Ellis and Angel are lovely names, which respectively graced the two main immigrant stations on the East and West coasts that processed millions of immigrants in the first half of the twentieth century. The 12 million immigrants who disembarked on Ellis Island (named after an earlier owner, Mr. Ellis) between 1892 and 1954 entered a country in transition from a laissez-faire economy to a regulated urban industrial nation, hence the double meaning of “passage.” Vincent J. Cannato, a historian at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, has written a balanced book, avoiding both the hypercriticism of condemning Ellis Island as the ultimate product of nativism and the sentimental mystification of the island as the Golden Door. By following the origin of the immigrant station via the whereabouts of its predecessor, Castle Garden, and placing it as a concern on the Progressive agenda, he admirably succeeds in assessing the various positions in the immigration debate. The participants in this debate included the Supreme Court, which banned state regulations in 1875, making immigration a national subject; the humanitarians, who tried to save the new arrivals from the exploits of profit-seeking entrepreneurs; public opinion, which increasingly distrusted the immigrants; and most prominently in this study, the civil servants responsible for executing the policies. If there is an underdeveloped theme in this eloquent book, it is the role of the shipping companies. These were more active partners than this book reveals and that is relevant in the Progressive campaign which tried to balance corporate interests with government supervision. But this is only a minor quibble which does not take away any of the praise this book deserves.

The strength of the book is that it shows how the immigration process actually worked and changed, especially when public opinion became stronger and policies were closely monitored. When public opinion shifted, the pressure to close the open door increased. An outbreak of a contagious disease which affected a large group put immigrants in a dark light and strengthened the clamor for careful selection. Amidst these signs of grave concerns, immigration commissioners kept their heads cool and confirmed that most immigrants came to improve their situation and not to be dependent on welfare. But internal feuds and frauds undermined the trust in their ability to winnow the undesirables. Regular investigations revealed that something was wrong. In times of economic crisis these suspicions fanned new arguments to curtail immigration.

Much of the call for restriction came from Boston, where the elite felt that the gap between their own traditions and the new arrivals was widening. Pride and insecurity prodded anti-immigrant initiatives. This psychological dimension of the restrictionists was not persuasive enough to change the tide, but the growth of the federal government added a number of new causes to fight, such as national security which targeted anarchists and later immigrants from enemy countries.

The protagonists of this book are the civil servants, who were often political appointees. One of the most prominent was Commissioner William Williams, whose dislike of southern Europeans called forth a vocal response from mainly German immigrants. This large group was well organized and lived close by in New York. They were an effective counterweight against the restrictionists. Theodore Roosevelt's appointment of a German Jew, Oscar Straus, as secretary of commerce and labor, whose authority included Ellis Island, revealed this countervailing power. One of the reasons the balance tipped to the restrictionist side was that this powerful immigrant lobby lost its credit during World War I.

The book is an indispensable contribution to immigration history, which has thus far lacked a balanced analysis of this most important physical and symbolic place. It effectively ties the views of potential (and disagreeable) citizens to the growth of a bureaucratic state and ends with the increasingly contradictory expectations of the nation as both guardian of the borders and idealistic place of refuge. After the immigrant quotas and the economic crisis stopped immigration, the facilities were put to use as prison and detention center, underlining the first part of the state's responsibility, which often led (and still leads) to a careless treatment of suspected newcomers.

A similar warning, even more strongly phrased, concludes the book on the “other” immigrant port of entry: Angel Island at San Francisco. What Ellis Island is to many European immigrants, Angel Island is to many Asian ones. The later date and limited volume, half a million entries, put Angel in the shade of Ellis. The authors of this book show a strong commitment to the topic, which is stimulated by their own, often painful, family histories; both, meanwhile, have published studies about Chinese immigrants in the US. The immigrants are at the core of this book, which ends in a warning against the current lack of respect for the legal position and treatment of immigrants.

The West Coast immigration location served a detention purpose from the very beginning. It was a result of the 1882 official ban on Chinese immigrants, especially laborers and prostitutes. This necessitated the building of a detention center to scrutinize the passengers. Since migration and trade with the Far East were closely connected at the West Coast, this part allows a more careful weighing of racial and economic causes of restriction policies, in addition to nationality and gender as factors leading to different treatment of newcomers. The claim that the immigrants arriving via Angel Island were more diverse than on Ellis Island is not substantiated and dwells too heavily upon contrasting the stories of humiliation at Angel Island with the celebratory texts on Ellis Island – a one-sided appraisal that has now been corrected by Cannato's recent book.

The novelty is that this book adds new concerns of immigration by focussing on those arriving from the East. The Chinese and Japanese were by far the largest groups, but equal space is devoted to other South Asians, Koreans, and also Russians, Jews, Mexicans, and Filipinos. Though many stories in the various chapters sound similar in facing degradation, separation, and unequal justice, they not only elevate the book from the statistical to the personal level, but also introduce particular legal challenges.

The opening chapter describes the bureaucratic procedures, the interference of regional and national political decisions, the flexibility civil servants had to follow their own interpretation of the public-charge rule, and the opportunities for appeal decisions. These are the aspects which offer the best materials for comparison with Ellis Island. Its value extends to an even more ambitious overview of the effect of one location on other points of entry, for instance at the Mexican border, posing questions on the relations within the string of immigrant posts surrounding America's territory, but also on the effect of restriction in one category on another, e.g. the Japanese filling the need for labor after the Quota Acts of 1924. Another theme is the effect of ethnic communities nearby, and (strong) national governments farther away, to ameliorate the conditions of immigrants held in detention.

The mythology of the American Dream, which promised individual success but reckoned with the risk of failure, fanned the fear of immigrants' becoming a public charge. The subjective and unequal treatment of various groups was expressed in racial hierarchies, but based on economic concerns. The book on Angel Island strengthens the trend that restores class fears as a strong incentive in timing exclusion measures.

Both books conclude with stories about the renovation of the sites, which somewhat ironically demanded more than was spent on the treatment of the immigrants that had passed through them. Yet these places of memory assist in reflecting on the apparent continuities in mistreatment of immigrants.