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I would forget about the "illegal immigrant" claim. It didn't take much to get into the US or Canada before WWI. Because both countries were desirous for immigrants a large part of their populations were "aliens". An alien is just a non-citizen.
There are certain peculiarities that most of us come across over and over. One is various birth dates. In Europe people celebrated their "name's day" (the feast of their patron saint) rather than their birthday. For men the year of birth was important because that determined when the army would get them. But a precise date didn't mean much.
Another is date of immigration. It may have been the stress of starting a new life but a lot of folks claimed various years as their date of arrival. And the longer they were here the less likely they were to remember it.
The US Census was, basically, a nose counting operation. The US Congress came up with a few items they wanted to know about ( can you read/write?, how mwny children have you born?, what is your occupation?, etc.) but the precision or the correctness of what interviewees said was never authenticated. A census entry can be very helpful but it isn't a proof positve document.
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