The Passport in America: The History of a Document (30 page)

A brief walk through the inspection procedures at Ellis Island provides important context for why passports were not considered necessary when border security was defined through a racialized understanding of what made the nation productive and healthy, and when, as in the case of United States, the primary “border” was a seaport. The individual identity utilized at Ellis Island, befitting the nature of immigration, was a transitory one, with only hesitant attempts made to record that identity for future reference by government officials. When immigrants needed to be identified individually, it was to ensure their movement through the main hall, and this identification was achieved through something akin to a premodern logic of badge and uniform.

The successful movement of more than five thousand people a day through Ellis Island in the peak years of immigration at the turn of the twentieth century depended on an efficient choreography of bodies that utilized the structure of ships and buildings to facilitate inspection. This was in part due to the limited federal money budgeted for enforcing immigration law; the greater resources allocated to collecting customs duties was read as a constant reminder of border priorities by at least one commissioner in charge of immigration at Ellis Island.
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Personal appearance was integral to the implementation of an efficient system where race and class provided useful shorthand for establishing identity according to the categories created in the law. The examination process for steamship passengers began by initially sifting them through a specific understanding of class and identity. There were two stages to the process: an inspection on the ship for first class and cabin passengers and an inspection at Ellis Island for steerage passengers. Because immigration laws did not apply to citizens, this inspection was limited to “aliens” with the assumption that a citizen would be easily recognizable as such. The inspection of first-class and cabin passengers occurred as a ship made its way from quarantine to the port of New York, when the boarding divisions of the medical inspection and immigration services performed their duties.
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Immigration officials utilized the tripartite division of the steamship into first class, cabin, and steerage to determine differing degrees of inspection. The structured mobility of ocean travel was viewed through the articulation of class and race that underwrote immigration restriction. First-class passengers were rarely inspected, and second-class cabin passengers received “cursory examination,”
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apparently distinct from the expert glance steerage passengers received during their onshore inspection at Ellis Island. Officials assumed that most immigrants traveled in the cramped quarters of steerage, therefore, those who did not were not thought likely to be subject to exclusion. The inability of immigrants to afford a more expensive ticket marked them as poor and thus, in the eyes of immigration officials, more susceptible to disease and the lack of morals which made their right to live and work in the United States questionable. Potential immigrants became increasingly aware of this, and often tried to find additional money for a nonsteerage ticket to reduce the possibility of exclusion.
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However, whether out of necessity or genuine belief, officials continued to treat the ability to afford a cabin ticket (first or second class) as evidence of the cultural suitability necessary for admission. A ticket above steerage was read to exhibit wealth (that is, a productive capacity) and a belief in the importance of hygiene (self regulation).
Until 1912 the official confidence in the ship’s sorting mechanism was such that claims to admission through citizenship from cabin dwellers were rarely challenged. But on the occasions they were, the documents offered by “passengers who appear to be aliens” were of little value. Documents would be easily trumped if the inspector’s “cursory and hasty examination” offered evidence to suspect either the “bona fides of the passenger or the genuineness of the paper.”
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An Immigration Service commissioner clarified the nature of the appearance that aroused suspicion, writing that “experience shows that those from southern, south-eastern and eastern Europe are more likely to be ineligible than those from northern Europe”;
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this despite the fact that prior to 1921 immigrants from these areas were not restricted because of race or ethnicity.

At the beginning of the twentieth century those who successfully passed this on-board inspection were issued with a card to present when they disembarked that verified their right to enter the United States. When the ship arrived all immigrants from steerage and any non-citizens in second class who had failed the on-board medical inspection were transported to Ellis Island on barges. The first barge from each ship also carried what was deemed relevant documentation: the steerage manifests, the landing tags of any citizens in steerage, and a list from the steamship company of passengers rejected at embarkation.
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Once at Ellis Island immigrants entered the main building in two lines, at which point the four PHS doctors on duty at the line performed the medical examination.
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The point at which an immigrant turned right soon after entering the building determined the placement of the doctors. The immigrant’s entry into the building under the eyes of these officials became, in the words of one doctor, a “system, silent, watchful, swift, efficient.”
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The complete medical examination usually took no more than forty seconds, with some claiming no more than six seconds.
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As one writer noted, “The examination can be superficial at best; but the eye has been trained and discoveries are made here, which seem rather remarkable.”
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In 1912 a PHS doctor explained to readers of
Popular Science Monthly
how these discoveries occurred:

At this turn stands a medical officer. He sees each person directly from the front as he approaches, and his glance travels rapidly from feet to head. In this rapid glance he notes the gait, attitude, presence of flat feet, lameness, stiffness at ankle, knee, or hip, malformations of the body, observes the neck for goitre, muscular development, scars, enlarged glands, texture of skin, and finally as the immigrant comes up face to face, the examiner notes abnormalities of the features, eruptions, scars, paralysis, expression, etc. As the immigrant turns, in following the line, the examiner has a side view, noting the ears, scalp, side of neck, examining the hands for deformity or paralysis, and if anything about the individual seems suspicious, he is asked several questions. It is surprising how often a mental aberration will show itself in the reaction of the person to an unexpected question…. At the end of each line stands a second medical officer who does nothing but inspect eyes.
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It should be noted that a year after the publication of this article, its author, Dr. Alfred C. Reed, resigned in frustration at the inefficiency of the medical examination at Ellis Island, complaining, “the staff is too small and the administrative policy is passive, rather than aggressive, reactionary rather than progressive.”
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A little under one-fifth of immigrants failed the medical examination. If they did fail, an official marked their clothing with a chalk symbol “indicating the nature of the suspicious circumstance”: for example, a “C” signified an ocular condition, and an “S” signified senility.
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They were then removed for further examination. If the subsequent examination confirmed the initial diagnosis, the immigrant was issued a medical certificate signed by at least two doctors and rejoined the line, where the certificate would become evidence for the final decision, which an immigration inspector would make.

After the medical inspection, the line of immigrants entered the main hall. This could hold approximately two thousand immigrants, most of who would make a two-hour journey through the hall before they were finally examined by an immigration inspector.
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The movement of immigrants through the hall was initially managed by “groupers” who were employed to ensure that immigrants ended up in the correct line. The manifest compiled by steamship officials determined the right line; it listed passengers’ names along with information requested by the Immigration Bureau. Immigrants had cards attached to their clothing with the number and line of the manifest that recorded their information. A series of numbered aisles corresponding to manifest numbers divided the hall. The grouper thus attempted to ensure
immigrants were lined up in the aisle appropriate to their ship by looking at the number on the cards attached to their body. At the end of each line, an inspector sat behind a desk to ask questions based upon the “facts” recorded on the manifest and any other additional documents. On a busy day, this inspection normally lasted no more than two minutes; each inspector had to examine four hundred to five hundred immigrants a day. In 1909 inspectors were required to ask thirty-eight questions during the inspection and note any new information or discrepancies briefly on the manifest; they were then expected to enter the changes in longhand at the end of the day.
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Along with the immigrants’ answers, inspectors were also instructed to evaluate their “appearance and general demeanor.”
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Although officials made use of an identity derived from a belief that “race” could be read off a body, this understanding of race combined elements of language, culture, and physical appearance. In this conception of race, the essentializing function given to clothing could turn immigrants’ clothes into evidence of race and nationality. While this particular representational function of immigrants’ clothing was made visible in newspaper and magazine articles where immigrant clothing was usually described as “national costume,” it also allowed officials to determine how detailed their inspection needed to be.
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If the cross-examination failed to verify the immigrant as a viable and productive future citizen, the inspector marked the individual’s coat or shirt lapel with chalk and sent him or her to wait for a hearing in front of a review board; different colored markings indicated the reason for the initial exclusion. While about 20% of potential immigrants failed this initial examination, as noted earlier, only 1% of potential immigrants were eventually excluded.

In an inspection that privileged the body and physical appearance over documents, the most important document was the manifest. It gave an individual an identity that enabled immigration officials to inspect him or her. First, and perhaps primarily, the manifest was intended to organize an individual’s passage through the main hall in the hope of “obliviating dire confusion,” in the words of the official in charge of Ellis Island.
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It was also intended to make the immigrant appear before an inspector in another sense—it attached the body of an immigrant to information deemed necessary to assess an alien’s suitability to work and live in the United States. In a review of the manifest’s implementation as part of the 1893 act, the immigration commissioner contended the detailed manifest ensured that the inspection of immigrants would no longer be “mere census taking,” making it “possible to identify each and every one of them.”
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It did this by
substantially augmenting the basic information (name, country of citizenship, last residence, and destination) steamship companies had had to provide to officials since 1819.

To be more than “mere census taking,” the manifest had to comply with the requirements of immigration officials. The manifest was a large sheet of paper, ruled with horizontal lines and vertical columns. There were thirty lines intended to record thirty names, with twenty-nine numbered vertical columns for steamship officials to record the information immigration officials required to ascertain admission. However, in the decade after its introduction, the manifest had apparently become little more than census taking. In 1902, William Williams, a young Wall Street lawyer with some experience in government legal services, was appointed commissioner of immigration at Ellis Island by President Theodore Roosevelt to clean up the running of Ellis Island following a number of scandals. The rigorous collection of information on manifests became one part of his crusade. Soon after his appointment Williams began to impose fines on steamship companies for “instances of very bad manifestation”
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—occasionally, the only information on a manifest was an immigrant’s name.
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Not only were many categories not filled out (a common omission was the address of the relative with whom the immigrant would initially stay), but, to Williams’s mind, several categories seemed to have been filled out in advance with standard answers (for example, health was uniformly described as “good”).
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With limited success he offered steamship companies a variety of methods to collect the necessary information from passengers during the voyage: “Inquiry, direct or indirect, by hearsay, by observation, or by any other method that may seem to you appropriate.” However, Williams was careful to remind company officials that their staff should not rely on direct questioning to obtain the necessary information, because “if an alien is suffering from a dangerous contagious disease, or if he is a noted criminal, he will generally avoid admitting that such is the case.”
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Many steamship companies had also taken to listing more than thirty names on each sheet; there could be anywhere from twenty to fifty additional names crammed onto the document. This practice developed in response to the requirement that a ship’s officer had to swear to the completeness of a manifest’s list of passengers before the U.S. consul at the ship’s port of departure. Because a steamship company had to pay a notary a fee for each sheet of the manifest, the fewer sheets, the lower the cost.
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