Post-WWII immigration files to be opened to public

Millions of files containing detailed information about U.S. immigrants _ including their spouses' names, as well as personal photographs and letters _ will soon become available to the public through a federal facility in suburban Kansas City.

Preservationists had been worried that the documents providing an important picture of immigration after 1944 would be lost because the federal government considered them temporary and could have destroyed them after 75 years.

But a deal signed this month between the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the National Archives and Records Administration preserves all 53 million files. About 21 million will be …