Ellis Island stands as a symbol of the waves of immigrants who have come to the US, but there also were other ports of entry for new arrivals, according to a panel of speakers in Washington.

As part of a National Archives exhibit about immigration, experts came together June 20 to talk about Ellis Island and the immigrant experience.

The panel explored the myths surrounding Ellis Island and the real experiences of the people who passed–or were thought to have passed–through the iconic immigrant facility in New York Harbor.

“About 700,000 immigrants who arrived in New York were not processed in Ellis Island,” said genealogist John Philip Colletta.

Colletta pointed out several instances when Ellis Island was not used, citing the fire that burned down the original Ellis Island building, exceptions made for first-class passengers and automatic citizenship for family members of naturalized immigrants.

“If your relatives arrived (in New York) between June 1897 and 1900, they did not go through Ellis Island,” he said.

During that period, the Barge Office in Battery Park on the southern tip of Manhattan processed new immigrants.

Before Ellis Island, those coming to New York entered through Castle Gardens in lower Manhattan. Other US ports of entry included Buffalo, NY, Baltimore, and Philadelphia on the East Coast and Angel Island on the West Coast.

Addressing the popular idea that some immigrants’ names were changed upon arrival, Colletta said that “the names were already in the passenger list.”

“Ellis Island is a popular symbol with specific meaning in conversation in our popular culture,” said Marian Smith, a historian at US Citizenship and Immigration Services. “But if you get an image fixed in your mind, it may stop you from exploring other possibilities.”

Panelist Megan Smolenyak, a genealogy expert and author of “Hey America, Your Roots Are Showing,” talked about the mystery surrounding Annie Moore, an Irish teenager who was the first immigrant to go through Ellis Island.

Moore arrived Jan 1, 1892, with her two brothers after a voyage in a ship filled with Russians and other East Europeans.

“She is an accidental symbol of immigrant America,” Smolenyak said. “Because Ellis Island is so synonymous in our minds of immigration and because we are a nation of immigrants, she is also representative of the American dream.”

While doing research for a PBS documentary on immigration almost 10 years ago, Smolenyak discovered Moore’s real descendants. She said that, unlike past accounts, the real Annie did not emigrate westward; in fact, she did not make it outside of New York.

“She had a tough life,” Smolenyak said. “But one that was much more representative of the immigrant experience.”

Pope Benedict XVI has approved the heroic virtues of US Abp. Fulton J. Sheen, the Vatican announced June 28, clearing the way for the advancement of his sainthood cause.

Among the others honored in decrees announced the same day were first prelate of Opus Dei, the Canadian and Irish-American founders of two orders of religious women, a priest murdered by the Sicilian Mafia, and 154 martyrs killed during the Spanish Civil War.

Abp. Sheen heroically lived Christian virtues and should be considered “venerable,” said a decree issued by the Congregation for Saints’ Causes and signed by Pope Benedict. Before the archbishop can be beatified, the Vatican must recognize that a miracle has occurred through his intercession.

The decree came just more than 13 months after Bp. Daniel R. Jenky of Peoria, IL, presented Pope Benedict with two thick volumes about the life of Abp. Sheen, whose home diocese was Peoria.

Abp. Sheen, who was born in Illinois in 1895 and died in New York in 1979, was an Emmy-winning televangelist. His program, “Life is Worth Living,” aired in the US from 1951 to 1957.

Last September, a tribunal of inquiry was sworn in to investigate the allegedly miraculous healing of a newborn whose parents had prayed to the archbishop’s intercession.

The Vatican also announced papal decrees approving the beatification of 158 men and women, including 156 martyrs, all but two of them Spaniards, killed during their country’s 1936-39 Civil War.

Fr. Giuseppe Puglisi, a Sicilian priest and activist against organized crime who was killed by the Mafia in 1993, was another of the martyrs recognized.

Martyrs do not need a miracle attributed to their intercession in order to be beatified. However, miracles must be recognized by the Vatican in order for martyrs to be canonized.

Other decrees recognized the heroic virtues of eight men and women, including:

–Bp. Alvaro del Portillo, the first prelate of Opus Dei.

–Mother Marie-Josephte Fitzbach, founder of the Good Shepherd Sisters of Quebec.

–Mother Mary Angeline Teresa McCrory, the Irish-born founder of the Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm, who died in New York state in 1984.

Repeating over and over that “it’s the right thing to do,” Pres. Barack Obama announced June 15 that effective immediately, the US will stop deporting certain young people who are in the country illegally because they were brought to the US as minors.

The action–taken under existing law that allows for prosecutorial discretion–effectively creates an administrative version of the DREAM Act, legislation that enjoys popular, bipartisan support but has long languished in Congress.

“It makes no sense to expel talented young people who for all intents and purposes are American,” said Obama at a news conference from the White House Rose Garden. The new policy will make the system “more fair, more efficient and more just,” he said.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said in a memo announcing the change that immigration laws “are not designed to be blindly enforced without consideration given to the individual circumstances of each case.

“Nor are they designed to remove productive young people to countries where they may not have lived or even speak the language. Indeed, many of these young people have already contributed to our country in significant ways. Prosecutorial discretion, which is used in so many other areas, is especially justified here.”

But Congress still needs to act, Obama said, and the sooner the better, because the changes are only a temporary fix.

As Obama described the order, eligible applicants between the ages of 15 and 30, who arrived in the US by the age of 16 and have been here at least five years, will be able to request “temporary relief from deportation proceedings and apply for work authorization.”

“Let’s be clear,” Obama said. “This is not amnesty, this is not immunity, this is not a path to citizenship, this is not a permanent fix. It is a temporary stopgap measure that allows us to focus our resources.”

The new approach will apply to people who complete high school or get a GED, or serve in the military. It will require background checks, no criminal history and other criteria. Deportation will be deferred for two-year renewable periods, during which time the applicants could obtain work permits.

Implementation may take up to 60 days, Napolitano’s memo said. Eligible immigrants who already are in deportation proceedings but do not have a final order to leave may immediately qualify for deferral of deportation, it said.

The Pew Hispanic Center estimates as many as 1.4 million people might qualify. Other sources estimated the possible pool at 800,000.

Bills known as the DREAM Act–the acronym for Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors–have been proposed regularly for years, aimed at addressing the problem of young people who were brought to the US as children and lack legal immigration status. Such immigrants may have few, if any, ties to their homeland but also have no way of getting legal status in the US without returning to countries that they don’t know and going through a years-long–or decades-long–wait to return legally.

They also are unable to work legally, to qualify for in-state college tuition or get driver’s licenses in most states, and to participate in many kinds of opportunities such as government-funded scholarships. Currently, they risk deportation if they come to the attention of immigration authorities.

While many supporters of the DREAM Act were jubilant, legal analysts were more cautious, noting that the new policy is possible because of prosecutorial discretion that has been available to immigration authorities for years.

Among those hailing the announcement was Abp. Jose H. Gomez of Los Angeles, chairman of the US bishops’ Migration Committee.

The young people to whom the action would apply “are bright, energetic, and eager to pursue their education and reach their full potential,” said Abp. Gomez’s statement.

He echoed Obama’s point about needing more permanent action by Congress.

“The action by the president today is no substitute for enactment of the DREAM Act in Congress,” he said. Abp. Gomez encouraged elected officials to make a bipartisan effort to “give these youth a path to citizenship and a chance to become Americans,” and to enact a comprehensive immigration reform law.

One law professor, Michael A. Olivas of the University of Houston, observed in an analysis that the action “shows new political will but does not change existing law or available discretion.”

Olivas noted that there’s little data about how similar discretion has been used under a review process begun last year for the entire category of undocumented immigrants who have no criminal records but are facing deportation. That program, known as the Morton Memo, encourages authorities to exercise their discretion to not deport such immigrants who have been in the US for many years and who have strong family ties here.

Among advocates for the DREAM Act, the announcement was lauded.

Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., one of the most ardent supporters of the DREAM Act in Congress, said the administration’s action “sets the ball in motion to break the gridlock and fix our laws so that people who live here can do so legally and on the books and people can come with visas instead of smugglers in the first place.”

“Today, the students are being protected,” Gutierrez said. “But we have to fix the system for their families and for the country once and for all.”

“This is huge,” said Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice Education Fund. “As a result of today’s decision, hundreds of thousands of young people who are American in all but paperwork will have the opportunity to live freely, work legally, and contribute to the country they love.” He added that “this expansion of existing policy is the only viable path to meaningful relief for Dreamers this year.”

The change will mean eligible students can apply for a Social Security number and seek work legally, Martha Arevalo, executive director of the Central American Resource Center in Los Angeles, said in a statement released by the National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities.

“They will also be able to apply for a driver’s license and be able to drive without the fear of being stopped by the police and potentially facing deportation proceedings,” she added. “Young immigrants are fully aware this is only an initial positive step in a long struggle to be recognized as full and productive members of American society.”

Olivas also noted that potential pitfalls remain. As highlighted by Time Magazine’s cover story June 25, many would-be DREAM Act applicants “have outed themselves, hoping to gain status, putting themselves and their undocumented parents and siblings at risk.” The discretionary program may do little to improve their status, he said.

And in states that bar undocumented immigrants from enrolling in public colleges, students may have little to gain from getting the discretionary legal status, he added.

“If the DREAM Act itself were to be enacted tomorrow by Congress, states would still have to pass laws to grant tuition and financial aid to these students,” Olivas said.

Wong Lan Fong brought her wedding picture with her when she came to America in 1927, but the photo of the 27-year-old bride was not a keepsake.

It was a proof to convince California’s immigration authorities that she did not come for “immoral purposes,” but to be reunited with her husband, a Chinese trader.

“They decided that it was important for them to arrive to the United States with a first-class ticket because they thought, rightly so, that the immigration officials would treat them better than if they came in steerage,” said Erika Lee, an immigration historian and Wong’s granddaughter.

Lee’s grandfather saved up for almost two years to buy the ticket, which allowed Wong to enter the country without prejudices faced by other Asian women. Wong’s slim file shows that her interrogation by immigration officials went smoothly.

Wong Lan Fong’s wedding picture is part of a new National Archives exhibit featuring the stories of 31 men, women and children who passed through US entryways between the 1880s and the end of World War II.

The exhibit, called “Attachments: Faces and Stories from America’s Gates,” features mural-size black-and-white photos that were “attached” to immigration files. The original documents, letters and photos tell the stories of those who were entering, leaving or staying in the US.

Exhibit curator Bruce Bustard said the exhibit illustrates the “long and complicated and contested history about immigration in the United States.”

Some of those entering were visitors; others came to America’s gates looking for freedom and prosperity for themselves and their descendants. Some brought a lot of money; others carried little. Some had their papers in order; others forged documents and had fake relatives sponsoring them.

These stories are drawn from millions of immigration cases on file at the National Archives. The exhibit is on display in the National Archives main building in Washington through Sept. 4.

One of the first pictures in the exhibit shows children arriving at Ellis Island in New York Harbor in 1908. The expressions on their faces show uncertainty, with some adults behind them smiling; others just stare at the camera.

Another view greeting visitors to the exhibit is a panoramic photo of Angel Island, the California processing facility that received half a million people, mostly Chinese and Japanese immigrants. It was built to be “the Ellis Island of the West,” but, under race-specific laws enacted in 1882, it also served as a detention facility, Lee said.

Like many other immigrants before and after them, some of the individuals featured in the exhibit could not enter America’s gates or were later sent home.

Among those featured are Rose and Emile Louis, an interracial couple coming from Britain. Emile was illiterate and was barred entry. Rose was denied entry as well, because her husband could not enter the country.

Pictures of six men deported because of “moral turpitude” listed their physical features to prevent them from re-entering. They include Dubas Wasyl, an Austrian farmhand who was caught stealing beans in his homeland and Francesco Zaccaro, who was sent back to Italy for “applying (a) vile name to a woman.”

“America’s gates have always swung in both directions,” said Joel Wurl, a senior program officer at the National Endowment for the Humanities, “Emigration also represents a part of the story.”

The exhibit also tells the stories of Mary Louise Pashgian, who came to the US fleeing persecution in Armenia, or Kaoro Shiibashi, a Hawaiian raised in Japan who returned to his native land.

A picture of 13-year old Michael Pupa is attached to a file detailing how he hid for two years in the Polish forest after the Nazis murdered his parents. After living in many refugee camps, he came to the US in 1951 and ended up living with a foster family in Cleveland.

“His story was one of many in the 25, 000 boxes of materials about children refugees after World War II,” Bustard said.

Pupa, the only person featured in the exhibit who is still living, visited the National Archives for the exhibit’s opening. Seeing his documents compelled him to share those experiences with his family for the first time, Bustard said.

In conjunction with the exhibit, the Archives also featured a series of events where experts discussed immigrant experiences at Angel Island, Ellis Island and other entry points, along with examples of global migration and exclusion.

“I love the original documents and the photographs,” said Quincey Johnson, a Maryland resident who was visiting the exhibit. “It’s a wonderful exhibit. It tells a number of really interesting stories about the difficulties people had.”

“It was interesting to see people from a number of countries, people who lost their families, people who were just trying to bring their families back together,” he said.

The establishment of a new post of senior communications adviser is a step in the right direction to help the Vatican deal with the challenges of a sound-bite culture, said the American journalist appointed to the job.

Greg Burke, 52, was named to the newly-created position in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State and will start in July. The announcement was made on Vatican Radio June 24.

Burke, a native of St. Louis, told Catholic News Service June 25 that his job will be to help “shape the message” coming out of the Vatican and make sure everyone there “stays on message.”

It’s a role similar to the White House’s director of communications, who supplements the work of a more visible spokesperson, Burke said, as he described some of the challenges he plans to address: “What’s the message we want to get out? How do we get it out?” And how does the Vatican respond to issues getting traction in the media?

The communications strategy “sounds very simple, but its execution will be very complicated,” he said.

He will also help develop and strengthen lines of communication among the Holy See’s numerous communications outlets, which include TV, radio, a newspaper, a book publishing house and a press office. He will work with Abp. Angelo Becciu, the No. 3 official at the Vatican Secretariat of State, and US Msgr. Peter B. Wells, assessor for general affairs.

Burke, who’s a graduate of Columbia University’s school of journalism, has spent the past 24 years based in Rome as a journalist–with the National Catholic Register, Time magazine and, for the past 10 years, the Fox News network.

While he is not an expert in PR or communications, Burke said his experience covering news events at the Vatican and throughout Europe and the Middle East means “I know what journalists are looking for and what they need, and I know how things will play out in the media.”

A good example of a past media storm that could have been avoided, he said, was during Pope Benedict XVI’s speech on Islam in Regensburg, Germany, in 2006. The pope quoted a medieval Byzantine emperor, who said the prophet Mohammed had brought “things only evil and inhuman.” The pope later acknowledged the quotation was open to misinterpretation, as he had not meant it as an endorsement of the emperor’s words.

If such a speech had been restricted to a small group of scholars, there might have been no problems, Burke said, but as a talk televised to the world, “in a sound-bite, headline culture, it’s a whole different thing,” Burke said.

Burke said he has been covering the Vatican long enough “to know that no one walks in and changes things” overnight. But, he said he hopes “this post is a step in the right direction” and that he will be able to alert the right people in advance of any potential message mix-ups.

A lifelong Catholic and numerary member of Opus Dei, Burke said he wouldn’t have taken the job if he didn’t put all his faith and trust in God. Numeraries are celibate and contribute a large part of their salaries to the prelature.

When he was first approached about the new position, Burke declined, but then over the course of a week, he went with “a gut feeling” to finally accept the job.

“I had a great job at Fox, just the right mix of time in Rome and travel; I was in my comfort zone,” he said.

It took him some time to “get the courage up” and take the chance rather than risk living with the nagging feeling he could have been able to make a difference, he said.

The appointment is likely to provoke comparisons between Burke and Joaquin Navarro-Valls, another Opus Dei member who served as Vatican spokesman during Blessed John Paul II’s pontificate.

Burke said that he didn’t know whether being a numerary of Opus Dei was a factor in his hiring, but he noted, “I wasn’t hired at Fox because of Opus Dei,” but rather for his knowledge and experience.

Being a native speaker of English, which is the working language of much of the global media, was perhaps a more critical factor in his favor, he said.

Despite the Vatican’s communications’ challenges, Burke said the Church “still has got a great message” that needs to get out there.

“It’s a message of spread the love, which often gets lost in a lot of the static,” he said.

While he doesn’t have “a magic wand” or feel he has all the answers, Burke said the Church’s direction should be based on being clear and open with the world.

He said a great model to emulate would be a communications’ structure similar to that of the United Nations (UN), whose Web site lists “a spokesperson on every continent with cellphone numbers in case you need an interview and free video footage.”

“That’s the direction I’d like to see. Greater openness and accountability is all positive” for any institution, organization, and business, not just the Vatican, he said.

“The danger is you say nothing, it’s a closed shop,” he said, and then lies, distortions, or misunderstanding can fill the media vacuum.

He grew up in St. Louis Hills, which he credits as being “maybe the best neighborhood to grow up in with small houses, small yards, and big families.”

Living five minutes from his parish of St. Gabriel, the church was a big part of community life, he said.

The middle child of six, Burke went to Jesuit-run St. Louis University high school and praised his Jesuit Latin teachers as being “great scholars, gentlemen, and saints.”

Despite his all-American background, after nearly a quarter century in Rome, Burke took Italian citizenship earlier this year. That means he will be right at home at the Vatican, where Italians still far outnumber employees of any other nationality.

Duery Felton Jr. calls them “icons.”

The religious articles gathered up each day at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington are just a small part of the estimated 400,000 items left in honor of a veteran and collected twice daily by National Park Service employees since the memorial opened 30 years ago.

But for Felton, curator of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Collection held at the Museum Resource Center in Landover, many of the items represent a mystery that will never be solved.

He holds up a small cross on a pedestal. A piece of paper affixed to the bottom says the cross was made from square nails used to build the original St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Kasson, MN, in 1873.

But that doesn’t answer Felton’s many questions: Who left the item and for whom? What did the church mean to the veteran or the person who left the cross?

“Most of the three-dimensional objects in the collection come with no explanation of what it is or what it means,” he said.

There is even a box of rocks left at the memorial on the National Mall. Felton isn’t sure, but he thinks some veterans bring the rocks as a symbol that they have “put their burdens down” and left their bad memories of Vietnam at the memorial.

“This is a collection unlike any other,” Felton said. It is the only collection in which the public decides what will be included, the only one made up of items left by the living for the dead and the only one in which “the bias of what is worthy is taken out” of the curator’s hands, he said.

But Felton believes that is more than appropriate for a memorial to those who served in “a completely different kind of war”–the only US war that was never officially declared.

“It’s Vietnam, so you can leave logic out the door,” he said.

With the exception of plant matter, food and unaltered US flags, every item left at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is preserved and cataloged. The flags are given to veterans’ hospitals, visitors to the memorial, or civic groups such as the Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts.

The collection started almost by accident when a park ranger who thought the items had been left inadvertently started a kind of lost and found, thinking those who had left the items would return for them one day.

When no one came back for the items–and more were donated each day–the collection was born.

The most popular items left at the memorial are notes or letters, many of which are not addressed to a specific veteran. Thousands of metal bracelets commemorating a specific Vietnam prisoner of war or missing in action also have been left behind.

The largest item held in the collection is believed to be a painting on a nine-foot-by-five-foot sliding glass door that shows a scene in Vietnam and displays the names of all those who were POWs or listed as missing in action.

Donated with the door is a full-size reproduction of a tiger cage, like the ones that held POWs during the war. The cage is currently on display at the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of American History.

Another candidate for largest item is a Harley-Davidson motorcycle bearing a Wisconsin license plate with the word HERO. The group of Wisconsin veterans that donated it has asked that no one be allowed to sit on the motorcycle–hand-painted with scenes of Vietnam–until all those MIA in Vietnam have been accounted for.

According to the Department of Defense, 1,664 veterans are still missing in action in Vietnam.

Those items indicate a great deal of pre-planning, but other donations are spontaneous.

“It’s not unusual to see children go through their backpacks and leave whatever the popular toy of the day is,” Felton said.

“Every item is precious,” he added. “It might be a fourth-place karate medal, but for a person to leave it ennobles this offering.”

Religious items–medals, Bibles, rosaries, crosses and similar articles–make up a significant part of the collection. Among the most popular medals are those dedicated to St. Michael the Archangel, patron saint of paratroopers; St. Anthony of Padua and St. Nicholas, both considered the patron saint of sailors; and St. Therese of Lisieux, patron saint of pilots and air crews.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Collection is one of about 40 historical collections held at the Museum Resource Center. Others include items from the Antietam National Battlefield Park, the Clara Barton National Historic Site, and the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site.

But none of the collections has such strong emotions attached to it as the Vietnam collection does.

Felton, an Army veteran who served in Vietnam in 1967, said he tells new interns, “You have my permission to go outdoors and take a deep breath” when they need to. And he admits that he sometimes has to do the same himself.

“In my office I keep a photo of a very good friend who died in battle,” he said. “That keeps my feet on the ground.”