Albany Residents Attend Pilgrimage to Angel Island

Two Albany women recently attended a pilgrimage to Angel Island to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the formerly busy immigration station, and raise awareness about the plight of detained immigrants today.

Rev. Deborah Lee , 41, and her mother, Julia Lee, 68, share a house on Sonoma Avenue.

The younger Lee, who leads the Interfaith Coalition for Immigrant Rights, helped organize a ceremony  on Sept. 25 to mark the Angel Island centennial.

She said the island granted about 1 million people entrance to the United States from 1910 to 1940.

The ceremony honored Angel Island detainees, said Lee, by telling their stories and reminding people that detention remains a problem for immigrants.

"Last year alone, there were more people being held in detention centers than in all 30 years of Angel Island. Half the people in detention centers have no criminal record," Lee said. "There has always been an anti-immigrant sentiment in our country. It's just the face of who's being targeted that changes."

Julia Lee, president of the Friends of Albany Seniors, said she came to the United States from Indonesia when she was 24 to study at Akron University in Ohio.

The Angel Island ceremony, she added, helped remind her how lucky she is.

"I came to this country as a foreign student. I already knew English and I didn't have to look for a job. I didn't have to worry about the government trying to kick me out," she said.

She moved to Albany five years ago from Ohio to be closer to her daughter and her grandsons, Ayize, 10 and Akani, 8, who attend Cornell Elementary School.

She said the Angel Island ceremony was a chance for her to support her daughter and learn more about her work.

Former Albany resident Craig Wong, 49, worked with Rev. Deborah Lee to organize the ceremony.

Wong is executive director of Grace Urban Ministries, a non-profit that helps immigrants around the Bay Area. Wong lived in Albany for his first 22 years, attending Marin Elementary and Albany High. 

Wong's parents still live in the house where he grew up, on Santa Fe and Marin avenues. He said his mother, Pearl, recently researched family members who came through Angel Island.

She found records of her mother's interrogation; Wong said the records gave him a better idea of what his grandmother endured.

"She, just as other newly-arrived immigrants, was treated as guilty until proven innocent," he said. She had to prove she had relatives living in California, and get medical treatment for an eye infection, before she was allowed to pass.

Wong said his grandmother would have been deported had it not been for an immigrant-friendly Presbyterian church that heard about his family's situation and decided to help.

The church helped pay for medical treatment and vouched that the woman was the daughter of a merchant living in Chinatown.

"It had to be proven by a white person," Wong said.

Wong added that he is extremely thankful for the church's assistance to his family, and that its example continues to inspire him in his work with immigrants.

"A big part of what my organization does is advocate for families in need, and support them, which is necessary, especially in the present anti-immigrant climate," he said. "I hope that, if the Chinese churches today can see how these non-Chinese churches cared for their ancestors during the time of Angel Island, it will remind them to care about the situation of all undocumented immigrants today."