CITYSCAPES MILES CORWIN : Human Drama Still Plays Out on the New ‘Isle of Tears’

They come by boat, past the Statue of Liberty, these huddled masses, through New York Harbor to Ellis Island, the country’s most famous port of entry.

This is how the tourists visit the Ellis Island Immigration Museum, one of New York’s most popular attractions.

Today’s immigrants arrive in America on airplanes, and dozens of airports throughout the country are the new Ellis Islands. Los Angeles International Airport is the country’s second-busiest port of entry for immigrants, and every day there are the same poignant scenes that once were played out on “The Isle of Tears.”

At Arrival Area B, in the Tom Bradley International Terminal, Ky Do waits for his mother and sister. He has not seen them for 17 years.

Do’s family is arriving on a chartered flight filled with 361 Vietnamese immigrants, most of whom will be settling in Southern California. More than 1,000 of their relatives crowded into the terminal, along with hundreds of Guatemalans, Salvadorans, Koreans, Mexicans and Taiwanese, who milled about waiting for family members to pass through immigration.

At 7:30 p.m., four hours after Do’s arrival, the first few families from the chartered flight begin filing through the tunnel to the waiting area. The crowd lets out a sudden, collective roar and a thousand people dash to the railing, lining up six and seven deep, craning their necks to see who is walking up the ramp. Most walk away disappointed.

But the relatives of the first five families to enter the terminal scream and call out names and embrace family members they have not seen, in some cases, since the Vietnam War.

One newly arrived elderly couple fall to the ground, overcome with emotion. Their children run down the ramp and then sit beside their parents, cradling their heads, talking to them softly and smoothing their hair. Others just hug for minutes, saying nothing, tears streaming down their faces. Some wait stoically, recording the historic event on video or aiming Instamatics and snapping picture after picture, the terminal ablaze with the flash from dozens of cameras.

Finally, at about 9 p.m., after more than five hours of waiting, and 17 years of haggling to get his mother and sister out of Vietnam, 17 years of dealing with bureaucrats from two governments, Do sees them walking up the tunnel. They are lugging metal carts piled high with steamer trunks, suitcases, wooden boxes and plastic sacks.

Do and his son run down the ramp. His 79-year-old mother, frail and stooped, a long scarf wrapped around her head, beams when she sees her 10-year-old grandson for the first time. The grandson, the grandmother, the son and his sister all embrace, a knot of people hugging, laughing and crying, spinning around the ramp.

“For so long I was afraid I’d never see them again,” said Do, 43, who fled Vietnam in 1975. “Now they are here.” He briefly closes his eyes. “I do not have words to express how I feel.”

The reunions are high drama, but before the immigrants reach the waiting area they must undergo a series of private dramas. They pass through a maze of customs inspectors, who have confiscated dried zebra meat, stuffed monkeys and live birds; public health officials--who used to draw chalk marks on the backs of Ellis Island immigrants with health problems--and Immigration and Naturalization Service inspectors, who make the final decision on residency.

At Ellis Island, America’s first federal immigration station, people lined up on the wind-swept shores. Then they were herded through the brick baggage room, where numbered tags were hung around their necks, and into an immense hall with grimy arched windows where inspectors waited behind wooden lecterns. Now they complete the process in the antiseptic environs of a modern airport.

They nervously wait in rows of black plastic chairs, in the back of a lounge with pale blue carpeting. These would-be Americans--75,000 of whom passed through the Los Angeles airport last year--sit side by side in the lounge: Vietnamese women in flowing silk dresses, Guatemalan men wearing battered straw hats, Indian women with red caste marks on their foreheads.

Immigrants do not have their last names Americanized anymore, said INS inspector Barrie Bluejian, whose grandfather emigrated from Armenia. His grandfather’s name was Gobuyjian--blue in Armenian--so the inspector at Ellis Island changed the name to Bluejian.

After Bluejian calls the nervous immigrants to the booth, asks a series of questions and peruses sheaves of documents, he says to those whose papers are in order: “Welcome to America.” Some immigrants burst into tears. Others clap excitedly. A few shake Bluejian’s hand.

Then they pile their belongings onto a cart, roll it up the ramp to the terminal and begin life in a new country.