In this time of vilification of undocumented immigrants, it’s worth examining, from a legal point of view, the immigration stories of my grandfather and great uncle.

They were born in Zambrow, a town in the northeast section of present day Poland. My grandfather, his parents’ eldest child, was born in 1899. The area was ruled by Russia until Poland declared its independence in 1918, following the end of World War I. The next year, war broke out between Poland and the Soviet Union over the borders of these newly established countries. The Poles drafted my grandfather into their army. But my grandfather’s identity was as a Jew, not as a Polish citizen. He didn’t want to risk his life for a cause in which he felt no stake. Besides, the Polish army’s mistreatment of Jewish soldiers was notorious. And so, while posted near the Polish-German border, he went AWOL, smuggling himself across the porous Polish-Germany border. (The border itself was in dispute until October, 1921.)

Thus began his first experience living as an undocumented immigrant.

He was far from the only undocumented person living in Germany in the early 1920s. Many people fled westward from the Soviet Union because they opposed to or were accused of being disloyal to its communist government. In addition, Jews from Poland and Ukraine fled to Germany as a result of the wave of pogroms after World War I.

Germany was a relatively safe destination for refugees. Its government, known as the Weimar Republic, was saddled with reparation payments demanded under the Treaty of Versailles and struggling to rebuild its economy following the devastation of World War I. It therefore lacked the resources to effectively police its borders, let alone track down and expel the many undocumented persons living there. (Brinkmann, From green borders to paper walls: Jewish migrants from Eastern Europe in Germany before and after the Great War.) Moreover, there were obstacles to deporting Polish refugees such as my grandfather as many were essentially stateless, lacking passports or travel documents, and Polish authorities were unwilling to recognize them as Polish citizens. Germany was also hesitant to be viewed as abetting the persecution of refugees should they be sent back to places where they would be potentially prosecuted, imprisoned or killed.

To be sure, the possibility of deportation, however remote, existed. In 1919, Germany passed laws that “mandated the detention and deportation of any unwanted foreigner who had been found guilty of a crime, was not regularly employed, or did not have a permanent place of abode.” Undocumented persons could only work in jobs for which no German citizen could be found. Jewish refugees had some additional protection in that Jewish charity organizations could vouch and provide for them if they did not have a permanent residence or a job. Persons like my grandfather could avoid deportation so long as they didn’t commit crimes or were otherwise deemed not to pose “a threat to public peace, order, and security.” (Ibid.)

Like many of his generation, my grandfather chose to live as an undocumented and essentially stateless person rather than risking his life by remaining in his country of birth.

He didn’t intend to stay long in Germany though. As a Zionist, he aimed to live in Palestine. The British ruled Palestine at the time, having been granted a “mandate” from the League of Nations in 1920. While Palestine was not a “state” as such, there were requirements to emigrate there. In June 1921, the British authorities instituted a requirement that Jewish immigrants to Palestine possess a “Palestine Immigration Certificate.”

While the exact legal requirements to immigrate to Palestine shifted during the early years of the mandate, British policy was based on allowing Jewish immigration to those who could aid in economically developing the land. Immigration was guided “according to the conditions and needs of the country,” also referred to as its “absorptive capacity.” However vague this phrases, British policy favored potential immigrants who could prove their economic worth.

The British regulations of 1921 divided potential immigrants to Palestine into three groups: those sponsored and guaranteed by the Zionist Organization; those not sponsored by the Zionist Organization but who possessed assets and would be able to find employment and means of subsistence in Palestine; and family members of Palestine residents with sufficient means. The Mandatory immigration laws limited the number of Jews permitted to enter the country, but they allowed unlimited entry of “‘persons of means,'” defined as a person who had 500 pounds sterling ($2,250) or the equivalent in property (jewelry, goods, tools, etc.) (Alroey, Land of Refuge, p. 122.)

Under these guidelines, my grandfather had little chance of obtaining an immigration certificate. For one, the number of applicants exceeded the number of immigration certificates issued by the Mandatory government. (Ibid.) And although he was young and healthy, he had no special skills other than those acquired while helping his father’s oil extraction business. He had no profession, no guarantee of employment, nor any direct family connections in Palestine. Furthermore, potential immigrants to Palestine were required to produce passports or other forms of identification, and it’s likely that, having fled Poland, he lacked any identification papers.

No one in my family is sure exactly how my grandfather got to Palestine. What we know is that, shortly before he left for Palestine, he met his mother in Berlin. They went to a photography studio to mark this momentous rendezvous, which, sadly, would be the last time they would ever see each other.

The purpose of the meeting was to facilitate my grandfather’s aliyah (migration) to Palestine. As my aunt records in her family history memoir, undoubtedly based on what my grandfather told his family: “His mother Sheindel met him in Germany and gave him money and some falsified papers and documents in order to go to Palestine.” How exactly he got there is unknown, though, later on, when he applied to leave Palestine, he recorded that he had previously travelled on a Spanish passport.

And so, within a span of two years, necessity and ideology had driven my grandfather to twice migrate across porous borders without legal authority.

While in Palestine, he tried to get a visa to immigrate to the United States. His odds of success were long because, by 1924, the U.S. had enacted restrictive immigration laws. Known as the Johnson-Reed Act, the law established quotas based on national origin. The quota capped immigration at two percent of the total number of people of each nationality in the United States as of the 1890 national census. (It also completely excluded immigrants from Asia.) The annual Polish quota was less than 6000. The intent of the law was to keep people like himself–specifically Southern and Eastern Europeans–out of the country.

Moreover, anyone seeking to immigrate to the U.S. had first to obtain a visa. No one could legally enter the United States without a valid immigration visa issued by an American consular officer abroad. Potential immigrants were not even allowed to board ships bound for the U.S. without possessing a valid visa.

For some reason, my grandfather believed his best chance of getting a visa lay with the American consulate in Paris. (Consular officers were authorized to issue visas to eligible applicants, but the number of visas that could be issued by each consulate annually was limited, and no more than 10% of the quota could be given out in any one month.) In 1925, he travelled there, only to be denied, presumably because the quota for that month or year had already been filled. He returned to Palestine, and, in September, 1925, married my grandmother.

But then, in early 1927, a miracle occurred. He somehow obtained a visa. To facilitate his migration to the U.S., he had to obtain permission to leave, as British officials regulated migration to and from Palestine. This document, known as a laissez-passer, could be issued at the discretion of either the British Department of Immigration and Travel or the police office of the district in which the person resided. The permit was valid “only for the journey for which it was issued.”

On March 3, 1927, my grandfather obtained an “Emergency Certificate” to leave Palestine for the United States. It specified that he could leave Palestine “for a single journey in the United States of America within three months.” It also stated that the certificate “was not valid for return to Palestine.”

His decision to leave must have been agonizing. It meant leaving his newlywed, who also happened to be pregnant with their first child. Nor did he have any guarantee that she would be able to get a visa to join him in the United States. Yet he must have believed that the chance of obtaining U.S. citizenship was worth the risk and pain of separation. By immigrating, he could legitimize his legal status and take the first step toward obtaining the security offered by U.S. citizenship. And so, within less than a month of obtaining his visa, he boarded a ship at the port of Jaffa bound for the United States. He arrived at the port of Providence, Rhode Island, on March 30, 1927.

The ship’s manifest shows just how lucky he had been. It lists the names of the ship’s “alien passengers.” It also includes the visa number of these “aliens.” My grandfather’s number was 5923. The 1924 immigration law capped the annual total number of visas to Polish nationals at 5,982, a number that was undoubtedly reached within the first few months of 1927. He had obtained one of the last remaining visas issued to Polish nationals that year.

The visa my grandfather obtained was essentially today’s equivalent of a Green Card. It meant that he could live and work in the U.S. as a legal permanent resident. And so long as he resided in the U.S. for five years, and then passed a test demonstrating some basic knowledge of English and civics, he could petition to become a U.S. citizen. (The interview requirement did not exist until the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act.) He wasted little time after arriving in the U.S. before filing a Declaration of Intention to become a citizen.

Fortunately, his wife and newborn daughter were able to rejoin him the following year. After five years of living in New York, he applied for and was granted U.S. citizenship.

The path from Poland to U.S. citizenship of my grandfather’s younger brother, Shmulke, was even more convoluted. In 1929, he left Poland for Cuba, which he intended to use as a stepping stone to immigrate to the United States. His went to Cuba for two reasons. First, under the quota system, he had little chance of getting a visa. Second, given its proximity to the U.S., Cuba was a perfect destination for getting into the U.S, legally or otherwise. The 1924 immigration law contained an exception for persons living in the Western Hemisphere. Under the law, persons who resided in a Central or South American country for five years could immigrate to the U.S. outside the quota system. (So many Jews arrived to Cuba to facilitate their later immigration that it became known colloquially as “akhsanie Kuba” (hotel Cuba)). To be sure, this loophole was not intended to help persons in Shmulke’s position, but rather to aid growers in the Southwest to hire out laborers from Mexico.

Shmulke apparently did not intend to wait five years in Cuba so that he could immigrate legally. Less than three years after arriving in Cuba, he snuck onto a steamer bound for the U.S. in an attempt to smuggle himself into the country. Unfortunately for him, he was caught, brought before a Cuban court, and fined. That experience, however, did not deter him. Two weeks later, he tried again, stowing himself away on an English freight ship. The freighter arrived in the port of New York on March 2, 1932. As Shmulke later declared in his petition for naturalization, he entered the United States “without immigration inspection,” legalese for illegally entering the U.S. (This information is contained in the immigration file when he applied for U.S. citizenship. Click here for the full story.)

Shmulke’s actions were not unusual for Jews seeking to enter the United States during the era of restrictive immigration. Jews illegally crossed the border into the United States from Mexico, Canada, Cuba and other Central American countries. (Garland, After They Closed the Gates: Jewish Illegal Immigration to the United States, 1921-1965.) As my grandfather’s story demonstrates, “by the time the United States passed its new immigration laws, there was already a well established tradition of Jews crossing national borders illegally” (Id., at pp. 92-92). An entire network of smugglers existed to help Jews as well as non-Jews enter the U.S. “without immigration inspection.” European Jews had normalized the illicit crossing of national borders. “Buying and selling on the black market, smuggling, assuming fake identities, and obtaining forged papers were, particularly in the chaos that followed World War I, facts of life” (Id, pp. 130-131).

My grandfather may well have aided Shmulke’s illegal immigration scheme. As Garland notes, “Family members in the United States . . . were often intimately involved with their relatives’ illegal immigration, even if they themselves had entered the country legally. They put up capital for the trip, corroborated fraudulent stories when necessary, and provided homes and other means of support for immigrants once they entered the United States” (Id., p. 146). Not surprisingly, Shmulke came to live with him immediately upon arriving in the U.S.

Once in the U.S., Shmulke began to build a path toward citizenship. Step one in this effort was to marry a U.S. citizen. While in Cuba, he met a fellow Polish Jew, Eva Richman, who had obtained citizenship as a minor when her father naturalized. About a year after landing in New York, Shmulke travelled to Los Angeles, where Eva and her family had moved. They married there on October 21, 1933.

We can only speculate whether this marriage was based on love, or to facilitate Shmulke’s path to citizenship, or, in all likelihood, some combination of both. Their first child, Judith, was born on December 7, 1934. Judith became a U.S. citizen by virtue of being born in the U.S. The 14th Amendment states that “all person born . . . in the United States are citizens,” and no court has ever held that this clear language depends on whether a child’s parents are legal residents of the U.S.

Shmulke benefitted from a change in the law that took place just ten years before he married Eva. Between 1907 and 1922, under the Expatriation Act of 1907, wives acquired their husband’s nationality upon marriage, so if a female citizen married a non-citizen, she acquired the citizenship status of her husband. In other words, a woman could be stripped of her U.S. citizenship if she married a non-citizen. The Cable Act of 1922 changed the law to give women the right of independent citizenship, so long as their husband was eligible for citizenship. Even as an undocumented immigrant, Shmulke, as a European, was legally “eligible for citizenship,” as opposed to, for example, Asians, who at the time were not considered eligible for citizenship. (Shockingly, full naturalization rights for Asians did not occur until the Immigration and Nationality Acts of 1952.)

Having married an American citizen, Shmulke faced little risk of being deported. It seems that, in the 1930s, immigration officials were not actively targeting undocumented immigrants for deportation. Unless, that is, they were Mexicans. During the 1930s, the U.S. carried out a massive expulsion campaign against Mexican immigrants, including those who had become U.S. citizens, on the supposed grounds that the presence of Mexicans was party responsible for the country’s economic depression. By the end of the 1930s, in what became known as the “Mexican Repatriation,” an estimated two million Mexicans–many if not most U.S. citizens–were deported or coerced to leave the country.

Shmulke’s next step toward citizenship was to change his status from “illegal” to legal immigrant. Compared to our times, that task in the 1930s was relatively easy.

To become a citizen, an undocumented person has to first become a “permanent resident.” The process of changing one’s status is termed “adjustment of status.” Currently, this process is governed by section 245(i) of the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1994. It essentially involves either being sponsored by a U.S. citizen spouse or by an employer; it can also be based on certain humanitarian grounds such as the right of asylum. The complexity of the process is readily apparent from a cursory examination of the 24 page I-485 form, “Application to Register Permanent Residence or Adjust Status.” Not only is the process not easy, it’s also not cheap. The cost of filing such an application is currently $1440.

In the 1930s, adjusting one’s status was much easier and cheaper. At that time, no specific legislation existed. It appears that the policy of the U.S. was to allow undocumented persons to become legal permanent residents since many of them worked in the U.S., paid taxes and had established families. One source explains that “[p]rior to the enactment of section 245, an alien could acquire permanent resident status if he was in the United States even though there was no record of his lawful admission for permanent residence. The alien was required to show that he had resided in the United States for a relatively long period of time. Hence, on approval by the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service), a permanent record would be created. Also, an alien who was found to be deportable could apply for and receive adjustment of status to that of a permanent resident.”

In other words, even though Shumulke was legally subject to deportation, he could apply for an adjustment of status without fear of being deported. While the granting of an adjustment of status application was a matter of discretion, Shmulke could point to the facts that he was married to a U.S. citizen, had a child who was an American citizen and was employed. Moreover, the cost of filing for a change of status was, at that time, only $1.

Before he applied for a change of status, his wife filed a “beneficiary petition,” whereby a citizen petitions for the legalization of status of his or her spouse on the grounds that the citizen spouse would suffer extreme hardship without the presence of the non-citizen. Shmulke’s wife, his visa application indicates, filed such a petition, which was granted in 1936.

Fortunately for Shmulke, a change in U.S. policy in 1935 allowed him to present his case for adjustment of status without leaving the United States. In that year, the INS established a system of “pre-examination” whereby an undocumented person could have his or her admissibility determined before leaving the United States. “If found qualified to immigrate, and unless evidence adverse to the alien were subsequently discovered, the alien was guaranteed readmission to the United States, at least to resume his prior status, after a brief and relatively inexpensive visit to an American consular office in Canada. The procedure was enormously popular, since it eliminated the anxiety of possible exclusion if an immigrant visa was denied, as well as the cost of travel to the alien’s home country. Between 1935 and 1950 INS adjudicated over 45,000 pre-examination cases.”

Shmulke went about presenting his case with diligence, marshaling all the evidence he could in his favor.

He procured a letter–translated from Polish to English–attesting to the lawful life he had led before leaving Poland.

He got letters of reference from his various employers in New York, where he worked as a shoemaker.

In addition, he had to demonstrate that the name he had adopted in the United States, Sam Waxman, and his birth name, Shmuel Wierzbowicz, were one and the same person. He submitted declarations from his cousin and brother-in-law to this effect. In his own declaration, Shmulke noted that he had not changed his name for any nefarious purpose, but rather because “of the fact that Americans found it difficult to spell and pronounce Szmul Zelko Wierzbowicz, and your deponent therefore uses the name Sam Waxman for simplification in spelling and pronunciation both in business and social circles, and your deponent did not alter his name to Sam Waxman to conceal his identity.”

Finally, Shmulke had to address his previous conviction in Cuba and illegal entry into the United States. Shmulke recounted his attempts to smuggle himself into the United States. Putting the most positive spin he could on the matter, he declared: “That your deponent was only arrested once in his entire life, that being in February, 1932, in Havana, Cuba, for attempting to smuggle his way onto a freighter to the United States without proper and legal documents and for which offense your deponent was fined by the Cuban authorities, 31 Cuban dollars. That your deponent’s conduct during his entire life otherwise, has been of an exemplary character.” He even submitted a letter from the New York City Police Department attesting to his good character.

Having submitted his evidence during “pre-examination,” Shmulke undoubtedly hoped that he would be granted permanent residence status outside the quota system, since the quota for Polish nationals was severely limited. It seems that persons married to U.S. citizens could be admitted as so-called “non quota” immigrants. But that was not to be, and he was required to apply as a “quota immigrant.” Even so, because he was married to a U.S. citizen, he had, under section 6(a)(1) of Immigration Act of 1924, priority over those without a connection to the U.S (“In the issuance of immigration visas to quota immigrants preference shall be given to a quota immigrant who is . . . the husband . . . of a citizen of the United States who is 21 years of age or over.”).

Of course, this meant that Shmulke’s visa under the quota system would come at the expense of another Polish national who could not obtain a visa. We will never know who that person was, but it is worth contemplating that cases such as his meant that Poles desperate to leave Poland were denied visas, and that within a few years those denials would mean almost certain death.

Shmulke also hoped that his “adjustment of status” could be processed without the necessity of leaving the United States. Section 245(i), which now governs adjustment of status applications, eliminates the requirement that persons in the U.S. illegally leave the country in order to apply for permanent resident status. That was not the case for Shmulke. He would have to leave and then re-enter the United States. However, would not have to return to Poland. He only had to travel to the closest country, Canada. And, it seems, having passed the pre-examination phase, he was guaranteed of re-entry.

Guaranteed, that is, upon one condition. He would have to submit to a medical exam to prove that he was not medically impaired, or, in the words of immigration law, “a threat to public health.”

Shmulke travelled to Montreal on the last week of February, 1937. On February 24, he presented himself at the American consulate and submitted an “application for immigration visa (quota).”

He was examined and, other than a visual impairment, found to be physically fit. (I’m not sure why this examination could not have taken place in the U.S. before he left for Canada.)

On that same momentous day, Shmulke received the document that would ensure his future, a visa to enter the United States as a quota immigrant.

Visa in hand, Shmulke immediately boarded a train, arriving the next day in St. Albans, Vermont. He had successfully legalized his status in the U.S. Four years later, he obtained his U.S. citizenship.

My grandfather and great uncle left Poland as young single men. They sensed the danger of the world around them and felt that making a home for themselves in the United States would be their best guarantee of a secure future for themselves and the families they hoped to build. They knew that in an era of growing nativism and immigration restriction, they might have to cut some legal corners to realize their dreams. To be sure, as White Europeans, they enjoyed some advantages over others such as Asians and Mexicans. Their journeys to U.S. citizenship involved a combination of determination, luck and an appreciation of how and when to use immigration law to their advantage. They both made choices about when to follow immigration laws and when to try to get around them. In the end, they succeeded in obtaining U.S. citizenship only because, at some points, they were willing not to be constrained by strict adherence to immigration law.

The stress and uncertainties years of living as undocumented persons must have taken an toll on both men. Both of them died young, neither making it past their 60s. As my aunt wrote about my grandfather, his experiences as an undocumented person left him scared to be in crowded places. “He used to tell us,” she records, “that he got into the habit that whenever he saw a crowd, no matter what the reason he would turn and go the other way.”

Not very different than the experiences of undocumented persons in our times.