Until 1890, each state had
jurisdiction over admitting immigrants. Ports of entry were five main
cities:
New York Castle Island served as
the port for New York City 1830-1892; thereafter Ellis Island served port
of entry (1892- 1954); Boston (customs passenger lists through 1899); Boston
(customs passenger lists through 1899); Philadelphia (customs passenger lists
through 1899); Baltimore (customs passenger lists through 1891); and New
Orleans. through 1902)
Ellis Island, NY
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Approximately, 40 percent of all
current U.S. citizens can trace at least one of their ancestors to Ellis
Island.
There were also several minor
ports, e.g. Mobile, Al., Bath, Me., and Galveston, TX.
Shortly after the U.S. Civil War,
some states started to pass their own immigration laws, which prompted the U.S.
Supreme Court to rule in 1875 that immigration was a federal responsibility.
Chy Lung v. Freeman (92 U.S. 275, 1875)
However, the states continued to
pass legislation on immigration entry. The Immigration Act of 1891, however,
stopped all state incursions into immigration matters. Legislation authorized
the Office of the Superintendent of Immigration (Treasury Department),
responsible for processing immigrants.
At the beginning of the 20th
century the Hamburg Shipping Lines (Hapag) built an emigrant's "city"
in Veddel, in the port area, as a refuge. It could accommodate 5,000 people
awaiting departure of their ships. It included a kosher canteen and a
synagogue.
In Russia’s larger Jewish
communities, assistance agencies arose in response to the enormous emigration.
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In
1891 in London by Baron M. Hirsch of London, has an idea that Jews should become
agriculturalists, something denied
in
Europe. Accordingly he established a society to benefit of those who
wished to take up work in agriculture. He and the
Russian
government agreed to relocate Jews up to 3,250,000 Jews emigrating over a 25-year
time period.
Baron
Hirsch also sponsored sixteen agricultural development in the United States,
of which Woodbine, NJ was a successful.
In 1907, the Jewish Territorial Society established in Warsaw. This society was a break-off of the Zionist movement. It wanted to relocate European Jews wherever they would be accepted; not exclusively Palestine. However, it closed its doors the very next year, although the organization, itself, continued to exist.
Jewish Emigration Society - Russia
The Jewish Emigration Society, 1909 operated from Kiev, with numerous offices in other centers of the Russian Empire. Its mission was regulation of Jewish emigration to redirect Jews outside the overpopulated large cites, (New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston and Chicago) to the southern and southwestern states of North America, where there seemed to be more economic opportunity.
It
assisted the Jewish emigrant from departure from Russia to establishing
his new location in another country to the extent that they no longer
need assistance.
Supported
by well-to-do Jews, one of their experiments was immigration to
Galveston, Texas. A middling success, in 1909 (773); 1910 (2,500); 1911;
(1,400). By 1913, the threatened competition to nativists and the ‘strange’
religious rituals Jews exacted political retribution from the Texan communities.
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http://www.rtrfoundation.org/kiev-1.html
When the Jewish refugees arrived in
America, The Hebrew
Emigrant Aid Society (HEAS),
heavily supported by Jacob
Schiff, provided shelter on Ward
Island in the New York
harbor and Greenpoint, in Brooklyn.
See Sacher, p. 128
Initially, the Jewish agencies in
Hamburg, Berlin, Antwerp and London supplied immigrant needs. However, the flow
developed into a torrent.
The constant flow of Jewish immigrants
from Russia gave birth to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) in 1881. An
international organization, HIAS rescues, relocates, relocates families through
resettlement.
HIAS officially started in 1881 as
the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society – HIAS. Operating out of New York, it provided
shelter for immigrants disembarking from Castle Garden, up to the opening of Ellis
Island in 1892.
The Society helped immigrants find
employment in New
York and New Jersey and established agricultural colonies in
other states to provide land on which they could settle.
HIAS advocated for those Jews who
were initially screened out of the immigration process, arguing before the
Boards of Special Enquiry to prevent deportations. It lent needy Jews the $25
landing fee, and obtained bonds for others guaranteeing their employable
status.
The Society also searched for
relatives of detained immigrants in order to secure the necessary affidavits of
support to guarantee that the new arrivals would not become public charges, the
lack of which detained the immigrants.
Many of the Jews traveling in
steerage refused the non-kosher food and came to the U.S. in weakened condition. To
correct this, in 1911, the Society installed a kosher kitchen on Ellis Island.
In 1909, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid
Society merged with the Hebrew Sheltering House Association and became
universally known as HIAS. By 1914, HIAS had branches in Baltimore, Philadelphia,
Boston, and an
office in Washington, D.C.
Every community had a different
story. In the case of Eishyshok in Belarus, near the Ukraine, an 1895 fire the
dwellings and markets to which the Rothschild’s, both the Vienna and Parisian
branches of the Rothschild family helped to restore the village. (James Mayer de Rothschild (1792–1868), in
Paris and Salomon Mayer Rothschild (1774–1855)
in Vienna.
Seeing outside help, the town fathers asked for additional help when the larger
portion of Jews wanted to escape the persecution that the Russian government
imposed. See Yaffia Elliach
There were also local organizations
such as Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society, founded in 1879. In Trenton, there
was the Hebrew Mutual Aid Society, the Jewish Sheltering Home and the Hebrew
Free Loan Society, among others.
It is remarkable that only, while
the total figure was that 26% of immigrants to U.S. retuned; for Jews, 7%. See
James
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0001_0_00834.html; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIAS
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