By the Associated Press
New York, June 30—Eleven thousand immigrants from 42 countries tonight impatiently waited on 24 lines in Gravesend Bay for the race into quarantine and admittance to the United States. Scores of aliens who leaned over the ships’ rails gazing wistfully at the shores of America are doomed in disappointment as several quotas will be filled by noon tomorrow.
A score more liners are facing across the Atlantic with other thousands of hopeful immigrants who just returned to the Near East and ?? after spending the savings of a lifetime on the 5,000 mile trip., Each of two ships which arrived today from Greece had more than enough passengers to fill the quota for that country. All passengers on the ship that comes inside will have to be returned.
The allotments for two continents, Asia and Africa, and six countries, Greece, Palestine, Turkey, Syria, Memel and Albania, will be filled by noon officials said and people who have traveled all the way here from their distant homes will have to be returned without setting foot on the mainland.
Twenty per cent of the quota from each country will be accepted during each of the first five months. After that, if the annual quota has been filled, no more may enter until next July. Many of those who will be excluded tomorrow and sent back, will find, by the time they are ready to try again, that their country’s allotment has been filled for the year and will be forced to wait until next July.
Eight thousand of the incoming aliens are steerage passengers.
How these 8,000 will be cared for is still a matter of conjecture, immigration officials asserting today that the largest number that could possibly be squeezed into the government buildings on Ellis Island was 2,000.
Hundreds of other aliens are traveling first and second class, and these will be passed on and allowed to enter first, as they are not forced to go to Ellis Island. This will greatly reduce the number of third class passengers allowed to enter.
The authorities are doing their utmost, according to Deputy Commissioner Uhl, but the lack of sufficient clerks and inspectors will greatly retard the work of admitting the aliens. Major Henry H. Curran, who will take over the post of commissioner tomorrow, on the departure of Commissioner Tod, who recently resigned, said today that every effort would be made to provide comforts for the immigrants, but that facilities were sadly inadequate.
. . . (words obscured) liners spaced along the imaginary line in Gravesend Battery beyond which they may not pass with aliens before midnight. Of the 43 nationalities on the quota list, only one, Ireland, will not be represented tomorrow. All the others, from Great Britian with an annual quota of more than 77,000, down to Flume, with a quota of 71, have citizens on the ships now down the bay.
Reports from Canada stated today that a large number of aliens are massing along the border, ready to step across at midnight. This also will cut the number in New York.
The Greek quota will be the most quicky exhausted, as it allows for only 659, and the liner King Alexander, which arrived this morning from Greece, carries almost 1,700.
From the front page of the Durham Morning Herald, Sunday, July 1, 1923
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