MIGRANT HEALTH SCREENING

Author C.A. Collins explores migrant arrivals into the United States not only to Ellis Island but Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay. The latter of which has a very interesting history, more often than not that Port of Entry is overlooked.

By the late 1800's global conflicts and the industrial revolution fueled immigration to the United States. The lion's share of migrants sought a better life in America, those arriving with contagious diseases would not doomed to be returned home; the medical team at Ellis Island did a marvelous job to screen in an era of vastly less diagnostic tools and take the appropriate action.

The opening of the New York Subway system was hailed by its residents and visitors alike. A marvelous re-cycling of the tons and tons of earth generated by construction. Sent by barges to Ellis Island - the soil became re-claimed land tripling the original size of the island, on which the entire hospital complex sat. That changes the lives of many, and save many more. An entire building devoted to isolation wards of infected migrant arrivals.

Ellis Island opened up a few years after the Haymarket Riots in 1886, most seeking better working conditions and pay. However, in the mix were anarchists who sought to overthrow the capitalist system in America, a number from the moment they arrived on US soil. The threat from anarchist was vastly more daunting to screen migrants upon arrival than medical maladies.

As a new century dawned Umberto I, King of Italy of the House of Savoy was assassinated by Italian Gaetano Besci on July 29, 1900. Besci had immigrated to America in his late twenties and became involved with other Italian anarchists in Patterson, New Jersey. With their help, Besci returned Italy to assassinate Umberto. That event inspired recluse and anarchist Polish American Leon Czolgosz to assassinate President William McKinley who died on September 14, 1901 from an infection of his gunshot wounds. Three years before McKinley's assassination Senator Henry Cabot Lodge published The Great Peril of Unrestricted Immigration in 1898.

Fast forward one century and two decades later there are countless comparisons with Covid-19. Many valuable lessons to chart ahead to the "New Normal" whatever that may turn out to be.

Migrant Screening is part of a set of three titles:

Century of Discord and Amnesty to Atrocity

Dettagli