During my trip to the national archives I found at lot of records detailing the way that Immigration services worked back in the day and the procedure in which they processed people. Another aspect that I found out was that the immigration services perspective of an immigrant changed according to nationality or race. Many people I found out were smuggled into the United states from Mexico and were deported back there via the port of San Francisco. I also found out that many aliens went by alias in order to avoid being deported. Most of my time consisted combing through tons of records in a tedious repetition of reading and photographing the records. I eventually worked so hard that I no longer felt hungry. Here is the list of records that I found:
545556/1 -Jitsuyo Akioka – He was deported at the port of San Francisco, and he was a native to Japan- His expenses caused by the deportation were played in full by authorities, and he arrived at at Calexico California
545556/2 Wong Hong- 17 year- He was a Chinese Laborer, and he was arrested as being a public charge No expenses accord via deportation, He entered via Mexico
7338/ 30 years -Chon Hing alias John Moore – He is a Native of Singapore who arrived a San Francisco via Honolulu, but could not be deported right away as he was a subject of Great Britain. There was a plan by the Immigration department for him to be called up for military service in order to be deported His Bond set at $1000 , He originally came via American Hawaiian company, but that was discontinued by the time of his arrest, it was revealed that he deserted the ship Georgian at San Francisco, He also admitted that he had a sister in china and was sending money to her. The records show that the investigation was incomplete but the department deported him anyway, He was eventually deported to China
54558/9 Low Gum Joe – Lom Gum Joe was the son of Low ah form who came to America before the Chinese Exclusion Act – Charges were brought by the department that Low Gum Joe made many trips to china and came back via false or misleading statements , These charges were dropped and Low Gum Joe was let go
54353/502 Hindu – Morchu Singh was arrested and held in bond that was to be extended – noted to have completed all the requirements to reside in the US as a resident alien- A man by Mr. Pierce vouched for him noting all of his qualities, that he was intelligent, he spoke English, and was a excellent and efficient employee . Singh worked for him in Yolo county. It turns out that Singh could not come back when he left in 1918 because Immigration services had changed law to exclude Hindus from India who lived at around a certain latitude , immigration services wrote kindly and courteous tone , and raised him as ideal immigrant – He was let go
Kiyont Sagara arrive in SS Korea Maru- He was interned at Angel Island in order to determine if she had a disease, none found- $500 deposit returned
54353- 596 Johanne Lohmann – He was 47 years old at the time and was imprisoned on Angel island because he was an alien enemy , if found that he was an illegal alien he would be imprisoned at interment camp due to President Proclamation , His Interrogation consisted of questions about how he thought about the Germans and their war effort or if he did any acts of violence against the United States and he was deported. He arrived to the United States in August 30 1915
54352/601 – Conrad Andre 36 years of age – enemy alien – interned at San Francisco- He was as a German Vice consul at Cobu and he was excluded as an Alien enemy. His interrogations included questions about his job.
I was surprised to find out the amount of Chinese that came or were smuggled in from Mexico. I also was surprised to find out that enemy aliens during the First World War were screen and interned if they could not reasonably justify their presence in the United States or if Immigration Services suspected them. I thought that that only happened in the Second World War. A final thing that I found out, while I was combing through the records was that if a person was here legally and was found to be intelligent and sophisticated that the immigration records would praise them and allow them to stay. This was surprising to me as this went against my preconceived notion of Immigration Services as full of racist and nativist officials. This could be beneficial to our project as we could use these examples to prove how biases effected the officials and the process of immigration was at the time. It could also prove that the racist bias against immigrants among the officials of Immigration services only went so far against characteristics of the immigrant.