Kelly: Ellis Island visitors wrestle with Trump's order

Michelle Ritz went to Ellis Island on Monday, carrying a name from the past.

It was her grandfather’s — a man named Nader, who journeyed to America from Syria in the early 1900s, then changed his name to hide his ethnicity in the hope of blending in more comfortably in his new homeland. He wouldn’t be seen as a Syrian. He would be another American. 

But as Ritz stepped off the ferry after a 10-minute ride from Jersey City to the island that symbolizes America’s immigrant legacy, she also stepped into a nasty debate about how the nation that gave a home to her grandfather is now rethinking how open its doors should be, highlighted by President Trump’s order to block the entry of migrants from seven nations, including Syria.

“If my grandfather tried to come today,” said Ritz, “he would not be allowed into America.”

Ellis Island, which was the doorway for some 12 million immigrants from 1892 to 1954, still offers many lessons, especially now, following Trump’s immigration and refugee crackdown, which sparked scores of protests over the weekend.

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For many of those immigrants, Ellis Island was a welcome pathway into what many immigrants saw as a golden life in America — a haven for “huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” as poet Emma Lazarus wrote in her famous tribute to migrants on the plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty that looms nearby.

For others, however, Ellis Island was a painful place that rejected immigrants because they were too sick, lacked proper documentation or were deemed too dangerous.  

Ritz, 28, who grew up in Erie, Pennsylvania, and now works as a clerk in a Teaneck hotel, knows that larger, disjointed and often messy history.  But her own journey was far more personal: a mission to locate a piece of her own family’s history, which she found in the Ellis Island immigrant database of names.

That she arrived for this personal search amid a raucous national debate over America’s immigration legacy — and what it now means in an age of global terrorism — was not lost on her.

“It hurts to know that people have become so discriminatory that they feel that America, the melting pot, is no longer melting and we’re not allowing the ingredients that comprise what America is,” Ritz said. “It’s changing who we are.”

Civil rights groups and immigrant advocates reacted swiftly with harsh criticism. Conservatives, however, cheered, calling Trump’s action a much-needed remedy to curtail the possibility of terrorism that has bloodied Europe from reaching the U.S. It was as if the already divided nation had yet another excuse to remain divided.

On Ellis Island, however, many visitors saw these sudden — and deep — divisions as a painful reminder that America is still wrestling with its identity.

“America likes to say it is a nation of immigrants — and we are,” said Michelle Pouliot, 20, a college student visiting from Rhode Island. “We also are a nation of refugees and slaves and Native Americans, too.”

Pouliot’s own ancestry is mixed with a variety of ethnic heritages.

Her grandfather came to Rhode Island before World War II as an undocumented immigrant from Quebec, Canada. “He just walked over the border,” Pouliot said.

Her grandfather applied for citizenship so he could serve in the Navy during World War II. From there, however, the family became a tossed salad of ethnic groups, including Italians, Spanish, Portuguese and Native Americans.

But on Monday, Pouliot was able to locate the name of her great-grandfather on her mother’s side of the family in the Ellis Island immigrant data base — a brief reference that Antonio Cannavo, then only 21, arrived on Ellis Island from Limini, Sicily, in 1911 as a 21-year-old. 

“Now I know when he came,” Pouliot said.

That basic confirmation — knowing where a grandparent or other relative came from — is one of the social and psychological magnets of Ellis Island. For many, however, it is also the core of America’s immigration history as a place that stitched together pieces of the world into a larger, national quilt. Where did the grandparents come from? When did they arrive? What was their arrival like?

Tim O’Keefe, 77, of Santa Clara, California, already knows how his family fits into that quilt. His father came through Ellis Island before World War I, arriving from Cork, Ireland, then changing the spelling of the family’s name from “O’Keeffe” to the more common “O’Keefe.”

Such changes were common for many immigrants — as Michelle Ritz discovered about her Syrian grandfather who took the name “Elias” as a way to not only blend into the American fabric but also enlist in the Army during World War I.  

As O’Keefe, 77, retired as a college history professor, sat in the Great Hall of the Ellis Island main immigration building on Monday — a hall where immigrants were often sorted out — he said the latest decisions by Trump are something of a political hammer-blow to the nation’s legacy of welcoming a variety of ethnic groups.

“Trump is making a mockery of one of the great strengths of our nation,” O’Keefe said. “We’re so used to having a mixture in society. We don’t all look the same. Coming here, it makes you understand the nature of the country.”

But O’Keefe’s wife, Julia, 71, a retired sixth-grade teacher, said Trump’s order — and the unexpected nature of how it was issued — has upended that uniquely American sense as a nation of many backgrounds.

“I think Trump would like to have chaos,” she said.

That sense that the national fabric is unraveling is also not lost on non-citizens. 

Maria Belhassan, 26, who came from Morocco on a student visa to study for a master's degree in business administration, said Trump’s latest order makes her uneasy.

“It doesn’t feel safe here,” Belhassan said, as she sat on a bench across the great hall from O’Keefe. “What is happening to America? I don’t know how to describe it.”

For other visitors, though, America — and especially at Ellis Island — is still a place that evokes hope.

It was midafternoon when Ana Ferreira, 33, stood with her husband, Andre Alves, 35, by a large window in the Great Hall and looked across the choppy harbor toward the Statue of Liberty. The golden sun had begun is final descent toward the horizon, and the statue gleamed as if it was a reminder of the nation’s immigrant ideals — however flawed.

Ferreira and Alves were both born in Portugal. But, in search of jobs, they immigrated to Ireland and now work as technicians for Apple Corp.

"We’re immigrants to another country,” Ferreira quipped. “And we work for an American multinational corporation in another country.”

It was a reminder of how complex and diverse the world has become since Ellis Island was a beacon of immigration. And to Ferreira, it was also a reminder that something positive may yet emerge from the angry debate now spreading across America.

“I have to believe that good things will happen,” she said.

She turned toward the window — and the Statue of Liberty beyond. She smiled.

“We came here today,” she said, “and we learned all about the American Dream.”

Email: Kellym@northjersey.com; Twitter: @MikeKellyColumn

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