Tag: immigration
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Howard A. Knox and intelligence testing on Ellis Island
Carine TabakKansas City, Kansas, United States Between 1892 to 1924, twelve million men, women, and children entered the United States through the Ellis Island Immigration Center, making it the largest health screening facility in the US at the time.1,2 At first, immigrants were inspected to identify medical conditions, but changing economic and political forces shifted…
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The man shackled on 4 Northwest
Andria AlbertTucson, Arizona, United States In one of the patient rooms tucked into the Northwest (NW) wing of the fourth floor of the hospital, there lay a particular man. Upon walking into his room, you would find nothing extraordinary about him. He is young, early thirties, with a head full of curly brown hair and…
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Operation Pedro Pan: Saving Cuban children from communism
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden In 1959, lawyer and revolutionary Fidel Castro (1926–2016) overthrew the corrupt, US-supported government of Fulgencio Batista, the dictator of Cuba. Castro promised reforms and democracy. However, early in his regime, members of the Batista government were executed after pro forma trials. Businesses were nationalized in 1960, and the following year, all private…
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A birth remembered
F. Gonzalez-CrussiChicago, Illinois, United States Memory is to old age as presbyopia (far-sightedness) is to eyesight. Presbyopia makes you lose the ability to see clearly at a normal near working distance while maintaining a sharp distant vision. Just so the elderly recollect in painstaking detail what happened to them fifty or sixty years ago, yet…
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History repeated: child abuse in the United States
Joseph deBettencourt Chicago, Illinois, United States U.S. Border Patrol agents conduct intake of illegal border crossers at the Central Processing Center in McAllen, Texas, Sunday, June 17, 2018. Q: Did you see any place for this child to sleep in? A: No, Sir, except in one corner. The child told me she slept up…
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Ellis Island Hospital, from quarantine to freedom
Annabelle S. SlingerlandLeiden, the Netherlands The recent news and concerns about immigration into Europe and other parts of the world bring to mind similar events and fears prevailing in the years during which millions of people immigrated into the United States of America. During that period, under the benevolent gaze of the Statue of Liberty…