock does now to a lot of Americans? Instead, will the descendants of Hispanic immigrants seek to build a memorial along the Mexican border fence that asserts their entrance into the American mainstream?
The future is notoriously hard to predict, but the fight over the meaning of Ellis Island—and the meaning of immigration in general— will most likely remain a part of our national dialogue for as long as individuals feel the need to pick themselves up from their homelands and make that American passage, whether by boat, plane, or foot.
Acknowledgments
WHEN DISCUSSING THE TITLE OF THE BOOK WITH MY EDITOR, I requested a slight change. Modestly, I asked that the subtitle be changed to “A History of Ellis Island” instead of “The History of Ellis Island.” I lost that argument but still think that it would have been a more appropriate subtitle. My modesty stemmed from my belief that it is impossible to write a comprehensive history of Ellis Island. Its history is literally that of millions of stories, of those who arrived and those who processed them, and of the numerous political and legal battles fought over the inspection station. Most readers will not find the names of their ancestors in this book, but I hope that they come away with a