The idea that at the beginning of the twentieth century, both political rhetoric and legal definition distinguished between immigrants who were “desirable” and those who were not, also looms large in Hannah Zaves-Greene’s essay… Zaves-Greene investigates one particular concept which was used to bar immigration, that of “public charge.” This idea held some immigrants were liable to become a “burden to the state,” and should hence be denied access to the US nation-state. Zaves-Greene follows one particular case in which the notion of “public charge” was applied to keep a young Jewish woman, Esther Kaplan, from becoming American. Having been classified as “mentally deficient,” Esther was seen as an “undesirable immigrant.” This charge was quickly challenged by Jewish American lawyers who sought to intervene into both the classification and the logic on which it was premised. Zaves-Greene thus weaves together concepts of early twentieth-century eugenics, disability, and immigration to show how the transnational and the medical were intimately connected.