4 - “American Aliens”: Isabel Gonzalez, Domingo Collazo, Federico Degetau, and the Supreme Court, 1902–1905

Summary

Little about Isabel Gonzalez suggested that she would present the Supreme Court with momentous decisions about empire, race, and citizenship. In 1902, she migrated to New York. At Ellis Island, immigration officials excluded the young, poor, unmarried Puerto Rican mother as an undesirable alien. She and her uncle Domingo Collazo responded with a lawsuit demanding recognition of Puerto Ricans as U.S. citizens. Puerto Rico’s representative in Washington, Federico Degetau, and a leading constitutional lawyer, Frederic Coudert, joined at the Supreme Court stage. Coudert told the justices that to deny citizenship would be to repeat the mistake of the Dred Scott (1857) Court and join it in infamy. He proposed all-but-rightsless U.S. citizenship for Puerto Ricans, akin to that of people of color. Degetau instead claimed for Puerto Ricans such as himself a robust citizenship associated with that entailed on white men. In 1904 the Court ducked the question of citizenship and held only that Puerto Ricans were not excludable. Gonzalez could enter the United States. But she and Collazo were not satisfied. As they told U.S. newspapers, the United States had acted like a cad, seducing Puerto Rico with now-broken promises of a union.