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Steltek | 25 days ago

There were only two requirements at Ellis Island:

1. You were free of contagious medical diseases

2. You were not in danger of "becoming a public charge" (welfare)

That plan is perfectly compatible with your concerns.

discuss

order

roenxi|24 days ago

It isn't quite that simple though - you're saying the standard is something like no danger of being a net welfare recipient. Apreche said he saw "no reason that becoming a citizen today should be any more difficult today than it was in the early 20th century".

Those are different. The standard of not being likely to be a welfare recipient is a much higher standard than what was around in the early 20th century. The US federal minimum wage came in in 1933 [0] for example following work that started in the 1910s. Ellis Island migration was completely finished fairly soon after that in the 1950s after what seems to be a wind-down period [1]. I don't know my US immigration history of when they started reviewing migration in relation to welfare but it'd be a complex question and it isn't obvious that the standards that were traditionally used on Ellis Island would even guarantee that the people migrating were skilled enough to be allowed to work in the modern era.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_the_United_Sta...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellis_Island