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Forum: Disability and Immigration Policy
Defectives in the Land: Disability
and American Immigration Policy, 1882–1924
DOUGLAS C. BAYNTON
SOPHIE FUKO OF Hungary embarked from Hamburg aboard the SS
Kaiserin Auguste Victoria in late November 1912, with her six-year-old
son, Kalman. Fuko's husband had died four years earlier and now, at the
age of 46, with no remaining relatives in her native land, she had decided
to emigrate to the United States to join her two adult sons, Laszlo and
Bela. She and Kalman arrived at Ellis Island December 4. They immediately
encountered difficulties. The medical inspectors certified Sophie
Fuko as "practically blind in right eye," her son as "afflicted with deaf
mutism," and therefore both of them as "likely to become public charges."
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