INDEPENDENCE — A century of files documenting people who immigrated to this country over the last century will be stored in Kansas City.
The papers, called A-files, or alien registration files, include such things as citizenship applications, photographs, personal correspondence, foreign birth certificates and marriage licenses.
The papers will be stored in limestone caves in Lee's Summit and will be open to the public. That decision was made after an agreement between Citizenship and Immigration Services and the National Archives and Records Administration.
The records will not include people who immigrated before 1907 because that is when the immigration service was given jurisdiction over arriving people. Before that, records were not centralized.