Immigration Stories
Marilyn Go
Since retiring from the federal bench, Marilyn Go has pursued her interest in redistricting and voting rights as a member of the New York City Districting Commission, the Justice and Civic Engagement Committee of ClassAct HR '73 and two Asian Pacific American voting rights organizations.
I served as a United States Magistrate Judge for over twenty-five years in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York (EDNY) in Brooklyn. Created under an Act enacted on February 25, 1865, the EDNY was the last court that President Abraham Lincoln established.
One of the most coveted duties of EDNY judges was, and still is, administering the oath of citizenship to new Americans in naturalization ceremonies. The Ceremonial Courtroom where proceedings are conducted has walls adorned by giant murals that Edward Laning painted as part of a series entitled "The Role of the Immigrant in the Industrial Development of America." Commissioned during the depression by the Works Progress Administration for Ellis Island, the murals depict immigrants "engaged in building railroads, farming, mining and beginning their lives in America."
Like the workers captured in Laning's paintings, the new citizens naturalized in the EDNY come from all corners of the world, ready to leave the Court House to continue the efforts to build America. With joyful faces and great enthusiasm, they give life to the phrase "We the People" – for it is The People who give substance to American "democracy," a term with origins in ancient Greek from demos ("people") and kratos (rule).
In 2015, as part of the Court's celebration of its sesquicentennial, judges of the EDNY shared stories of when they or their forebears first immigrated to the United States. Like new naturalized citizens in the EDNY, the judges or their relatives emigrated from many different places: Antigua, Austria, Belarus, China, Czechoslovakia, England, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Lithuania, Russia, Ireland, Japan, the Philippines, Poland, Puerto Rico, and elsewhere.
One judge had ancestors who arrived in the late 1700s, coming from England shortly after our nation had been formed and long before creation of the EDNY. One judge had great-grandparents who emigrated from Italy and Ireland to settle in Richmond, Virginia, with one great-grandfather serving in the Union Army during the Civil War, an act that may have been dangerous for anyone then residing in Richmond. A number of judges are second or third generation Americans – i.e., judges whose parents were born abroad and immigrated to America or whose grandparents were the first to come to the United States. Some judges are first generation Americans, as am I.
I emigrated to America with my parents when I was almost six. I was fortunate compared to many of the immigrant parents or grandparents of judges who were children when they came to America. Like most other new immigrants, they had to begin working despite their age. One judge's father came with his mother through Ellis Island at age nine and began working 10 hours a day selling fruit and vegetables from a street cart. A grandmother of another judge was 14 when arriving with her family in the U.S. She worked in a sweatshop in Manhattan making ladies’ garments during the day and went to school at night to learn English.
The grandfather of another judge came to America alone when 16 and knew little English. He worked at many different jobs (including delivering milk), but was able to save and eventually pay the way for his parents and all nine siblings to join him. Another judge's grandfather supported his family first by operating a bar, but when Prohibition was passed, opened up a laundry.
The immigration stories of the EDNY judges are the stories of all immigrants coming to America. Some came to escape poverty while others were fleeing religious persecution or political upheaval. Some simply wanted a better life. Whatever the reasons for leaving their homelands, people coming to America held the same dreams of having a better life for themselves and their families. America is a nation of immigrants and what better example than the stories of judges of the EDNY!. That is what democracy is all about – when a ten year old boy selling fruit in the streets of New York would one day have a son who would become a judge.
Immigration is an important component of American democracy and has often demonstrated that rule by The People will not inevitably be rule by the wealthy or already powerful or the well connected. However, as we know so well today, immigrants are convenient political targets, as they have been. One hundred years ago, Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1924, which was intended to limit immigration from eastern and southern Europe, and essentially stopped almost all immigration from Asia. This was but one of many discriminatory immigration acts. The Chinese had already been barred from immigrating to the U.S. with the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. Until the repeal of the Exclusion Act seventy years later, Asians living in the United States were subject to state and federal anti-Asian laws prohibiting them from being naturalized as citizens or from owning land under various Alien Land Laws. The Immigration Act of 1952 (the Walter-McCarran Act) repealed the prior exclusionary immigration laws and permitted people from Asia to immigrate to the United States. One judge whose Japanese grandparents had emigrated to the U.S. in 1902 could finally become citizens. However, the 1952 Act put into place a national origins quota system which effectively limiting the number of Asians immigrants to around 1,000 people annually, less than 3% of the total number of immigrants.
Finally, in 1965, the Immigration and Nationality Act was passed and amended immigration laws to favor family reunification, employment needs and refugees. When signing this Act, President Lyndon Johnson stated that the Act supports entry of “those who can contribute most to this country – to its growth, to its strength, to its spirit.” Irrespective of the intended goal of the Act, there is little doubt that immigrants who have come to the United States in the past have contributed greatly to our country.
