Snapped Shot

This is our future, sadly.

CARY – After closely examining the immunization records and marriage and birth certificates of the eighth-grade “immigrant” with a magnifying glass, Brent Lueck asked him the important question.

“You’re from Ireland,” he said. “Are you a Catholic?”

Lueck said he was worried that the “immigrant” might try to subvert America in the name of the pope. “I’ve got some issues with you, some loyalty issues.”

It was just one example of the mock prejudice faced by about 120 eighth-grade students Friday at Cary Junior High taking part in a simulation of immigrant arrivals and experiences at Ellis Island. Millions of immigrants arrived and were processed at the New York port until it closed in 1954.

“I want them to get an essence of what it would have been like to be an immigrant,” explained Lueck, a history teacher at the junior high school.

Lueck has helped organize the annual simulation for the past three years as the culmination of a three-week unit on American immigration.

On Friday, students dressed in fedoras, head scarves and long dresses as they waded in front of Lueck and other teachers who checked their student-created passports and immigration papers.

The majority who made their way to the front of the line were forced to start all over again after teachers found some reason for them not to enter the country.

Students were red-flagged into categories, such as being possible political subversives or unmarried women.