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.In his first annual report since returning to Ellis Island, Williams noted that many of the previous year’s detentions were due to “serious physical defects discovered by our surgeons,” placing these immigrants under what Williams termed the “excellent provision of the law of 1907.” Williams did not believe that these ailments were randomly assigned across the racial and ethnic spectrum.“Relatively few immigrants from Northern Europe are so held,” he wrote.“It is those coming from the other parts of Europe (particularly the southern and south-eastern parts) that constitute the great majority of the doubtful cases.”The amount of work being done was astounding.In 1911, there were 70,829 board of special inquiry hearings.That came to almost two hundred hearings a day, seven days a week, twelve months a year.Ellis Island possessed a staff, not including medical officials who did not sit on the boards, of 523 workers, although that included many, such as watchmen and maintenance staff, who did not perform inspection duties.Williams worried about the ability of his staff to carry out that work.“Some of these men will never understand the meaning of the phrase ‘likely to become a public charge’ or how to apply it,” he wrote to Daniel Keefe, the new commissioner-general of immigration.“The fact is we are executing here some of the most difficult laws in the world with much green material.” Ellis Island was running as many as eight board hearings at any one time, necessitating more than thirty officials to sit on those boards.“We have not 32 men here who are qualified to do good Board work,” Williams lamented.To the thousands of immigrants who passed in front of those boards, like Wolf Konig, Williams’s strict enforcement of the law had real consequences.The seventeen-year-old arrived at Ellis Island alone and penniless in June 1912; doctors certified him as “afflicted with lack of physical and sexual development for age claimed which affects ability to earn a living.” Wolf was headed to his uncle, Nathan Waxman, in Chicago, who owned a stationary store and property worth $3,800.Nathan signed an affidavit that he would support Wolf so that he would not become a public charge.Irving Lipsitch of HIAS took up the case.He argued that Wolf was sixteen years old and therefore not underdeveloped for his age.“We believe that he can improve himself and his development with the assistance of his relatives who are prepared to help him to get better nourishment and exercise,” Lipsitch told officials.“Being a young boy, and not accustomed to travel, it is quite natural that this first long journey should cause him to become fatigued and to look poorly developed when examined.” Nathan Waxman enlisted the help of two Chicagoarea congressmen to write to Secretary Nagel about their interest in Wolf ’s fate.Ultimately, though, Williams stood his ground.“This boy is frail and obviously weakling [sic],” he concluded.Unfortunately for Wolf, Nagel was away from his office when his appeal reached Washington.In his place, Solicitor General Charles Earl agreed with Williams and ordered the boy back to Galicia.Michele Sica was also a victim of the new regime at Ellis Island.He was a “bird of passage,” an immigrant who would come to America for a number of years to work and then return to his wife and children back home in Italy with the money he had saved.This would have been Sica’s fourth time in the country, having first arrived in 1901.He had lived in America for seven out of the last ten years.On his fourth visit, in June 1911, Sica ran into problems.Though he arrived with $21, had a brother-in-law and friends in New York, and had resided in the country for a number of years over the previous decade, Sica was declared likely to become a charge.He was now fortyfive years old and diagnosed with a hernia.“Although there are some favorable features in the case, he is certified to be physically defective,” wrote Assistant Commissioner Byron Uhl, “his general appearance is not good, he is considerably older than when previously in this country and there is great doubt as to his ability to earn a livelihood, afflicted as he is, as a laborer.”Sica was ordered deported, but his expulsion was postponed until September.That meant Sica would spend the entire summer cooped up at Ellis Island, where temperatures would often rise to over 100 degrees in the poorly ventilated dorm rooms [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]