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(*Note*: This will all be added to the Ellis Island page mostly under the Immigrant Inspection Station section. More to be added.)

Immigration through Ellis Island and Disability

Immigration to the United States during the period of Ellis Island (1892-1954) saw over 25 million potential immigrants. Many of these people hailed from Europe, with Eastern Europe and Southern European immigration being the primary groups. During this time period, eugenic ideals gained broad popularity and made heavy impact on immigration to the United States by way of exclusion of disabled and "morally defective" people. These attributes of defect would become associated with certain racial/national normalities and give power to a movement of creating a racially superior America via the reproduction of "old stock" white Americans due to their membership to the "Nordic race" (a form of white supremacy).

Statistics

^{Between 1891 and 1930, Ellis Island reviewed over 25 million attempted immigrations. Of this 25 million, 700,000 were given certificates of disability or disease and of these 79,000 were barred from entry.[1] Approximately 4.4% of immigrants between 1909 and 1930 were classified as disabled or diseased per with 11% being deported when this number spiked to 8.0% in the years of 1918-1919. 1% of immigrants were deported yearly due to medical causes.[2]}

Eugenics Influence

Eugenicists of the late 19th and early 20th century held the belief that reproductive selection should be carried out by the state as a collective decision. For many eugenicists, this was considered a patriotic duty as they held an interest in creating a greater national race. Henry Fairfield Osborn's opening words to the New York Evening Journal in 1911 were, "As a biologist as well as a patriot...," on the subject on advocating for tighter inspections of immigrants of the United States.

Eugenic selection occurred on two distinguishable levels:

• State/Local levels which handles institutionalization and sterilization of those considered defective as well as the education of the public, marriage laws, and social pressures such a fitter family and better baby contests.
• Immigration control, the screening of immigrants for defects, was notably supported by Harry Laughlin, superintendent of the Eugenics Record Office from 1910 to 1939, who stated that this was where the "federal government must cooperate."

At the time, it was a broadly popular idea that immigration policies had ought to be based off eugenics principles in order to help create a "superior race" in America. To do this, defective persons needed to be screened for my immigration officials and denied entry on the basis of their disability.

Types of Defects often screened for:

• Physical: people who had hereditary or acquired physical disability. These included sickness and disease, deformity, lack of limbs, being abnormally tall or short, "feminization", etc.
• Mental: people to showed signs and/or history of mental illness and intellectual disability. These included "feeblemindedness", "imbecility", depression, and other illnesses that stemmed from the brain such as epilepsy and cerebral palsy.
• Moral: people who had "moral defects" at the time were, but not limited to: homosexuals and those of "illicit sexuality", criminals, impoverished, and other groups associated with degeneracy that deviated from the considered "norm" or American society at the time.

The people with moral and/or mental disability were of higher concern to officials and under the law, mandatorily excluded from immigrating to the United States. Persons with physical disability were under higher inspection and could be turned way on the basis of their disability. Much of this came in part of the eugenicist belief that defects were hereditary, espically those of the moral and mental nature those these were often outwardly signified by physical deformity as well.

In 1898, a Chicago surgeon named Eugene S. Talbot(Eugene Solomon) wrote "crime is hereditary, a tendency which is, in most cases, associated with bodily defects." Likewise, George Lydston, a medicine and criminal anthropology professor, argued further in 1906 that people with "defective physique" were not just criminally associated but that defectiveness was a primary factor "in the causation of crime."

1924 Immigration Act (on 1924 immigration act page)

The 1924 Immigration Act was a federal law designed to cut the number of immigrants into the United States to 2% of the number of people already within the country according to the United States census.

People who supported the 1924 Immigration Act often used eugenics as justification for restriction of certain races or ethnicities of people in order to prevent the spread of feeblemindedness in American society.^[13] In order to filter "fit" immigrants, in 1907 the Binet intelligence test was administered and found 40-50% of people attempting to enter the United States as "feebleminded".

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[1] Wilson, “No Defectives Need Apply.”

[2] Amy L. Fairchild, Science at the Borders : Immigrant Medical Inspection and the Shaping of the Modern Industrial Labor Force.