American Passage_ The History of Ellis I - Vincent J. Cannato [46]
Weber called Chandler’s bill “a senseless panic among our people.” The Nation called it “a medieval admission of inability to take scientific precautions against cholera.” Others noted that even with a moratorium on immigration, disease could still be transmitted by arriving cabin passengers such as tourists and businessmen, as well as imported cargo arriving in the port.
Despite the fears brought about by the outbreaks of two deadly and contagious diseases linked to immigrants, the effect on national policy was quite the opposite of what might have been expected. Few members of Congress were ready to join Chandler in calling for even a temporary suspension of immigration. Public opinion, despite worries over immigration, was not willing to jettison America’s traditional vision of immigration. Chandler’s bill went nowhere.
Instead, Congress passed the National Quarantine Act in early 1893, which strengthened the federal government’s role in immigration and created new rules governing public health. As a sop to immigration restrictionists, the law formally gave the president the power to suspend immigration in case of an epidemic, a power never used by Harrison or any subsequent president.
The nation did get an immigration bill in 1893. There was no moratorium on immigration, and attempts to expand exclusionary categories to include anarchists and those not able to read and write in their native language failed to survive the bill’s final draft. The pattern of near-absolute exclusion by race as set in the Chinese Exclusion Act would not be followed for white European immigrants. “Exclusion all along the lines is not to be thought of excepting under the pressure of some extraordinary urgency,” one journalist wrote. “It were better for the government to recede from its Chinese policy instead of venturing to extend it.”
What did pass was a series of administrative reforms that tightened the regulation of existing laws to weed out undesirables, as Chandler had proposed in his final report after his 1892 hearings. The system of bonding was allowed to continue, but with greater scrutiny. Bonds could now only be granted under the authority of the superintendent of immigration in Washington.
The new law created boards of special inquiry at each inspection station to hear the cases of all immigrants not clearly entitled to land. Immigrants who appeared before these boards would need to gain a majority vote from the board before being allowed to land. In addition, any dissenting board member had the right to appeal the admissions decision to the commissioner.
The bill called for a more detailed ship’s manifest to be provided by the steamship companies to immigration officials at the port of entry. When Annie Moore landed in January 1892, her manifest listed passenger names and the answers to eight basic questions. Now, besides having to answer the basics—name, age, sex, and occupation—an immigrant would have to answer a total of nineteen questions. Among them were:
• “By whom was passage paid?”
• “Ever in prison or almshouse or supported by charity?”
• “Whether a polygamist”
• “Whether under contract, express or implied to labor in the United States”
Steamship officials would also have to make note of the mental and physical condition of immigrants on the manifest and list any deficiencies.
The new manifests would allow steamship companies to better sift immigrants. The detailed questions allowed for a more thorough crossexamination of immigrants. When immigrants arrived at Ellis Island, inspectors would ask them the same questions as appeared on the ship’s manifest, whose answers would be in front of the inspector. If the answers did not align with the information on the ship’s manifest or if the inspector felt there was something wrong with the answers, the immigrant would then be sent to a board of special inquiry hearing. In less than ten months of operation under the new law, the boards heard the cases of 7,367