464 



The Journal of Heredity 



directly upon the moral, social and 

 financial condition of the alien and 

 his past history in rej^ard to these 

 conditions, or in other words, to coin 

 an expression, his "immigration status; " 

 and the medical portion, which concerns 

 itself entirely with the mental and 

 physical condition of the immigrant. 



Quoting from Section 2 of the Act of 

 February 20, 1907, as amended by the Acts of 

 March 26, 1910, and March 4, 1913, "the fol- 

 lowing classes of aliens shall be excluded from 

 admission into the United States: . . . Pau- 

 pers; persons likely to become a public charge; 

 professional beggars, . . . persons who have 

 been convicted of or admit having committed 

 a felony or other crime or misdemeanor involv- 

 ing moral tuqjitude; polygamists, or persons 

 who admit their belief in the practice of 

 polygamy; anarchists, or persons who believe 

 in or advocate the overthrow by force or 

 violence of the Government of the United 

 States, or of all government, or of all forms of 

 law, or the assassination of public officials; 

 prostitutes, or women or girls coming into the 

 United States for the purpose of prostitution 

 or for any other immoral purjjose; persons 

 who are sujjported by, or receive in whole or 

 in part the jiroceeds of prostitution; persons 

 who procure or attempt to l)ring in prostitutes 

 or women or girls for the i)urpose of prostitu- 

 tion or for any other immoral purj)osc; persons 

 hereinafter called contract laborers who have 

 been induced or solicited to migrate to this 

 country by offers or promises of employment 

 or in consequence of agreements, oral, written 

 or printed, expressed or implied, to perform 

 labor in this country of any kind, skilled or 

 unskilled; those who have l)cen, within one 

 year from the date of application for admission 

 to the United States, deported as having been 

 induced or solicited to migrate as above 

 described; any person whose ticket or passage 

 is paid for with the money of another, or who 

 is assisted by others to come, unless it is 

 affirmatively and satisfactorily shown that 

 such person does not belong to one of the fore- 

 going excluded classes and that said ticket or 

 passage was not paid for by any corjjoration, 

 assfjciation, society, municipality, or foreign 

 government, either directly or indirectly; all 

 children under 16 years of age unaccompanied 

 by one or both of their parents, at the discre- 

 tion of the Secretary of Labor or under such 

 regulations as he may from time to time pre- 

 scribe: Provided, That nothing in this Act 

 shall exclude, if otherwise admissible, persons 

 convicted of an (offense purely polilital, not 

 involving moral turpitude: Provided further, 

 That the provisions of this section relating to 

 the payments for tickets or jiassage by any 

 corporation, association, society, municipality, 

 or foreign government shall not ajjjjly to the 

 tickets or passage of aliens in immediate and 

 continuous transit through the United States 

 to foreign contiguous territory; and provided 

 further. That skilled labor may l)e imported if 

 labor of like kind unemployed cannot be found 



in the country: And provided further. That 

 the provisions of this law ai^plicable to con- 

 tract labor shall not be held to exclude pro- 

 fessional actors, artists, lecturers, singers, 

 ministers of any religious denomination, pro- 

 fessors for colleges or seminaries, persons 

 belonging to any recognized learned profession, 

 or persons employed strictly as personal or 

 domestic servants." 



It will be seen that the portion of the 

 law which has just been quoted relates 

 to what I have called the ' ' immigration 

 status" of the alien. The medical por- 

 tion of the same paragraph of the law 

 reads as follows, "The following classes 

 of aliens shall be excluded from admis- 

 sion into the United States: All idiots, 

 imbeciles, feeble-minded persons, epilep- 

 tics, insane persons, and persons who 

 ha\'e been insane within five years 

 previously, persons who have had two 

 or more attacks of insanity at any time 

 previously; persons likely to become 

 a public charge, persons afflicted with 

 tuberculosis or with a loathsome or 

 dangerous contagious disease; persons 

 not comprehended within any of the 

 foregoing excluded classes who are 

 found to be and arc certified by the 

 examining surgeon as being mentally or 

 physically defective, such mental or 

 physical defect being of a nature which 

 may affect the ability of such alien to 

 earn a living ..." 



In the general apj^lication of these 

 provisions of the law at San Francisco, 

 at which port over 90% of the work of 

 California ports is done, the arriving 

 aliens arc examined as to what I have 

 called their immigration status by 

 Inspectors of the Immigration Service, 

 who are appointed to that ]3osition after 

 civil service examination, and physically 

 by Medical Officers of the United 

 States Public Health Service who are 

 assigned to temjjorary duty as medical 

 advisers to the Commissioner of Immi- 

 gration. 



These men board all incoming pas- 

 senger shijjs from foreign ports im- 

 mediately after the vessel is given 

 jjratique by the quarantine officer and 

 while the immigration officers are busy 

 determining whether or not there arc 

 an\- i)ersons among the passengers who 

 are exemi^t from immigration examina- 

 tion, such as United States citizens, 



