Vincent Cannato, a historian at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, did not want his publisher to use the definite article in the subtitle, because “THE History of Ellis Island” sounded immodest. For once, however, the publicity pushers were right. American Passages is an exceptionally fine combination of vivid social history and careful policy analysis, as good a volume on the most visible symbol of American immigration history as you will find.

Cannato’s “biography . . . of a place” avoids being either prosecutorial or nostalgic as it “looks at how actual people created, interpreted, and executed immigration laws” in New York Harbor, with most attention given to the years between Ellis Island’s 1892 opening and the 1924 legislation that imposed exclusionary quotas. As Cannato points out, “few Americans argued for a completely open door to all immigrants and few argued for their complete exclusion. . . . [The] debate took place between the proverbial forty-yard lines of American political life.”

Between 1892 and 1924, most immigrants walked right through Ellis Island. Of more than 12 million would-be immigrants, most from Southern and Eastern Europe, fewer than 2 percent were turned away. Cannato argues that this is more “regulation” than “restriction” and adds that “the impulse behind immigration control was the same impulse that banned child labor, regulated railroads and monopolies,” and drove other Progressive Era reforms.

The regulations, although supposedly “scientific” and “objective” (and warped by racial, ethnic and class prejudice), actually gave commissioners such as William Williams and Robert Watchorn considerable latitude, for despite political pressures it was they who decided whether the wayfarers parked on America’s doorstep were “likely to become a public charge,” guilty of “moral turpitude, or fit into other undesirable categories. One of the book’s strongest suits is Cannato’s creative combing of federal files to find lively and appropriate examples of how they made their decisions.

With the “golden door” open only a crack between 1924 and 1965, Ellis Island was dedicated to other purposes — such as housing enemy aliens during World War II — and allowed to deteriorate, before being turned over to the National Park Service and eventually turned into a museum. Now, with immigration again at high tide, Ellis Island has become something of a national icon, “The New Plymouth Rock,” and still serves as a frequent reference point for advocates on both sides of today’s immigration debate.

Cannato demurs: “Studying Ellis Island’s history provides little ammunition for those who wish either stricter or more lenient immigration laws.” But the resemblance between our own time, when 12 percent of Americans are foreign-born, and the 20th century’s first decade, when it was more than 15 percent, means that Ellis Island will continue to be a touchstone. Cannato’s book, which dispels myths of all sorts and honors the past by complicating it, should at least help make the debate a more informed one.

Luther_Spoehr@Brown.edu