William Williams (Commissioner of Ellis Island)

William Williams (1862–1947) was the federal commissioner of immigration for the Port of New York, from 1902 to 1905 and again, from 1909 to 1914. His office was on Ellis Island, which was the location of the nation's most important immigrant inspection station.

The son of Charles Augustus Williams (1829-1899), a prominent merchant in the whaling industry, and Elizabeth Hoyt Williams, William C. Williams was born New London, Connecticut, on June 2, 1862. He had one sister, Mary Hoyt Williams Crozier (1864-1955), who became the wife of Gen. William Crozier, the noted artillerist and inventor. Williams grew up in Connecticut, Hawaii, Japan and Germany. He attended college in Germany and the United States. He graduated from Yale University with a bachelor's degree and earned a law degree from Harvard University.

In the 1890s, he briefly served the United States in the consular service, and served as a soldier during the Spanish–American War until he contracted typhoid fever in 1898.

In the few years between his service as a soldier in the Spanish–American War and his appointment as Commissioner of Ellis Island, William Williams led a profitable career as a lawyer on Wall Street. In 1902, he was chosen by President Theodore Roosevelt to assume the position of commissioner of the immigration at the port of New York, with his headquarters on Ellis Island, which was the location of the U.S. Immigrant Station which served that port. Feeling that corruption at Ellis Island was interfering with national goals for immigration restriction, Roosevelt chose Williams because of their shared beliefs in the Progressive movement, their faith in science as a source of authority, and honest, efficient public service.

In the decades before Williams began his work as commissioner, federal officials worked to improve the medical exclusion of immigrants in the interest of public health. Beginning with the Immigration Act of 1882, Congress acted to exclude immigrants with mental and physical defects. The Act specifically prohibited any "lunatic, idiot, or any person unable to take care of himself or herself without becoming a public charge." The public charge clause was intentionally vague to allow the examining officer's to discriminate at their own discretion. As the eugenics movement and popular fears regarding race escalated, a new law was passed (The Act of 1891) that rephrased the public charge clause to be a matter of likelihood of becoming a public charge (or LPC). A year before Williams began as Commissioner, Congress moved immigration responsibilities from the Treasury Department to the newly created Department of Commerce and Labor. The country began to understand immigration as something more than just a form of importation, due to its significant influence on many aspects of the public welfare, especially the public's health.

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