Defectives in the land: Disability and American Immigration Policy, 1882-1924

Journal of American Ethnic History

Volumn 24, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 31-44

  Baynton, Douglas C ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 61449261853     PISSN: 02785927     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (39)

1. National Archives, Record Group 85, Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Accession 60A600, File no. 53,550/580
2. John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925 (1955; New York, 1963), 5
3. Daniel Rogers, Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life (New York, 1990), 279
4. Alan M. Kraut, Silent Travelers (New York, 1994), 55
5. Amy L. Fairchild, Science at the Borders: Immigration Medical Inspection and the Shaping of the Modern Industrial Labor Force (Baltimore, 2003)
6. An earlier immigration act, passed in 1875, excluded criminals and prostitutes (this also was a disability issue, as immorality was thought to be closely associated with mental defect). United States Statutes at Large, Vol. 22 (Washington, DC, 1883), 214
7. Emphases added. United States Statutes, Vol. 26 (1891), 1084
8. United States Statutes, Vol. 34 (1907), 899
9. United States Statutes, Vol. 32 (1903), 1213
10. United States Public Health Service, Regulations Governing the Medical Inspection of Aliens (Washington, DC, 1917), 25-26, 28-29, 30-31
11. Regulations, 16-19
12. Victor Safford, Immigration Problems: Personal Experiences of An Official (New York, 1925), 244-45, 46
13. U.S. Bureau of Immigration, Annual Report of the Commissioner of Immigration (Washington, DC, 1907), 62
14. William Williams, "Ellis Island Station," in Annual Report of the Commissioner General of Immigration, 1904 (Washington, DC, 1904), 105
15. Robert DeCourcey Ward to Frank P. Sargent, Commissioner General of Immigration, Washington, DC, dated January 11, 1905, National Archives, Record Group 85, Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Entry 9, File no. 51490/19
16. Allan McLaughlin, "The Problem of Immigration," Popular Science Monthly 66 (April 1905): 532 (emphasis added)
17. Letter from F. P. Sargent, Commissioner General of the Bureau of Immigration, to the Commissioner of Immigration on Ellis Island, April 17, 1905, National Archives, Record Group 90, Records of the Public Health Service, Entry 10, File no. 219
18. National Archives, Record Group 85, Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Entry 7, File no. 49,968/4
19. National Archives, Record Group 85, Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Entry 7, File no. 48,599/4
20. Letter from W.W. Husband, Commissioner General, Bureau of Immigration, to H.S. Cumming, Surgeon General, United States Public Health Service, September 27, 1922; and reply from Cumming to Husband, September 29, 1922; National Archives, Record Group 90, Records of the Public Health Service, Entry 10, File no. 219
21. National Archives, Record Group 85, Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Entry 7, File no. 49951-1 (the immigrant's name is rendered Abram Hofmann and Abram Hofman by immigration officials, Abraham Hoffman by his attorney). Spinal curvature was a common reason for rejection. A fifty-year study at the University of Iowa recently concluded that persons with late-onset scoliosis (occurring during puberty) "are productive and functional at a high level at 50-year follow-up" and experienced "little physical impairment," with "cosmetic concerns" being the only significant problem. This finding contradicts the common perception among physicians and the general public that this is a serious and debilitating condition. Stuart Weinstein, et al., "Health and Function of Patients With Untreated Idiopathic Scoliosis: A 50-Year Natural History Study," Journal of the American Medical Association 289 (February 5, 2003): 559-68
22. The LPC or pauper category was always the largest category of exclusion, but the criteria used are not entirely clear. Lack of money in itself was not a primary factor, though it was taken into consideration. Disability appears to have been a major factor. The definition of "pauper" for the immigration service was "one who is actually dependent upon public funds for support and who, in addition, is unable to work by reason of mental or physical infirmity, or who is unwilling to work." The Dillingham Commission reported in 1911 that, "At the present time ... pauperism among newly admitted immigrants is relatively at a minimum, owing to the fact that the present immigration law provides for the admission only of the able-bodied, or dependents whose support by relatives is assured." United States Government, Abstracts of Reports of the Immigration Commission, Vol. I (Washington, DC, 1911 ), 35. The Report of the Commissioner General of Immigration in 1912 states that while 3,055 were rejected as mentally or physically defective, 12,004 were rejected as "likely to become a public charge," and of those "a considerable portion ... were excluded on the additional ground of being mentally or physically defective.... Where the exclusion occurs on both grounds, it is not an easy matter properly to classify the cases in the statistical reports; and the figures representing those 'LPC and those 'mentally and physically defective' should be considered together." Annual Report of the Commissioner General of Immigration, 1912 (Washington, DC, 1912), 125
23. United States, Abstracts of Reports of the Immigration Commission, Vol. I (Washington, DC, 1911), also known as the Dillingham Report. In 1915, nearly 5% were excluded, probably because the reduced number of immigrants during the war allowed more careful inspection
24. United Slates Statutes, Vol. 27 ( 1893), 569
25. E. Abbott, Immigration: Select Documents and Case Records (Chicago, 1924), 71
26. U.S. Bureau of Immigration, Annual Report of the Commissioner of Immigration (Washington, DC, 1907), 10; U.S. Immigration Service, Annual Report of the Superintendent of Immigration (Washington, DC, 1894), 12-13
27. Abstract of Reports of the Immigration Commission [Dillingham Commission], Vol. 1 (Washington, DC, 1911), 26; Amy Fairchild's Science at the Borders (56-63) gives an excellent account of the multiple inspections immigrants faced along the way
28. James W. Trent Jr., Inventing the Feeble Mind: A History of Mental Retardation in the United States (Berkeley, 1994), 166-69
29. Thomas Wray Grayson, "The Effect of the Modern Immigrant on our Industrial Centers," in Medical Problems of Immigration (Easton, PA, 1913), 103, 107-09
30. I examine how disability has been used to deny citizenship rights to women and minority groups in "Disability and the Justification of Inequality in American History," in Paul Longmore and Lauri Umansky, eds., The New Disability History: American Perspectives (New York, 2001), 33-57
31. Edward Alsworth Ross, The Old World and the New: The Significance of Past and Present Immigration to the American People (New York, 1914), 285-90
32. Disability scholars have emphasized the importance of appearance to the construction of disability. For example, Martin Pernick has described the importance of aesthetics in eugenics literature, how fitness was equated with beauty and disability with ugliness, and Lennard Davis has maintained that disability presents itself "through two main modalities - function and appearance." Martin Pernick, The Black Stork: Eugenics and the Death of 'Defective' Babies in American Medicine and Motion Pictures Since 1915 (New York, 1996) 60-71
33. Lennard Davis, Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body (London, 1995), 11-12
34. See also Harlan Hahn, "Antidiscrimination Laws and Social Research on Disability: The Minority Group Perspective," Behavioral Sciences and the Law 14(1996): 54
35. One of the first to point out the distorting effects of this omission on our understanding of history was Paul Longmore, in two review essays in the 1980s: "The Life of Randolph Bourne and the Need for a History of Disabled People," Reviews in American History 13 (December 1985): 581-87
36. and "Uncovering the Hidden History of Disabled People," Reviews in American History 15 (September 1987): 355-64
37. Longmore and David Goldberger also demonstrated the importance of disability in the history of the Great Depression and the New Deal in "The League of the Physically Handicapped and the Great Depression: A Case Study in the New Disability History," Journal of American History 87 (December 2000): 888-922
38. A recent corrective to the lack of attention given to disability among war veterans is David A. Gerber, ed., Disabled Veterans in History (Ann Arbor, MI, 2000)
39. For a review of recent work on disability in history, see Catherine J. Kudlick, "Disability History: Why We Need Another 'Other'," The American Historical Review 108 (June 2003): 763-93