Austin American-Statesman from Austin, Texas • 120

SECTION INSIDE Editorials, About words, H8 Sunday, September 9, 1990 Austin American-Statesman DcaDKnr Brazilian chief brings new ideas, new hope By Katherine Ellison Knight-Ridder News Service BRASILIA, Brazil It's sunset at the end of the workweek, and more than 1,000 people have been lined up for an hour, waiting for a glimpse of their handsome young president. Fernando Collor de Mello, 41, doesn't disappoint. At last, strobe lights flash, a military band plays the national anthem and the tall, dapper man with slicked-back hair strides down the long ramp leading from the building to the street. As he reaches the end, the crowd rushes forward, his security surrenders and Collor, grinning fiercely, is mobbed. After five months in office, the man who's brought Brazil Latin America's most stunning shock plan still gets rock-star treatment.

It's extraordinary, considering the "Collor Plan" has brought massive layoffs 200,000 people cut from the federal payroll alone. But one recent J- nni.n.ini,,..! ,1 National Parks Service via AP More than 12 million immigrants passed through the portals of Ellis Island between 1892 and 1954. Nearly half of all Americans can trace their ancestry to those travelers. EW YORK Although she was only 11, Nelly Rattner Myers re f' poll found that 56 percent of Brazilians still approved of his program. "Collor has performed remarkably well as president," said Dick Foster, director of the weekly financial newsletter Brazil Watch.

"His plan could be a watershed for Brazil." It could be just as important for the rest of Latin America, say committee of the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation. "America wanted those immigrants," he said. "We were competing with Canada and Australia, which were already industrialized. The purpose was to weed out those who were too ill or disabled to support members very clearly the day 50 years ago when the ship pulled into New York Harbor and she glimpsed the Statue of Liberty for the first time. Her family, with the ex I I Collor's Brazil offers new hope that economic despair doesn't have to be Latin economists.

The region is buried under chronic inflation and debilitating unemployment. And Collor's I SI TED America's future. By Laurie Goodstein Washington Post Service ception of her father, had escaped the Nazis, then caught the last train from Vienna and the last ship to America. "I heard so much about it in Vienna," she said of the statue." "It means free-dom. When we saw it from the boat, we were so thrilled.

There was a lot of excitement." But her family's elation was premature. On Ellis Island, immigration officials detained them, not convinced that the family could support itself. Although Myers's grandmother was a seamstress and her uncle a tailor, the whole group was held back because Myers, her sister, her mother and uncle were deaf. Ellis Island became known as both the Isle of Hope and the Isle of Tears. The great majority of immigrants saw dreams fulfilled as more than 12 million passed through its portals between 1892 and 1954.

It is said that nearly half of all Americans can trace their ancestry to those travelers. A victim of decay and disrepair for years, Ellis Island is being reborn. Today, Vice President Dan themselves, the idea being that the U.S. should not become the almshouse of the world." Those who made the arduous journey had money, strength and the pluck to leave their homes. The weeding-out process began even before they boarded ship.

The Immigration Service required that transatlantic steamship companies examine prospective travelers and screen those who were sick or could not earn a living. The companies had an incentive to do a thorough job because those rejected at Ellis Island were returned to their places of origin at the companies' expense. Yet another hurdle was that a ticket to America in 1900 cost from $10 to $35 for steerage class, in which the majority of immigrants rode jammed like luggage below decks, often seasick and miserable. Those of greater means could travel more comfortably in cabins for about $40 second-class or about $80 first-class. Such sums amounted to perhaps years of savings, sometimes by a relative already in See Ellis Island, H7 Quayle will dedicate the island as a museum and shrine to American immigration.

Workers have been laboring overtime to paint the grand columns, assemble exhibits and polish wooden benches where immigrants once sat. Visitors can retrace steps taken by their forebears. But the route reveals that Ellis Island was not as much an open door as a guarded gate that swung shut on the ill, the very old, the paupers, the single women, the illiterates and, in certain eras, the anarchists and people of Asian descent. The island's celebrated rebirth has prompted a re-examination of assumptions about American immigration, long romanticized by the Emma Lazarus verse that is engraved at Lady Liberty's feet and begins: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. "Emma Lazarus's poem is all very lovely, but it's badly misleading," said Julian Simon, a University of Maryland professor who has written widely about immigration.

"The people who came and who are coming now were not tired, were not the bedraggled bottom of the economic barrel at all. The people who came then came when they were young, strong and vibrant. "And yet, the poem makes us feel good Lady Bountiful. It's just not warranted by the facts." To say the government wanted to keep people out, however, is "mythology," according to Alan Kraut, a history professor at American University and a member of the history Brazil offers new hope that this state of affairs doesn't have to be Latin America's future. That's mostly why he's riding high at the moment he has managed to tame at least one of those demons, inflation.

Running at more than 80 percent per month when Collor was inaugurated in March, it fell to 1 1 percent in July and continues to decline. Even more impressive, that figure isn't expected to rise substantially, despite projections that Brazil will pay an additional $2 billion for oil imports because of the Middle East crisis. Nearly as important to explaining Collor's continued popularity is his talent at creating circus-style events, like the carefully staged Friday crowd appearances. It's not just Collor who has caught the imagination of the average Brazilian. He has filled his Cabinet with mostly young ministers, almost all of them government outsiders.

Many of them are brash, and share a kind of idealism that harkens back to the U.S. Camelot of the Kennedy administration. They have been drawn to Collor by his promise of a "new Brazil" a nation with abundant natural resources, which he promises can build itself into a modern, wealthy giant by the miracles of an open economy. That's a far cry from the Brazil of today, with its heavy state ownership, its bloated bureaucracy and its protectionist trade policies. But, then, Collor is like no former Brazilian leader The one-time playboy and sportsman "dropped down on us from out of nowhere," said political scientist Helio Ja-guaribe, who directs a prestigious Rio de Janeiro think tank.

Specifically, Collor hails from a small, northern state called Alagoas, where he was governor. He initially tried to join a national ticket as vice president, but was forced to set his sights higher and form his own party when no established politician See Brazilian, H9 I Ellis VJn 1 lslandjx Queens New York City Ellis Island once held future; now it keeps the past Hi Ilillililifiiippis Brooklyn fV By Judie Glave Associated Press if i Brazil: big, poor With a population of 150 million, IS 'A NEW YORK Ellis Island, reclaimed from ruins and restored with theaters and exhibits depicting the immigrant experience, is ready for the masses once again. When the great steel doors are swung open to the public Monday eight years and $156 million after restoration work began those who pass through can drink in Old World ambience through sight, sound and touch. The Ellis Island Immigration Museum is dedicated to the 12 million unknowns who entered the so-called Golden Door, such as the Schneider family from Switzerland who came in 1920 and Tong Ly Jue, who left Canton, China, in 1880. Their stories are among several displayed.

"It is an everyman's museum," said Diana Par-due, the island's chief curator. Because nearly half of all Americans can trace their immigrant beginnings back to Ellis Island, "it's a museum that relates to everyone's personal experiences," she said. The depth of the nation's feelings about its immigrant roots is seen in the wealth of objects donated for the "Treasures From Home" exhibit: delicate handmade lace fans from Spain; yard-tall black leather boots with hand-embroidered toes from the Ukraine; and a candy wrapper lovingly ingly preserved some 57 years by Nathan See America's, H7 Brazil is the world's fifth-largest nation. Boasting vast natural resources including gems, petroleum and the planet's largest rain for Three, nearly joined islands make up Ellis Island. The Manhattan skyline rises In the background.

SOUTH AMERICA Most who passed through Ellis ferried on to New Jersey, the gateway to the rest of America, not New York City. The only people who were given new names on Ellis Island were the young women who got married there. Although 30 million people came to America in this century, 10 million moved out. Associated Press Ellis Island facts Twelve million immigrants passed through the Immigration system on Ellis Island between 1892 and 1954. A greater proportion of would-be Immigrants were barred from America at European ports, about 5 percent, than at Ellis, 2 percent.

est the country also has the world's most unfair Income distribution, according to a World Bank study. Eight out of 10 Brazilians live in poverty, earning less than $150 per family. The top 10 percent holds nearly half the nation's wealth. Knight-Ridder News Service.