Kenny Webster's Pursuit of Happiness

Kenny Webster's Pursuit of Happiness

Ken Webster is a talk radio personality and producer from Houston, TX. He started his career in Chicago on the Mancow show and has since worked at...Full Bio

 

Ellis Island Was Not A Sanctuary City

Kate Steinle's killer, an illegal immigrant with a criminal history,  has been found not-guilty of murder and involuntary manslaughter.  This  is pretty baffling, considering he gave conflicting statements about the  incident to investigators, he blatantly lied during questioning and he  even threw the gun in San Francisco Bay after he shot her.  That doesn't  exactly sound like the behavior of an innocent man, does it? Of course,  this all happened because of San Francisco's sanctuary city laws.  The  city of San Francisco, much like a lot of other big cities around the  country, has laws that protect criminal illegals and prevent them from  being deported after they get caught breaking the law.  This man never  should have been in the country in the first place.  But he was here.   And an innocent person died because of him.  

People who are  defending Kate Steinle's killer keep saying, "This is a nation of  immigrants.  We built our country with immigration.  That's how we got  here."  Is it?  Sort of, but not quite.  Let's talk about "how we got  here."

Shortly after the Civil War took place, people were  migrating to the US in high numbers.  In fact, it was one of the biggest  influxes of immigrants in US history.  The Federal government needed a  system they could use to help vet the incoming migrants.  No, it wasn't  sanctuary city laws that helped us decide who should and shouldn't be  here.  Instead, the process took place on an island.  Ellis, to be  exact.

Between the years 1892 and 1954 more than 12 million  immigrants came to America and they all passed through a tiny little hub  known as Ellis Island, which is located in New York Harbor.  This  geographic location would become the first ever Federal immigration  station, established by President Benjamin Harris in the year 1890.   Named after Samuel Ellis, a merchant who was one of the original owners  of the island in the 1700s, the island had a number of uses before it  was designated as an immigration destination, including a military base  and an oyster fishing spot [because the Dutch loved oysters]. 

Before 1890 it was the responsibility of the states to handle immigration  services, not the Federal government.  But as the number of incoming immigrants started to rise to higher numbers, the states were becoming ill-equipped to handle the process, so the Federal government stepped in and took over the task.  That's when a giant facility [giant by the standards of the 1800s] was built on Ellis Island.

Over the next  62 years more than 12 million people passed through that island.  But it wasn't a simple process.  In fact, in 1897 a fire on Ellis Island destroyed the entire compound and every record and document being stored in the facility.  And since they didn't have cloud storage back then there wasn't much they could do to get the records back.  So the Federal government rebuilt the structure to be  fire-proof [or at least fire-resistant] and it was completed again in 1900 [but it still had no WiFi].

Visiting the island as an immigrant was no walk in the park.   Don't get me wrong, it wasn't exactly torture either.  If an immigrant was in good health and they had all their paperwork in order,  they would only be on Ellis Island for about 5 hours before they went to the mainland.  Even still, most people didn’t enjoy visiting the place.  It was crowded, noisy, and confusing to someone who just hopped off a boat from a far-away destination.  Ellis Island was commonly known as the "Island of tears" because sometimes people were rejected or subjected to increasing vetting that they hadn’t previously expected.   

When immigrants arrived on Ellis Island they needed to prove they had at least $25 in cash before they'd be allowed into America.  That was the way the government sought to prevent these new immigrants from being a burden to society.  So, the trope written on the Statue of  Liberty of tired, poor, hungry, etc.?  Well, they weren't as poor or hungry as you've been told.

Immigrants would be marked with an “H” if they had heart disease, or an  “X” if they had dementia [or if they just looked stupid].  They were  even labeled with an “E” if they had eye problems.  They were asked for  their birth location, questions about previous travels, possible  relatives in the states, and if they had any discernible skills.  Then  they were asked if they were anarchists or polygamists.

The truth is, most immigrants were treated respectfully, but even back then there were leftists complaining that incoming immigrants didn't receive fair treatment.  And in just the same way, there were some people who complained the process wasn't strict enough.  One of the biggest complaints from immigration critics concerned the health inspection.   Most of the incoming immigrants were only subjected to a 6-second physical exam from doctors.  After much debate over the process, several new immigration policies were enacted [and eventually eliminated], including the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Alien Contract Labor Law and a literacy test.  Oh, you're Chinese and you can't read?  Sorry, no America for you [or Yu - pun intended]. 

But in the 1920s it began to become apparent that Ellis Island wouldn’t always be big enough to handle the massive number of incoming immigrants.  After this time period the only people detained at Ellis Island were folks who didn't have the proper paperwork, those in extremely poor health or war refugees.  During World War 2 the island served as a dormitory for detained enemy-merchant-seamen [which was a common occurrence at the  time].  And large scale immigration to the US was drastically reduced in the 1920s because it was believed the immigrants weren’t assimilating fast enough. In fact, until the 1950s the only way you could come to the  country was as a refugee or if you were sponsored by someone.

Finally, in 1954, the last ever immigrant to be detained on  the island, a Norwegian named Arne Peterssen, was released and the  immigration station of Ellis Island officially closed.  Nine years later  President Johnson declared it part of the Statue of Liberty National  Monument.

So to anyone who reacts to news about sanctuary city laws [or Kate Steinle's killer] by saying, "stop blaming immigrants, it's always been this way in America," you can politely remind them that they're wrong.  It hasn't always been this way.  We use to detain immigrants on the "Island of Tears" where they were rejected for being criminals, war refugees, illiterate, unhealthy, Chinese and any other number of reasons.

NEW YORK, NY - JANUARY 31:  The Statue of Liberty stands in New York Harbor in the snow on January 31, 2017 in New York City. With President Donald Trump's executive order on immigration, the subject of who can come to America has once again become a hotly debated topic in the country. The executive order temporarily bars immigrants from Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, and Libya, and indefinitely prevents all Syrian refugees, from entering the U.S.  (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)


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