American Passage_ The History of Ellis I - Vincent J. Cannato [93]
Some cases were easily disposed of, but others were more difficult. The power Straus possessed was enormous and would determine the futures of many individuals. It was a grave responsibility. “I felt that there was a domestic tragedy involved in every one of these cases, and as the law placed the ultimate decision upon the Secretary,” he wrote, “I decided this responsibility was one that should not be delegated; so day by day I took up these decisions myself.” So engaged was Straus that he brought a number of the toughest cases home with him that first night to examine in more depth.
“I would be less than human if I failed to interpret the laws as humanely as possible,” Straus wrote his brother Isidor. “I propose to remain on the side of the angels come what will, and I shall defy hostile criticisms—to do less would be cowardly.” Straus was especially sensitive to the plight of Russian Jewish immigrants, thinking it the height of cruelty to send Jews back to the nightmare of czarist Russia.
Straus made his first official visit to Ellis Island in February 1907, witnessing some 2,600 immigrants passing through that day. He appeared there again two months later, examining every detail of inspection from the time immigrants got off the ferries to the time they passed inspection.
Straus also heard a number of appeals cases, including that of a Scots-Irish family of seven ordered deported because one son was certified as feebleminded. The family was faced with a decision: Should they split up, with the mother or another sibling returning to Europe with the son and the others remaining in America? The family decided that they would all stick together—either the entire family would stay or the entire family would go back home. Straus thought the family, with the exception of the twenty-year-old feebleminded son, was “an exceptionally fine lot” and decided to allow the entire family to remain in America, including the son. Upon hearing the good news, the family burst into tears of gratitude.
Straus made yet another visit to Ellis Island in June 1908, joined by the commissioner-general of immigration, Frank Sargent, and other immigration and medical officials from East Coast inspection stations. Straus convened the conference to deal with medical cases that had caused him concern. They first took up the case of a fifty-nine-year-old Russian immigrant named Chena Rog, who was headed to her five children and thirty-six grandchildren in Reading, Pennsylvania. Rog had been diagnosed with trachoma, an infectious disease of the eye. Should she be ordered deported or held in a hospital for treatment?
When Straus asked Ellis Island’s chief medical officer, George Stoner, about his opinion on the case, an agitated Stoner answered: “Just what I have stated in my certificate.” Stoner and his staff had recommended deportation since trachoma was a contagious disease. They felt they were now being second-guessed by Straus. Can’t she be treated for the disease, Straus asked? Stoner was not optimistic, arguing that it would take an “indefinite period which must be counted by years rather than by months.” Straus kept pushing to see whether there was any way to avoid deporting Rog, who had no relatives back in Russia and whose children had become successful members of their community, as was attested by the presence of their congressman at the conference. Stoner became impatient by Straus’s line of questioning and argued that there was nothing in the law that said that the officials had to treat Rog or any other immigrant suffering from a loathsome or contagious disease.
Clearly, Straus wanted the woman admitted, but Watchorn and Sargent argued that any ruling allowing diseased immigrants to land would be seen by steamship companies as an invitation to relax their own standards in Europe. They also sensed that their boss had already made up his mind, so they put their concerns aside and agreed to have the woman