El Paso, a sight for sore eyes: Medical and legal aspects of Syrian immigration, 1906-1907

Historian

Volumn 65, Issue 1, 2002, Pages 15-42

  Gabbert, Ann R ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT EL PASO   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61249505173     PISSN: 00182370     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1540-6563.651015     Document Type: Review

References (84)

1. Ameen Fares Rihani, The Book of Kahlid (New York, 1911), 29.
2. Senate, Reports of the Immigration Commission, Statistical Review of Immigration 1820-1910, 61st Cong. 1910, 756, 3d sess., Sen. Doc., 367-71.
3. Senate, Reports of the Immigration Commission, Emigration Conditions in Europe, 61st Cong., 3d sess., 1910, Sen. Doc. 748, 71-73.
4. Sarah Elizabeth John, "'Trade Will Lead a Man Far': Syrian Immigration to the El Paso Area, 1900-1935" (master's thesis, University of Texas-El Paso, 1982)
5. and Alixa Naff, Becoming American: The Early Arab Immigrant Experience (Carbondale, Ill., 1985) are cultural and economic assimilation studies of the American-Syrian community. However, neither Naff nor John probe this phenomenon of immigration from Mexico from a medical perspective or question the role of medicalization and racialization in the development of immigration policy.
6. There are two monographs that offer the comparative viewpoint of Lebanese immigration to Mexico, rather than through it: Martha Diaz de Kuri and Lourdes Macluf, De Libano a Mexico: Cronica de un Pueblo Emigrante (Mexico, 1995)
7. Luis Alfonso Ramirez Carrillo, "De Buhoneros a Empresarios: La Inmigracion Libanesa en el Sureste de Mexico," Historia Mexicana 43 (1994).
8. General studies on immigration include Roger Daniels, Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life (New York, 1990)
9. Roger Daniels, Not Like Us: Immigrants and Minorities in America, 1890-1924 (Chicago, Ill., 1997)
10. Oscar Handlin, Race and Nationality in American Life (Boston, Mass., 1948)
11. Oscar Handlin, The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migrations That Made the American People (New York, 1951)
12. John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism 1860-1925, 2d ed. (New Brunswick, N.J., 1988).
13. See for example T. V. Powderly, "Immigration's Menace to the National Health," North American Review 175 (1902): 59.
14. Act of 26 March 1790, 1 Statutes-at-Large 103. For example, see Ian F. Haney López, White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race (New York, 1996)
15. Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, 1998).
16. Tzvetan Todorov, On Human Diversity: Nationalism, Racism, and Exoticism in French Thought, trans. Catherine Porter (Cambridge, 1993), 90-94
17. Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s, 2d ed. (New York, 1994), ix, 4, 55.
18. Alan M. Kraut, Silent Travelers: Germs, Genes, and the "Immigrant Menace" (Baltimore, Md., 1994), 2. Within the last several years, there has been a small but growing body of scholarly work on the interconnections of medicine and public policy formation especially in the relationship of public health and immigration restriction during the Progressive era.
19. In addition to Kraut, Silent Travelers, see also Howard Markel and Alexandra Minna Stern, "Which Face? Whose Nation?: Immigration, Public Health, and the Construction of Disease at America's Ports and Borders, 1891-1928," American Behavioral Scientist 42 (1999)
20. Howard Markel, "'The Eyes Have It': Trachoma, the Perception of Disease, the United States Public Health Service, and the American Jewish Immigration Experience, 1897-1924," Bulletin of the History of Medicine 74 (2000)
21. Alexandra Minna Stern, "Buildings, Boundaries, and Blood: Medicalization and Nation-Building on the U.S.-Mexico Border, 1910-1930," Hispanic American Historical Review 79 (1999)
22. Alexandra Minna Stern, "Secrets Under the Skin: New Historical Perspectives on Disease, Deviation, and Citizenship: A Review Article," Comparative Studies in Society and History 41 (1999).
23. Eugene Braunwald et al., eds., Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine, 11th ed. (New York, 1987), 764-65.
24. Charles E. Rosenberg, Explaining Epidemics and Other Studies in the History of Medicine (Cambridge, 1992), 286.
25. Marian L. Smith, "Overview of INS History," in A Historical Guide to the U.S. Government, ed. George T. Kurian (New York, 1998), 305.
26. E. P. Hutchinson, Legislative History of American Immigration Policy, 1798-1965 (Philadelphia, Pa., 1981), 100.
27. Elizabeth Yew, "Medical Inspection of Immigrants at Ellis Island, 1891-1924," Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine 56 (1980): 493. The National Quarantine Act was passed in February 1893, shifting responsibility to federal inspectors. 27 Statutes-at-Large 452.
28. Hutchinson, Legislative History of American Immigration Policy, 416-17.
29. "Extract from 'Emigration Conditions in Europe' Reports of the U.S. Immigration Commission, IV (1911), 69-80," in Immigration: Select Documents and Case Records, ed. Edith Abbott (Chicago, Ill., 1924), 71-72;
30. U.S. Congress, Statistical Review, 367
31. For example, see Ann Novotny, Stranger at the Door: Ellis Island, Castle Garden, and the Great Migration to America, abridged ed. (New York, 1974), 9-11. Between 1892 and 1897, 179 out of a total of 11,441 were rejected for trachoma and favus.
32. Yew, "Medical Inspection of Immigrants," 495. Available therapies usually consisted of the application of antiseptic or caustic solutions (a 1-2 percent solution of silver nitrate was a common treatment) with the occasional use of draconian surgical procedures.
33. U.S. Congress, Emigration Conditions in Europe, 71-76
34. Senate, Reports of the Immigration Commission, Abstracts of Reports of the Immigration Commission, 61st Cong., 3d sess., 1910, Sen. Doc. 747, 1:110. Calculations were made using Dr. Allan McLaughlin's figure of trachoma being 87 percent of the total for loathsome or dangerous contagious diseases.
35. Allan McLaughlin, "Immigration and the Public Health," Popular Science Monthly 64 (1903): 233.
36. John McMullan, "Trachoma: Its Prevalence and Control among Immigrants," Journal of the American Medical Association 51 (1913): 1110-11
37. Robert De C. Ward, "The Restriction of Immigration," North American Review 179 (1904): 231.
38. Powderly, "Immigration's Menace to the National Health," 60.
39. Allan McLaughlin, "Hebrew, Magyar, and Levantine Immigration," Popular Science Monthly 65 (1904): 332.
40. See also McLaughlin, "Immigration and the Public Health"; Allan McLaughlin, "The Problem of Immigration," Popular Science Monthly 65 (1905).
41. Thomas Darlington, "The Medico-Economic Aspect of the Immigration Problem," North American Review 183 (1906): 1268-69
42. McMullan, "Trachoma: Its Prevalence and Control among Immigrants," 1111.
43. Alfred C. Reed, "The Medical Side of Immigration," Popular Science Monthly 80 (1912): 390-92.
44. See also Alfred C. Reed, "Immigration and the Public Health," Popular Science Monthly 83 (1913).
45. For a full explanation of the role of this organization in immigration restriction see Barbara Miller Solomon, Ancestors and Immigrants: A Changing New England Tradition (Cambridge, 1956).
46. Robert De C. Ward, "Pending Immigration Bills," North American Review 183 (1906): 1124.
47. U.S. Congress, Immigration Legislation, 51.
48. Victor Safford, Immigration Problems: Personal Experiences of an Official (New York, 1925), 244-51
49. Edward A. Steiner, On the Trail of the Immigrant (New York, 1906), 78-93
50. Reed, "The Medical Side of Immigration," 385-86.
51. United States Public Health Service, Regulations Governing the Medical Inspection of Aliens (Washington, D.C., 1917), 6-17, 38-40.
52. Markel, "Eyes Have It," 523
53. Kraut, Silent Travelers, 61-62.
54. E. K. Sprague, "Medical Inspection of Immigrants," Survey 30 (1913): 421-22
55. Markel, "Eyes Have It," 526
56. Markel and Stern, "Which Face?," 1317-18
57. Yew, "Medical Inspection of Immigrants," 488-89.
58. Federal regulations defined a medical certificate as the "certification of facts which have been demonstrated from appropriate medical examinations. A medical certificate so issued has the legal value of a document signed by a public officer which is by law made evidence of the truth stated for the purposes of the administration of the immigration law." Darlington, "The Medico-Economic Aspect of the Immigration Problem," 1263; United States Public Health Service, Regulations, 6.
59. Yew calls this the "Ellis Island Myth." Yew, "Medical Inspection of Immigrants," 508 n.57.
60. Reed, "Immigration and the Public Health," 232
61. Markel, "Eyes Have It," 531.
62. Daniels, Coming to America, 186.
63. Naff, Becoming American, 78-79.
64. McLaughlin, "Hebrew, Magyar, and Levantine Immigration," 440.
65. See also Louise Seymour Houghton, "Syrians in the United States, Part I," Survey 26 (1911): 482
66. Philip K. Hitti, The Syrians in America (New York, 1924), 47-61.
67. Edward Wakin, The Lebanese and Syrians in America (Chicago, Ill., 1974), 11-14
68. Institute of Texas Cultures, The Syrian and Lebanese Texans (San Antonio, Tex., 1974), 1
69. John, "'Trade Will Lead a Man Far'" 15.
70. Naff, Becoming American, 28-30, 86-88.
71. Houghton, "Syrians in the United States," 487-88
72. Quotation from McLaughlin, "The Problem of Immigration," 531.
73. Lewis E. MacBrayne, "The Judgment of the Steerage," Harper's Monthly 117 (1908): 490.
74. Casefile 51411/1, Folder #2, Record Group 85; Houghton, "Syrians in the United States," 491; McLaughlin, "Immigration and the Public Health," 236.
75. Ramirez Carrillo, 456; Casefile 51411/1, Folder #2, Record Group 85; John, "'Trade Will Lead a Man Far'" 31-32.
76. "Attracted by the progress of their countrymen and because of the ineffable American dream" ... "the country that had denied them entrance." Diaz de Kuri and Macluf, De Libano a Mexico, 45, 47.
77. In the case of Drs. Sinks and Coffin, the question is not whether they were using the standard treatment but whether they were applying it to actual cases of trachoma and whether they completed the cure as promised. See Markel, "Eyes Have It," 555-56 for more information on trachoma treatment.
78. C. L. Sonnichsen, Pass of the North: Four Centuries on the Rio Grande (El Paso, Tex., 1968), 270.
79. I. J. Bush, Gringo Doctor (Caldwell, Idaho, 1939), 168-71.
80. Immigration Act of 20 February 1907, 34 Statutes-at-Large 898; Senate, Congressional Record, 59th Cong., 2d sess., 41, pt. 3 (13 February 1907): 2808-17.
81. Reed, "Immigration and the Public Health," 323. Other diseases were occasionally targeted but trachoma was one of the most highlighted by the press. It was highly contagious, difficult to treat, disfiguring, and would eventually cause blindness.
82. D. E. Thompson to Ignacio Mariscal, 7 June 1906; "Trachoma Monograph," 22 March 1907; J. J. Sholgers to Commissioner-General of Immigration, 25 March 1907; Unsigned Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization Memorandum, 11 November 1907, Casefile 51463/B, Record Group 85; Diaz de Kuri and Macluf, De Libano a Mexico, 47-48.
83. McLaughlin, "Hebrew, Magyar, and Levantine Immigration," 440, 442.
84. See Walter Nugent, Crossings: The Great Transatlantic Migrations, 1870-1914 (Bloomington, Ind., 1992).