Immigration

Help Save Access to Historical Immigration Records: Take Action with RecordsNotRevenue.com

2008 Press Release announcing USCIS Genealogy Program

Researchers with an interest in immigration and naturalization might be familiar with US Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS, formerly the Immigration and Naturalization Service, INS) and the Genealogy Program launched back in 2008. What might be less well known was the reason for the creation of the program, which was to provide “a dedicated queue for genealogists, historians and others seeking genealogical and historical records and reference services that generally require no FOIA expertise. As a result, USCIS will provide more timely responses to requests for records of deceased individuals.”

While response times ebbed and flowed during the first decade of the Genealogy Program’s operation, today’s reality demonstrates anything but a timely response. Currently, an Index Search request averages 245 business days for a result. The subsequent Records Request averages an astounding 275 business days to provide record copies.[1] That’s more than two years, start to finish, to obtain records once promised in less than 90 days.[2] Worryingly, more and more people receive correspondence telling them their file cannot be located. Some correspondence to Genealogy Program customers shows their files received extensive FOIA review, exactly what the creation of the program sought to avoid.

Trendline Graph demonstrating near-exponential wait times to receive historical record information from USCIS Genealogy Program

Now (January 2023) USCIS proposes changes to the fees for the Genealogy Program, as well as changes to the operational structure of the program. USCIS claims the need for enormous fee hikes reflects the cost to operate the Genealogy Program. It also claims the structural changes “might” improve the wait time to receive records, but only if records have been “previously digitized.”[3]

What the proposed fee hikes will do, if adopted, is certain: make access to historical immigration records unaffordable to most Americans. What the proposed structural changes will do, if adopted, is certain: mislead customers to think that they might receive all the records with one payment of $100. The reality, though, is that only one of the five document types serviced by the Genealogy Program is fully digitized.[4]

Back in 2020, USCIS promised to “transfer more files to NARA [National Archives] in the near future,” [5] yet only a small number of non-historic A-files have transitioned to NARA custody. Many historic files remain inaccessible on warehouse shelves because USCIS’ management of its historic records is quite simply, a mess. Over decades, USCIS put fixing this problem in the “too hard bucket” and now it expects customers to pay the price – up to 269% more than current fees.

These records should be at the National Archives, but it’s not as simple as calling in moving trucks. USCIS seems unwilling or unable to provide NARA the finding aids and index for the records in a usable format.[6] USCIS cannot simply dump records at NARA’s doorstep and expect NARA to fix the problem USCIS created. The resulting stalemate means it is virtually impossible to access records of 20^th century immigration.

Speak out! RecordsNotRevenue.com provides all the details on issues of access, efficiency and transparency with the USCIS proposed rule. RecordsNotRevenue.com has suggestions on how to craft a comment, and shows you the steps to take. Join RecordsNotRevenue.com in telling USCIS to get their records management act together. Ask USCIS to present to the public a real plan to fix the two-year (plus!) backlog. Expect USCIS to coordinate with NARA to create a plan to transition these historical records in a manner that makes them serviceable to the public.

The comment period ends 6 March 2023. Visit RecordsNotRevenue.com and take action today!

Illustration explaining the proposed new fees and wait times for the USCIS Genealogy Program — *This graphic illustrates the future if we don’t stop the proposed changes to the USCIS Genealogy Program*.

[1] https://www.uscis.gov/records/genealogy/genealogical-records-help/request-status, last updated 28 Dec 2022; accessed 9 February 2023.

[2] https://www.uscis.gov/records/genealogy/genealogical-records-help/record-requests-frequently-asked-questions, accessed 9 February 2023.

[3] https://www.recordsnotrevenue.com/take-action

[4] The digitized series, known as Alien Registration forms (AR-2), came into use in 1940. Some Certificate files (C-files) are digitized. All other documents – A-files, Visa Files and Registry Files – would be subject to the $240 per document fee.

[5] U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Fee Schedule and Changes to Certain Other Immigration Benefit Request Requirements, published 3 Aug 2020. https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2020-16389/p-830, accessed 6 January 2023.

[6] https://www.archives.gov/records-mgmt/accessioning/finding-aid.html, accessed 9 February 2023; and MiDAS System schedule N1-566-06-002, see item 1(b). After the initial transfer, the NARA copy was supposed to receive periodic updates.

[7] The full text of the mission statement of the National Archives: https://www.archives.gov/about/info/mission, accessed 10 Feb 2023.

The Eastern European Mutt is going to…

…nowhere! Once again, I’m going nowhere. But I will be speaking at 42^nd IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy, August 21-25, 2022.

Check out my live panel presentation, The Future of USCIS Records: The Problem is More than High Fees, with Alec Ferretti and Marian Smith, taking place on 24 August from 5:15pm – 6:15pm EDT.

We will discuss what led to this moment of limited access to historical immigration records and the unclear future regarding preservation. Genealogists and genealogy societies play a vital role in influencing Federal records management and participants will come away with new information and key action steps targeting both the USCIS Genealogy Program and the National Archives.

I also have an on-demand talk, The Alphabet Soup of Naturalization Records: Meet the P-File. This session introduces researchers of 20^th Century immigration to the Petition File, a document that exists (or once existed) for immigrants who started the naturalization process between 27 September 1906 and early 1950. P-files, created by US Naturalization Examiners for every Petition for Naturalization filed, can provide a good deal of information on the applicant, sometimes information available nowhere else. These files, accessible only via a complicated FOIA request, are in the custody of USCIS, and scheduled for destruction in 2050.

These sessions are available to all conference attendees. The live panel will also be available as part of the conference recording package.

Will I see you online?

The Eastern European Mutt is going to…

…nowhere! I’m going nowhere. But will be speaking at 41^st IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy, August 1-5, 2021. Check out my live panel presentation, Know Your USCIS Records, with Rich Venezia and Marian Smith, taking place on 3 August from 11:15am – 1:30pm EDT.

The two-hour panel session will introduce researchers to Certificate Files (C-Files), Visa Files and Registry Files, Alien Registration Forms and A-files. We will work to untangle the misinformation and misunderstanding surrounding the records created by US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and its predecessor, the Immigration and Naturalization Service. The session will help participants understand the fee-based USCIS Genealogy Program, what might be found duplicated in court records, and what might be at the National Archives. We’ll discuss the content of the records, value to genealogical research, and unclear status regarding preservation and future researcher access. Despite the interest in these records, and advocacy for them, future access to USCIS records remains in jeopardy if the community does not continue to work to protect the records.

I also have an on-demand talk, Three is Not the Magic Number: Better Ways to Add Up Evidence and Improve Analysis. Finding three examples of a piece of information equals a fact is a genealogy myth. This presentation breaks apart the notion of three, and replaces it with using documents to learn definitions of primary and secondary information, original and derivative source documents, and direct and indirect evidence – all part of using the Evidence Analysis Process Map to weigh and analyze the evidence before making a conclusion.

Examples of how the “rule of three” can result in incorrect conclusions will be discussed in case studies, which will also help participants understand how to build research plans, equaling better research, better conclusions and fewer genealogy “do-overs.” The records discussed in this presentation will focus on those easily available for a newer researcher: vital records (birth, marriage, death), headstones, Census records, immigration and naturalization records, Social Security number applications, and military draft cards.

Will I see you online?

USCIS Wants to Hear From You! Tell Them “Give us the Records”

US Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) currently holds millions of records that should be accessible from the National Archives. The USCIS Genealogy Program, begun with the best of intentions, no longer functions, resulting in a difficult, time-consuming and very expensive process for genealogists, historians and everyday researchers to access immigration records of the late 19^th and 20^th century.

Previously, we fought back on the USCIS proposal to hike fees to access the records. Now, USCIS wants to hear from the public to identify barriers between their services and our satisfaction. The window of opportunity to tell USCIS about all the problems with the Genealogy Program closes on 19 May 2021.

Effective comments require specific feedback. Comments must address one or more of the 17 questions posed by USCIS. Comments must include reference to the Code of Federal Regulations. This sounds difficult, but it isn’t. The team at Records, Not Revenue (of which I am a part) outlined three steps to help you provide effective comments on the USCIS Genealogy Program.

If you are ready to take action now, click here. Remember, the deadline is 19 May 2021

If you want to know a bit more, continue reading….

USCIS focuses on citizenship and immigration services. Before it was USCIS, it was the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), and before that, the Bureau of Immigration. These agencies created heaps and heaps of records that provide important and interesting details on our ancestors’ lives.

The Genealogy Program at USCIS, created to help genealogists, historians and researchers access these old records, no longer effectively services the records nor the community. In fact, historical records and records management are not mentioned in the USCIS Mission Statement, nor is the Genealogy Program, historic records or records management listed in the USCIS Core Values.

Anyone who tries to order records from the USCIS Genealogy Program knows that the program currently exists as an afterthought, a burden, as illustrated in this info graphic

I experienced this process while working to obtain files on my grandfather. I submitted an index request, and then had to submit a FOIA request, after paying for the index search. Then, I received the documents, poorly scanned, redacted and delivered on obsolete technology. This is just one example of the challenges researchers face in obtaining the records.

The home for historic records is the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). USCIS has signed legal agreements to transfer many of their historic records and accompanying index to NARA, but has so far failed to uphold these agreements.

There is a solution: USCIS must transfer the historic records (and accompanying index) of our ancestors, as they are legally bound, and do it without further delay. The records that are not subject to transfer and are open for research must be serviced by trained professionals who understand the complicated history of the agency and the records under its care.

Take action now. Submit comments on the USCIS Genealogy Program. The deadline is 19 May 2021. Share this information with friends, researchers, librarians, historians, genealogy societies and your elected officials. Don’t let USCIS hold our history hostage.

The Persistence of Myth

Your family’s name was not changed at Ellis Island. And yet, again and again, the response to that factual statement is a retort of “well, in my family it was.” I understand. No one wants to call their grandparent a liar.

Grandpa said his grandpa was called Schwartz and now our name is Black. It was changed at Ellis Island.
Grandma said our name was Weiss and now it’s White. They were given that name on color day at Ellis Island.

I’ll tell you what is black and white – records. The documents have the facts, which are not always the same as the oral history. Previously, I documented the evolution of the surname on my paternal side. Let’s break down the myth again looking at my maternal line.

Growing up, I was told that this document was my great-grandfather’s steamship ticket – in reality it is an inspection card. The inspection card, issued to immigrants and steerage passengers, was filled out in Southampton, England. It bears the stamp of the US Consulate in Southampton.[1] 1904 Gotcher inspection card

This little card provides multiple points for cross-referencing:

the ticket number (upper right – 20600)
the ship and date of departure
last residence
page of the ship manifest (stamped “AA”)
number on the page AA of the ship manifest (5)

and, of course, the name in the center – Solomon Gotcher. That’s not his signature. This was filled out for him. How do I know it’s not his signature? Other documents required his signature, such as his Declaration of Intention to become a US citizen.[2]

1917 Dec of Int sig

But this signature says “Solomon Ketcher” not “Solomon Gotcher.” How did the name change happen?

A look at the ship manifest[3] shows a mirror of the inspection card. Solomon Gotcher appears on sheet AA, line 5, with the ticket number 20600 penciled in. That’s not his signature, either.

1904 Gotcher St Paul Manifest

How did Solomon get from Gotcher to Ketcher? Well, it was more of a return. In February of 1904, Solomon married in Daugavpils, Latvia.[4] The surname, written in Cyrillic, Кацерь, is underlined. It transliterates to “Katsher,” which is pretty close to Ketcher. And it has nothing to do with Ellis Island, or baseball.

1904 Dvinsk marriage

Resources on Inspection Cards:

More resources on name changes that never happened:

[1] A faded stamp to the right shows he passed inspection in New York.

[2] US District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, Declaration of Intentions. Vol 40 p365, 1917 Solomon Ketcher, Declaration 18469, citing St Louis County Library Film 68, FHL Film 1749653.

[3] New York Passenger Arrival Lists (Ellis Island), 1892-1924, database with images, FamilySearch, Roll 473, vol 928-929, 2 Jul 1904-5 Jul 1904; citing NARA publications T715 and M237.

[4] Latvijas Valsts Vēstures Arhīvs, Rīga. Latvijas Ebreju Rabinātu Metriku Grāmatas. Fond 5054, Apraksts 2, Lieta 276, page 15, entry 35.

I Heard It on NPR

Renee at NPR sized

https://www.npr.org/player/embed/791414961/791414962

Access to historical records is essential to any researcher, family historian or genealogist. Looking at records gives us information, but some records also give us the little details that bring personality and character to someone we might only know on paper.

The USCIS Genealogy Program maintains records on our immigrant ancestors – millions of people, millions of stories – trapped behind a paywall that might skyrocket if their proposed fees are put into place.

I joined David Greene, host of NPR’s Morning Edition, to talk about the USCIS Genealogy Program and why we must fight the fee hike and work to have these historic records transferred to the National Archives.

The deadline to post a comment to USCIS is 30 December 2019. Learn more and take action at RecordsNotRevenue.com.

Records, Not Revenue

In a past career life, I coordinated diverse groups of non-profits and ran advocacy campaigns, harnessing their collective voice for positive change. When I departed the political sphere, I never thought that I’d return to those roots in order to help keep historical records accessible.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Genealogy Program, keeper of some of the most essential records on 20^th century immigrants, has proposed a 492 percent increase in the fees required to search their index and obtain historical records held under their purview. Many of these records should already be publicly accessible. USCIS is essentially holding them hostage, demanding individuals pay exorbitant fees to access documents of our immigrant ancestors. USCIS Genealogy Program Fee Hikes final v4

If approved, fees to access records will start at $240 and could cost up to $625 for a single file. The fees are even more inexplicable when USCIS refers the majority of genealogy record requests to their Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) program for processing. If these requests are FOIA requests, researchers should not be paying any fees other than standard FOIA fees.

Everyone should care about the issues involved, even if your research does not include these records. What can be done to one type of records can be done to others. You do not need to be a US resident nor citizen to submit a public comment. Any interested party can make their voice heard.

You can make a difference. Make your voice heard in 3 easy steps:

Step 1: Review the proposed rule here, and jump to the Genealogy Program section here. There’s a summary available at RecordsNotRevenue.com

Step 2: Write your comments, addressing the issues listed here or any issue you think is important. Be sure to mention the Genealogy Program. See these conversation starters for thoughts on how to begin.

Step 3: Send your comments BEFORE 30 DECEMBER 2019 to

- Federal Rulemaking Portal and refer to DHS Docket No. USCIS-2019-0010 and follow instructions for submitting comments on the Genealogy Program; and
- Send a copy of your comments to your US Senators and Representative, and refer to DHS Docket No. USCIS-2019-0010. Tell them you care about preserving access to federal records!

Amplify your voice! Please share this with genealogical societies, historical societies, and every family historian and researcher you know!

The Eastern European Mutt is going to…

…Cleveland! I’ll be speaking at the 39th IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy, July 28 – August 2, 2019.*

My talk, titled Why Cleveland? Finding Answers in the Industrial Removal Office Records starts with the question many of us ask. Why did our immigrant ancestor chose to live in Cleveland over Pittsburgh? Little Rock over Los Angeles? Memphis over Miami? The answers might lie in the records of the Industrial Removal Office, a scary name for a good organization. The IRO, founded in 1901, assisted immigrants in finding employment and better living conditions, and helped assimilate them into American society. IRO agents, often working in partnership with B’nai B’rith or other Jewish fraternal groups, spread around the USA securing jobs, and then immigrants would be sent to those locations to establish a new life.

The session will examine the records of the IRO, housed at the American Jewish Historical Society, including ledger books, case files and correspondence, as well as reports by local agents on the newly settled immigrants. Using case studies, the presentation will demonstrate how to use the online index, and how to navigate to find immigrant case files, correspondence, and reports. The talk builds off a previous blog post, New York Minute.

I’ll also have a few minutes during the LatviaSIG meeting to speak about the records of the U.S. Consulate in Riga, housed at the National Archives in College Park.

Will I see you in Cleveland? Early Bird Registration ends 30 April 2019.

Of St. Louis and Bread Memories

I was born in St. Louis. My parents are from St. Louis – born, raised, married there. My great-grandparents chose St. Louis when they immigrated, some arriving in the 1890s, and all settled there by 1908.

My bread memories of St. Louis don’t have bagels in them. My bread memories are of oblong sourdough rye loaves, in a thick coat of crispy cornmeal. Tzitzel bread made by Pratzel’s, a bakery founded in 1913.[1] After we moved away from St. Louis, we’d return home from a visit with a trunk full of rye bread, thinking it might somehow be enough to last until the next trip.

1962 Carl 2 Cents Plain Post Card cropped 2 My family also knows a few things about the delis of St. Louis. My dad’s uncle Louis and cousins Jack, Charlie and Bill ran delis. Not just delis, famous St. Louis delis. Delis with pastrami, corned beef and barrels of dill pickles. Delis with tradition.

When the story of “bread-sliced bagels” as a St. Louis “tradition” broke the news cycle this week, I thought about Jack and Bill. In their retired years, I got to know Jack and his brother Bill a little bit. They aided me in the oral history of the Carl family, and Jack, in particular, seemed like an encyclopedia of St. Louis, lost when he died in 2015. I wondered what would happen if someone walked into Carl’s Deli and asked for a “bread-sliced bagel.” Bill, always putting the customer first, would have obliged, but would have wondered why. If the same order happened at Jack’s 2¢ Plain, Jack, the Soup Nazi long before there was a Soup Nazi, would have berated the customer.

Where did this “tradition” come from? Was it really a St. Louis thing? Panera’s parents were a Boston-bred cookie company, founded in 1980, and the St. Louis Bread Company, founded in 1987. Their union resulted in Panera’s birth in the 1990s. Panera is a millennial. It’s not a St. Louis tradition.[2]

Cities change. 2¢ Plain is gone now. Bill sold Carl’s Deli to an employee, and you can still get a real pastrami sandwich there. After baking tzitzel bread for nearly 100 years, Pratzel’s closed. We mourned the loss of the beloved bread, but a few years later, my cousin Melissa discovered that Mike Pratzel, of the St. Louis Pratzel’s, had a bakery in Madison, Wisconsin, and made tzitzel bread with the same sourdough starter that began his family’s bread legacy. With the magic that is overnight delivery, we can order tzitzel bread from Manna Bakery in Madison. Maybe next time I’ll ask them to cut it like a bagel.

[1] http://www.losttables.com/pratzels/pratzels.htm accessed 28 March 2019

[2] https://www.panerabread.com/en-us/company/about-panera/our-history.html accessed 28 March 2019

The Name Change Myth

2016 was the year of Fake News. Let’s make 2017 the year that one of those fake stories finally goes away.

Your family’s surname was not changed at Ellis Island.[1]

You know the story. It goes something like this:

Carl? That’s not Russian.
The clerk at Ellis Island named your family after his son.
It was “German Day” at Ellis Island and that’s how your ancestors were called Carl.
The name was too long and ended in –sky or –itz or something and the clerk shortened it to make it easier to write.

There are hundreds of variations of this story. None of them are true.

Nope. No. Nein. Nem. Nu. Nie. Нет. קיין .
[2]

Language plays an important role in this myth. Many of the people who purport the story of the name change have ancestors who emigrated from a country that used a different alphabet, or had different letters, or used diacritical marks to distinguish pronunciation. An immigrant from the Russian Empire might know how to spell their surname using Cyrillic or Hebrew letters, and that name had to be transliterated into the Latin alphabet. A Pole with the letter Ł in a name would expect a “W” sound, not “L.” Umlauts and other diacritic marks from German, Hungarian, Czech and other languages do not neatly transliterate.

The creation of the ship’s manifests, or passenger lists, took place in Europe. The clerk was at the ticket agency. A copy of that list was sent with the ship’s captain to be presented at the port of entry. Sometimes a copy of that list remained at the port of embarkation.

On 29 May 1900, the Lake Huron set sail for North America from Liverpool, bound for the Port of Quebec in Montreal. An “Outwards Passenger List” was cre 1900-jankel-karol-border-crossing ated, and kept in England. A similar version of the list went with the ship, and can be found in the Library Archives Canada collections. Both lists have the same version of the surname of an immigrant from Russia: KAROL.

Wait. Montreal? That raises another big factor in the myth. Did the family arrive at Ellis Island? What about its precursor, Castle Garden? Or Montreal? Or Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New Orleans or Galveston?

The final destination of this passenger was Boston, not Montreal, so another list is associated with the travel – on a form required by the US Government. Called a List or Manifest of Alien Immigrants for the Commissioner of Immigration, it too, was created prior to arrival. The fine print on the document illustrates that point:

Required by the regulations of the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, under Act of Congress approved March 3, 1893, to be delivered to the Commissioner of Immigration by the Commanding officer of any vessel having such passengers on board upon arrival at….

In this case, the list was used when the passengers prepared to cross the border from Canada to the United States. Again, the surname of the passenger was spelled KAROL.

After a few years of living with his sister-in-law’s family in Boston, this immigrant moved to St. Louis. He earned enough money to pay for the passage of his wife and children. They boarded the Pennsylvania in Hamburg and traveled to the Port of New York, arriving at Ellis Island on 22 Jan 1905. The surname on the manifest read CARROL. 1905-jankel-carrol

I can hear the myth-lovers: “that’s it – it was Irish day at Ellis Island, and that is why they changed KAROL to CARROL.”

No. Nope. Nein. Nem. Nu. Nie. Нет. קיין. Or as the Irish might say, Ní féidir.

Like the UK Outwards Passenger List, immigrants leaving from Hamburg were noted on passenger lists; lists stored at the Staatsarchiv Hamburg in Germany. The Hamburg lists match the Ellis Island passenger manifest, surname spelled CARROL.

Sometime between arriving in Boston in 1900 and moving to St. Louis about 1904, Jankel KAROL changed the spelling of his name to Jankel CARROL. When he purchased the steamship tickets for his family, the manifest listed his name and address as: Jankel CARROL, 814 Biddle Street in St. Louis, nearly an exact match to the listing in the City Directory for Jacob CARROL at 814 Biddle Street. Jankel is the Yiddish nickname for Yaacov, the Hebrew version of Jacob. It’s not just surnames that change as families Americanized.

The surname CARROL changed one additional time, to CARL, before 1910, in St. Louis, some 950 miles from Ellis Island. Why? That cannot be answered. Som 1911-jacob-carl-petition-for-naturalization e educated guesses could be made, but those guesses become stories, and those stories run the danger of feeding the myth.

Let’s recap:

Passenger lists and manifests were created by ticket agents in Europe;
Alphabets and pronunciation play a role in spelling;
Some ports of departure kept copies of passenger lists and the names from those lists match the names on lists at the port of entry; and
Not all immigrants arrived at Ellis Island!

Still not convinced? Here are some additional resources discussing the myth of the Ellis Island name change:

Why Your Family Name Was Not Changed at Ellis Island (and One That Was)
Philip Sutton, Librarian, New York Public Library

American Names: Declaring Independence and Examples of Name Changes from the National Archives
Marian L. Smith, Senior Historian, U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service

The Name Remains the Same
Robin Meltzer, Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington

[1]If only Snopes was on the case.
[2] English slang, Italian & Spanish, German, Hungarian, Romanian, Polish, Russian, Yiddish.