796
Opinion of the Court
64 years, this does not add up to much,17 and even its meager significance is diminished by the absence of evidence of any regulation of the State or City of New York or the National Government providing for the registration in New York of births and deaths that occurred on the Island. Of the marriage certificates, the one dated 1914 indicates that the marriage took place on Manhattan Island, not Ellis Island, and the 1901 certificates reflect marriages that were probably performed in the Main Building, located on the original Island. There is no evidence that any marriages solemnized under New York law took place on the filled portion of the Island. Immigration officials were apparently concerned about complying with a law passed by New York in 1907 that required couples getting married to obtain a marriage license from the town in which the woman resided. 1907 N. Y. Laws, ch. 742. But that same law also provided that if the woman or both parties were nonresidents of the State, the marriage license could be obtained from the State in which the marriage was to be performed. Ibid. Obtaining a New York marriage license therefore carried no necessary implication of residence, and at the times in question the immigrants were, of course, undomiciled in America.18 In sum,
the foregoing evidence cannot possibly be claimed to show any continuous practice, and 32 record entries over more than six decades is not even arguably persuasive as circumstantial evidence that New York was acting on a claim of
ciled in America were probably married in the Main Building at one time and later were taken to Manhattan.
17 New York's expert testified that from 1890 to 1954 there were hundreds of births and thousands of deaths on the Island. Tr. 2719-2720, 2740 (July 31, 1996).
18 The record suggests that all the marriages taking place on the Island and later at City Hall in Manhattan were marriages between immigrants or between a resident of the United States and a person who had just arrived. Immigration officials hoped that requiring young single women to marry their fiancés before they would be admitted to the country would help stem the importation of prostitutes.
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