WASHINGTON  The federal government is opening the immigration files of millions of refugees, war brides, "enemy aliens" and other foreign nationals in the USA in the first half of the 20th century. A gold mine for historians, genealogists, scholars and descendants, the files include private details on such public figures as Spanish artist Salvador Dali as well as family heirlooms confiscated from Chinese laborers. "Individually, these files represent the story of just one immigrant," says Gregory Smith of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, "but as a collection, they document the story of American immigration ... with its many wonders and its many blemishes." The immigration service signed an agreement Wednesday to transfer at least 21 million files to National Archives facilities near San Francisco and Kansas City. A searchable index is at www.uscis.gov/genealogy. The files were compiled under the Alien Registration Act of 1940. They include photos, visa applications, birth certificates, personal letters and transcripts of interrogations of celebrities and unknowns. Documents in Guerino DeMarco's creased brown file show the gardener was arrested in 1942 and held for three months at New York 's Ellis Island after visiting his mother in Italy. Another Italian, Raffaele Annunziata, registered when he arrived from Salerno in 1948. Like others, he certified that he and his kin were not "idiots," "imbeciles," "feeble-minded" or "insane," and that he was not a "professional beggar" or "anarchist." French crooner Maurice Chevalier, a 1930s Hollywood star who spent World War II in Europe , applied for re-entry in 1949. He wrote that he would live with his son on a farm in Alabama. The application apparently was turned down. The actor did not return until the mid-1950s, after suspicions that he collaborated with the Nazis and later harbored communist sympathies had dissipated. Dali lived in the USA during World War II . His thick file contains many forms he filled out over the years. The surrealist artist, best known for the melting timepieces in his painting The Persistence of Memory, apparently couldn't remember his height. Various documents list him as 5 feet 4 inches tall, 5-7, 5-8 and 5-10. A bad memory could mean deportation for thousands under the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the nation's first race-based immigration law. For 60 years, strict quotas forced Chinese immigrants to endure lengthy interrogations. Some came under false identities as "paper sons" of Chinese Americans. Jennie Lew, a San Francisco documentary maker whose father claimed such kinship, says the files and artifacts, once "a source of fear and torment," hold special meaning. "This opens an important and hidden chapter in our history," Lew says. Guidelines: You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. Read more