American Passage_ The History of Ellis I - Vincent J. Cannato [254]
193 Even after leaving: William Williams, “The Sifting of Immigrants,” Journal of Social Science, September 1906.
194 Although he questioned: Williams, “The Sifting of Immigrants,” NYT, July 18, 1909.
194 The letter of the law: “Annual Report of the Commissioner-General of Immigration,” 1909, 132; NYT, June 5, 1909.
195 It also possessed: William C. Van Vleck, The Administrative Control of Aliens; A Study in Administrative Law and Procedure (New York: Commonwealth Fund, 1932), 54.
195 Realizing this: “Annual Report of the Commissioner-General of Immigration,” 1909, 133; President Theodore Roosevelt, “First Annual Message to Congress,” December 3, 1901.
196 Now Williams was: He called the $25 test “nothing more than a timely warning to immigrants that they cannot land without funds adequate for their support until such times as they are likely to obtain profitable employment.” Letter from William Williams to A.J. Sabath, July 15, 1909, File 52531-12, INS.
196 Williams’s edict had: “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Ellis Island to Commissioner-General of Immigration,” August 16, 1909; NYT, June 30, 1909.
196 Conditions worsened: NYT, July 14, 1909.
197 On July 4, Rudniew: Isaac Metzker, ed., A Bintel Brief: Sixty Years of Letters from the Lower East Side to the Jewish Daily Forward (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971), 98–100; AH, July 16 1909, 278.
197 Williams was unmoved: NYT, July 10, 1909.
197 Many Americans were: Letter from Russell Bellamy to William Williams, July 12, 1909; Letter from Prescott Hall to William Williams, July 14, 1909, WWNYPL.
197 Eighty-two-year-old Orville Victor: Letter from Orville Victor to William Williams, July 17, 1909; Letter from William Patterson to William Williams, July 8, 1909, WW-NYPL.
198 Not all of Williams’s: Letter from an anonymous pupil at PS 62 in Manhattan to William Williams, undated, WW-NYPL.
198 The child who wrote: On the history of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, see, Mark Wischnitzer, Visas to Freedom: The History of HIAS (Cleveland, OH: World Publishing Company, 1956).
198 The HIAS took on: “Brief for the Petitioner in the Matter of Hersch Skuratowski,” 1909, File 52530-12, INS; Esther Panitz, “In Defense of the Jewish Immigrant, 1891–1924,” in Abraham Karp, ed., The Jewish Experience in America, vol. 5 (Waltham, MA: American Jewish Historical Society, 1969).
199 The lawyers were not: NYT, July 16, 1909; Max J. Kohler, Immigration and Aliens in the United States: Studies of American Immigration Laws and the Legal Status of Aliens in the United States (New York: Bloch, 1936), 54–55.
199 There was something: “Brief for the Petitioner in the Matter of Hersch Skuratowski,” 1909, 46–61, File 52530-12, INS.
200 The controversy over: For an overview of the issue of racial classifications, see Marian L. Smith, “INS Administration of Racial Provisions in U.S. Immigration and Nationality Law Since 1898,” Prologue, Summer 2002.
200 Powderly and his colleagues: See File 52729/9, INS; Joel Perlmann, “ ‘Race or People’: Federal Race Classifications for Europeans in America, 1898–1913,” Jerome Levy Economics Institute Working Paper No. 320, January 2001; “Reports of the Industrial Commission on Immigration,” vol. 15, 1901, 132–133; “Annual Report of the Commissioner-General of Immigration,” 1898, 33–34; “Annual Report of the Commissioner-General of Immigration,” 1899, 5. Patrick Weil claims that “immigration officials continued to use the statistics provided by the list to deny admission to immigrants of certain ethnic backgrounds, even when their exclusion was not specifically provided for by law.” Weil provides no support for his hypothesis. Patrick Weil, “Races at the Gate: A Century of Racial Distinctions in American Immigration Policy, 1865–1965,” Georgetown Immigration Law Journal 15 (2001).
201 For Jews, this new classification: Panitz, “In Defense of the Jewish Immigrant, 1891–1924,” 55–57; Nathan Goldberg, Jacob Lestchinsky, and Max Weinreich, The Classification of Jewish Immigrants