The Flood of Pauper Immigration

[…] Purpose than to get rid of the expense of maintaining them at home. The United States offers an unusually tempting opportunity to unscrupulous foreign nations of disposing of their surplus population under the most favorable conditions. Besides being the acknowledged asylum for the oppressed, the poor and the liberty loving classes of all countries, the United States has probably the most complete and best organized system of charities of any nation in the world, with the possible exception of England. Until the act of Congress referred to was passed, the United States was absolutely at the mercy of the unscrupulous emigration societies of the Old World. Shipload after shipload of the refuse of European slums, and the very inmates of reformatory institutions, were sent to our ports as a deliberate contribution to our criminal and pauper classes. The evil became so intolerable that Congress could not ignore it longer. The act excluding paupers, lunatics and criminals was passed, and the flood partially stayed.

But the evil is only partially remedied. It appears from the report of the New York State Board of Charities for 1884, that during the year the Board has caused to be returned to Europe [...] persons, of whom [...] were lunatics, imbeciles or feeble minded, and the rest blind, deaf, dumb, or otherwise infirm. We gather from the report that this represents the entire number of paupers returned from New York city, where the duty of enforcing the pauper law seems to have been left entirely to this Board.

When the immense number of emigrants arriving every week at Castle Garden is taken into account, it must be readily seen that so small a number can represent but a portion of the persons belonging to the forbidden class that are landed in New York city. The facilities of the State Board of Charities for apprehending such persons, we surmise, are vastly inadequate, as is frequently the case when the enforcement of a necessary law is left with a charitable or volunteer association of any kind. Furthermore, it would appear that, inadequately as the law is enforced at the port of New York, it is vastly [...]