Budget cuts threaten 'Ellis Island of the West'

Posted 5m ago

ANGEL ISLAND STATE PARK, Calif. (AP) — Schoolchildren crowd into the barracks of this former immigration station, poring over poems of sadness and longing carved into the walls by the million-plus immigrants who passed through the "Ellis Island of the West" decades ago.
Some of their ancestors were among the mostly Chinese immigrants detained on this island in San Francisco Bay.

Back in their classroom, these fourth-graders will do some writing of their own, joining ethnic groups, outdoor enthusiasts and educators in petitioning Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to spare Angel Island from a proposal that 220 state parks be closed because of California's $24.3 billion budget deficit.

Shuttering the parks at the end of summer would cut $70 million through the end of the fiscal year next June. Keeping them closed through the following fiscal year would save $143.4 million more.

Angel Island's dingy barracks, reopened four months ago after a $15 million facelift, tell a lesser-known side of American immigration history than its Eastern counterpart: the hardship that Chinese newcomers faced at the hands of immigration officials enforcing race-based laws.

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"The government was unfair," said Taylor Lim, a serious 10-year-old glancing at the metal bunks, stacked three high, that once held immigrants who included her great-grandfather.

Assemblywoman Noreen Evans, chair of the California State Assembly's Budget Committee, has been hearing from the public about the impact of proposed cuts to parks.

"The governor keeps asking this rhetorical question: what is the alternative?" she said. "We can close some on certain days, reduce hours, increase fees ... There are alternatives."

Angel Island's operational costs — a $900,000 yearly allocation, largely made up by annual revenues of about $725,000 — are just one line in a budget the governor wants to see by June 15.

Advocates say the immigration station represents a chapter in history that is finally being recognized and that the state cannot afford to close.

"Can you imagine recommending Ellis Island be closed? That was our Plymouth rock, for our history as an ethnic American group," said historian Judy Yung. "It would mean a part of our past is being closed to us."

Yung picnicked on Angel Island as a high school student, unaware her father had been detained there for a month in 1921. Like many others, after his release he never discussed Angel Island, said Yung.

The facility was closed in 1940. The rickety buildings were going to be torn down in the 1970s to make way for recreational space when a park ranger spotted the poetry engraved on the walls. Decades later, placards display translations of some of the approximately 200 poems left behind.

"Even if it is built of jade, it has turned into a cage," one detainee wrote in Cantonese on the once-green wooden walls of the building.

While Ellis Island, in New York Harbor, processed 12 million most European immigrants, the nationalities passing through Angel Island included White Russians fleeing civil war, Jews taking the Eastern route out of Europe before WWII, and tens of thousands of Japanese picture brides joining their husbands.

But the majority were Chinese, and they were subject to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, held for weeks and months while their cases were appealed.

Next year will be the station's 100th anniversary. Closing it now would be unconscionable, said Eddie Wong, director of the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation.

Waiting to speak before the Budget Committee, Wong carried letters from supporters.

"For years, the history of what happened at Angel Island remained a secret — it was not taught in schools — it wasn't even discussed by Angel Island immigrants with their own families," Katherine Toy, of San Francisco, wrote to the governor. Her extended family passed through the island.

"Please don't let this important story be silenced," she wrote.

Some former detainees are working to share their stories with younger generations.

As a seven-year-old, Li Keng Wong was separated from her mother and two sisters and questioned during their five-day stay in 1933. All four made it, settling in tiny living quarters behind her father's gambling business in Oakland's Chinatown. To Li Keng Wong, now 83, closing Angel Island would be a personal blow.

"I am so sad," she said. "What does that mean? All the work we have put in, millions of dollars used to restore it, what's going to happen to this place?"

Said Park Superintendent Dave Matthews: "We have no control over what will happen. We will continue to serve the public and protect the park until we are asked not to do so."

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