Europe Didn’t Send Their Best Either
My great-grandfather’s excitement would have been palpable. Such a long journey, and now it was nearly over. He was almost there, just a few yards from entering the United States — his new country.
His heart would have been pounding in anticipation of what lay ahead: a new life of opportunity for him and the family he would send for as soon as he found work and saved a little money. Soon, the misery that had marked their existence back home would be only a faded memory.
Just a few more feet.
A few more minutes.
But it was not to be. Not this time.
Not for Jacob Wise and his shipmates, all of whom were about to learn a lesson about the limitations of America’s promise as a land of fresh starts and boundless opportunity.
For as it turns out, Jacob’s boat arrived just a few days after the death of William McKinley, the nation’s 25th President, who had been shot eight days prior to that by Leon Czolgosz, the son of Eastern European immigrants. Immigrants, as it happens, from that exact part of Eastern Europe from which Jacob hailed. Caught up in a momentary wave of bigotry against those of his regional heritage, Jacob and the rest would be turned around at the port of entry, denied the right to disembark, and sent back.
Back to Russia whence they came. One can easily imagine that as the time ticked by, during the agonizingly slow return to the home he thought he had left for good, Jacob must have wondered if he would ever again get the chance to make right on his promises to his family.
He would of course, but it would take several more years. Six to be precise, until he could save up enough money to strike out again, hoping this time to make it past those who had seen themselves fit to exclude anyone who resembled, or sounded like, or were from the same part of the world as Jacob. To illegalize them, if only for a while.
And that, as much as anything, provides the most important answer to the question so commonly asked during the current immigration debate.
