Crossing the Russian/Austro-Hungarian border in the very early 20th century would have been a very difficult task. To cross legally, the emigrant would need to be very patient while moving through the various steps. He must have the proper paperwork and supporting documentation, he should probably have a ship ticket and/or a sponsor in the destination country. He would have to be able to pass a medical examination and wait through tedious lines in very poor conditions. Even if he passed through all these steps, he could be turned back at any point and be forced to return to his home. A home that may or may not be waiting on him depending upon whether he sold his house and/or possessions.
If he chose to bypass the proper procedures and somehow illegally cross the border, he faced the danger of dealing with shady border smugglers who might do what they could to steal from or cheat the poor emigrant. Border smugglers popped up in many border towns at the time. Known as Agenten shvindlers or Geheime Agenten, these smugglers could be very dangerous to deal with. Obviously these were people who made their living avoiding the law so their scruples were probably different from the emigrants who hired them. For very high prices they would offer to assist emigrants over the border illegally, but this process ended badly for many, many emigrants. Most smuggling was done at night. Some smugglers would take the emigrant half-way, and then, under cover of darkness demand more money from the emigrant. They might physically steal the emigrants’ possessions or lead them into a dangerous position physically in relation to armed border guards. The emigrant was worried enough dealing with eluding official border guards but the transaction with the smuggler must have been almost as bad.
By 1893, inspection stations had been set up in many border towns to examine potential emigrants. Some of these stations were maintained by the primary German shipping lines, Nord-Deutscher Lloyd and the Hamburg-America Line. At the train station, the potential emigrants would be taken directly to the border station for examination. Their luggage may have to stay behind at the depot and who can say what might happen to it there. Conditions at the border stations were primitive and overcrowded. If an emigrant passed the examination, he would have to wait in the station for the arrival of the train. The wait could take several days and food and water were not necessarily provided by the station. If the emigrant didn’t yet have a ship ticket, he may be able to purchase one at the border station. Of course all the agents at the train station and border station would have been anxious to make extra money off the confused immigrants and tickets would be over-priced.
In 1907, the US Congress formed a special committee to investigate the European immigration process. Called the Dillingham Commission, this report contains a lot of interesting information regarding immigration in the early 1900s: http://books.google.com/books?id=cmVE8ZNtDXAC&pg=PA97&lpg=PA97&dq=f+missler+bremen+agent+immigration&source=bl&ots=TS0QARLdhH&sig=LElIHHj8fvMQVXo3tDELlcw08YQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=DMYmT5-cKMigtwf27cmgCw&ved=0CEUQ6AEwBQ#v=twopage&q&f=false
If Andreas had decided to navigate through the proper channels, he would have needed to acquire the necessary paperwork and pass through the examination processes at the border station, which could have been a very complicated and difficult process. The examination itself probably wouldn’t have been a problem; the family moved through examinations later in Germany
The real problem for the Ratzlaffs regarding crossing the border legally may have been the fact that according to his internal passport, Andreas was due to return to the Forestry Service on January 1, 1909. He would probably have had to show the internal passport at any Russian border stations and the fact that he still had duty pending may have been enough for him to have been turned back.
As it stood, the Ratzlaffs hired smugglers to take them across the border. As we saw previously, the Ratzlaff party would probably have wanted to detrain at Iwanie Puste to avoid the border station in Radziwilow. In this case, they would have had about a 15 mile walk to the border and about 5 more miles to reach Brody , Austria-Hungary
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