BY Kamala Kelkar
PBS - September 16, 2017
After Israel Bosak’s tailor shop was destroyed in 1906 in an outbreak
of violence against Jewish people in Russia, he fled to America with a
respectable $65, more money than most immigrants brought at the time.
But the U.S. government criticized Bosak for his small physique,
claiming he would not be an asset to the workforce, and sent him back.
It was one of many racially-tinged institutional practices that
empowered immigration officials to deny people of certain ethnicities or
appearances — often people from South and Eastern Europe who were not
considered “purely” white — by speculating about their ability to work.
People with “poor physiques,” which was often said of Jewish immigrants,
were “illy adapted” and would procreate “defectives,” a letter from a
commissioner had warned the immigration and labor departments that year.
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