Where Millions Entered U.S., a Debate on Letting in More

By NINA BERNSTEIN
The New York Times
March 31, 2007

It was the perfect setting for a Congressional hearing on immigration, all the speakers agreed — the Great Hall on Ellis Island, where from 1892 to 1953 more than 12 million immigrants waited to be let in to America.

But the meaning that could be drawn from the backdrop was a matter of disagreement yesterday as the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration heard testimony from scholars and immigration officials.

Some, like David V. Aguilar, chief of the Border Patrol at the Department of Homeland Security, contrasted the orderly inspection at Ellis Island a century ago with the chaos of illegal immigration at the Mexican border today.

“The vast majority of that clutter, that chaos at our Southern border, are seeking economic employment,” Mr. Aguilar said. Sending more of them into a legal flow, like a temporary guest worker program, would let the Border Patrol concentrate on stopping criminals, he testified.

Others noted that only 2 percent of would-be immigrants were turned away at Ellis Island. The requirements were minimal compared with those of today, said Representative Linda Sánchez, a Democrat from California: reasonably good health and $10, or the equivalent of $216 in today’s dollars, to show that one would not become a public burden.

“I am the youngest daughter of immigrants who came to this country with very little money,” she said. “They sent every one of my six brothers and sisters to college.”

Zoe Lofgren, the California Democrat who chairs the subcommittee, evoked her immigrant grandfather, Carl Robert Lofgren, who debarked in Boston at 16 a century ago without money and speaking no English, “armed only with his dreams, his work ethic, his optimism and visions of America forged from reading Westerns written in Swedish.”

“This room is a visible vestige of a controlled, orderly and fair immigration system,” she said.

Like four other members of the subcommittee, the lone Republican, Steve King of Iowa, spoke of an immigrant forebear — a grandmother, who arrived at Ellis Island from Kiel, Germany, on March 26, 1894, as a 4-year-old. But he went on to caution, “The realities today are not the same.”

With a nod to the New York skyline, which could be seen through the arched windows of the hall, sparkling across the bay, he mentioned the attacks of the World Trade Center and warned, “Criminal aliens are coming to the U.S. in record numbers.”

But the testimony of several scholars painted a more optimistic outlook — and a less golden picture of Ellis Island’s past.

Dan Siciliano, who teaches corporate governance at Stanford Law School, cited recent research showing that the record immigration between 1990 and 2004 had helped to increase wages in the United States, contradicting older research that predicted the opposite would occur. He said that immigration— including illegal immigration —increased the wages of the native-born by an average of 1.8 percent, and by as much as 3.4 percent among 9 out of 10 native-born workers with at least a high school education.

Mr. Siciliano, a research fellow at the Immigration Policy Center, an organization affiliated with groups that support liberalized immigration, said the older studies failed to recognize that immigrants create jobs as well as fill them.

With enough immigrant waiters to staff a restaurant for lunch as well as dinner, for example, he said, the owner will make more on his capital investment — and perhaps open a second restaurant across town.

“There’s a divide between what we say we want from immigration and what the economy is telling us we need,” he said.

Immigrants at all skill levels will be needed more than ever over the next 20 years, said Dowell Myers, a demographer from the University of Southern California, to offset the aging of the baby boom generation and the decline in the nation’s birth rates.

From the other side, Jack Martin, a director at the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said no study showed that the United States was harmed from 1914 to 1965, when immigration was reduced to a trickle. And he suggested tradeoffs might be necessary, noting that a new White House plan considers denying citizens the right to sponsor foreign brothers and sisters, in exchange for more employee visas. “The country changes, and the needs of the country change,” he said.

Some things do not change, however, said Daniel J. Tichenor, who teaches history and political science at Rutgers University.

“Each wave of ‘new’ immigrants has been scored by critics as incapable of successfully joining our ranks, only later to distinguish themselves among our most loyal and accomplished citizens,” he said. And American history has been marked by waves of xenophobia that ebbed as the new immigrants gained the power of the ballot box.

He cited Benjamin Franklin’s complaint that German immigrants in Pennsylvania had made his home “a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them.”

In response, Representative King suggested that if the number of immigrants of one group grew too large, Franklin’s fear of his culture being overwhelmed was legitimate.

“The Germans did help Germanize the United States,” Professor Tichenor replied. “There was a blending.”

Mr. King persisted. “Is there a missing component in American culture?” he asked.

As Mr. Tichenor thought about his answer, tourists of all complexions gawked from the sidelines, and an audience of immigrant activists let their T-shirts do the talking — “Legalize the Irish” and “I Love Immigrant N.Y.” They sat on the same benches where years ago anxious immigrants waited to be called for inspection.

“We’ve always been a nation becoming,” Professor Tichenor said. “We’ve always added layers.”