Ellis Island, in Upper New York Bay, was the gateway for millions of immigrants to the United States as the nation's busiest immigrant inspection station from 1892 until 1954. The island was greatly expanded with land reclamation between 1892 and 1934. Before that, the much smaller original island was the site of Fort Gibson and later a naval magazine. The island was made part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument in 1965, and has hosted a museum of immigration since 1990. Long considered part of New York, a 1998 United States Supreme Court decision found that most of the island is in New Jersey. The south side of the island, home to the Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital, is closed to the general public and the object of restoration efforts spearheaded by Save Ellis Island.

Angel Island Immigration Station was an immigrant processing facility on Angel Island, in the San Francisco Bay. It opened in 1910 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is now the site of a museum. The museum and grounds were renovated and reopened to the public in February 2009. President Barack Obama, on the day of his inauguration declared January 21 as national Angel Island Day in honor of all the immigrants who suffered long periods of detention before they were admitted to America.

Uncle Sam, behind high wall marked "Literacy Test" which is spiked with pen points, says to immigrant family below: "You're welcome, if you can climb it".

U.S. inspectors examining eyes of immigrants, Ellis Island, New York Harbor

Goodbye to old Ireland!--Passengers on tender at Queenstown, going out to an ocean-liner.

Steerage Passengers Taking Life Easy on an Ocean Liner. Immigrants. Open deck with bridge in background 3 funnels in center, immigrants walking and seated at sides of image.

“Don’t Bite The Hand That Feeds You” Lyrics, 1915

Last night, as I lay a sleeping,A wonderful dream came to me,

I saw Uncle Sammy weeping,For his children from over the sea.

They had come to him, friendless and starving,When from tyrant’s oppression they fled,

But now they abuse and revile him,Till at last in just anger he said:

-Chorus-If you don’t like your Uncle Sammy,

Then go back to your home o’er the sea,To the land from where you came,

Whatever be its name;But don’t be ungrateful to me!

If you don’t like the stars in Old Glory,I you don’t like the Red, White, and Blue,Then don’t act like the cur in the story,Don’t bite the hand that’s feeding you.

You recall the day you landed,How I welcomed you to my shore,

When you came here empty handed,And allegiance forever you swore.

I gathered you close to my bosom,Of food and of clothes you got both,

So, when in trouble I need you,You will have to remember your oath.

-Chorus-

“Our Immigrants at Ellis Island” by Mrs. Francis E. Clark, 1912

The Inspection.

Let the arrival of the ship, with the number of immigrants, be announced to the officer in charge, and let the order be given that they shall be brought in. Have a special officer conduct them to the platform in groups, a family, or two or three individuals, or sometimes a single person.

1. A general inspection, as they pass through a gateway, by a surgeon of the marine hospital, who take a general look from feet to head; he is on the lookout for contagious skin-diseases or for any deformity. If he sees anything suspicious in any one, that person is marked with a chalk mark and sent to the detention-room, after being marked “F.I.,” for a more careful examination.

2. A careful inspection of the eyes by another uniformed doctor, who is looking especially for trachoma or any contagious eye-disease. Those whose cases seem doubtful are also marked with chalk and sent to the detention-room.

3. Inspection by a matron, who questions all the women, and eyes them sharply, and detains any who seem to her to be doubtful characters or to need special help such as she can give.

4. The immigrants pass up to the table of the inspector, who asks them the questions given below. He has before him the papers on which are the answers they have already given to the same questions at the place where they embarked. If their answers are satisfactory, and if they agree with those on the paper before him, they are marked “O.K. for New York,” or “O.K. for the Railroad,” or “O.K. for the West,” or wherever they are going.If any immigrants are not able to give satisfactory answers to the questions, or if for any reason the inspector does not dare to admit him on his own responsibility, they are marked “F.I.” (Further Investigation), or “S.I.” (Special Inquiry), and are sent to the detention-room.

Something certainly ought to be done, and done at once, to restrict, or at least to sift, thoroughly an immigration which furnishes more than half our paupers, while it supplies only one-sixth of our total white population...the

law is evidently utterly helpless as it now stands in shutting out paupers, who are coming here in greatly increased numbers.

Source:  Henry Cabot Lodge The Census and Immigration (1893).

He sees a thousand idle Americans and a like number of foreigners slaving for 80 or 90 cents a day. He sees the Americans sending their children to school, supporting churches, living in decent houses, trying to be cleanly, and to wear presentable clothing. He also sees the scum of Europe taking the place the former, content to swarm in shanties like hogs, to contract scurvy by a steady diet of the cheapest salt pork, to suffer sore eyes and bodies rather than buy a towel and a washtub, to endure typhoid fever rather than undergo the expense of the most primitive sanitary device.

Source:  Henry Hood The Forum Magazine (1892).

These immigrants adopt the language of the native American, they wear his clothes, steal his name and they are beginning to take his women, but they seldom adopt his religion or understand his ideals.

Source:  Madison Grant The Passing of the Great Race (1916).

pauper: a very poor person

shanty: small, poorly built shackscurvy: disease from a lack of vitamin Cprimitive: not developed

European Emigration to the U.S. 1851-1860

Potato Famine: The “Famine Irish” represented the first major influx of Irish immigration into America.

Between 1845 and 1850, a devastating fungus destroyed Ireland’s potato crop. During these years, starvation and related diseases claimed as many as a million lives, while perhaps twice that number of Irish immigrated – 500,000 of them to the United States, where they accounted for more than half of all immigrants in the 1840s. Between 1820 and 1975, 4.7 million Irish settled in America. In 2002, more than 34 million Americans considered themselves to be of Irish ancestry, making Irish Americans the country’s second-largest ethnic group.

Although the Irish potato famine receded in 1850, the effects of the famine continued to spur Irish emigration into the 20th century. Still facing poverty and disease, the Irish set out for America where they reunited with relatives who had fled at the height of the famine.

European Emigration to the U.S 1861-1870

The growing population of Prussia and the independent German states outstripped the available land. Industrialization could not provide decent-paying jobs, and political rights were limited. Dissatisfied with the lack of land and opportunity, many Germans left.

Many Germans were fed up with the lack of opportunity and the denial of political and civil rights in some German states, particularly after the failure of the revolutions of 1848. During the peak period from roughly 1860-90, there were only three years in which Germans were not the largest nationality among the new arrivals in America. All told, five million Germans came to the United States in the 19th century, and today more Americans consider themselves of German ancestry than any other group.

European Emigration to the U.S 1871-1880

In 1871, Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismark united the German states to form the German Empire. Whereas previous German immigrants had been mainly from Northern Germany, under Protestant Prussian rule, they came from southern, predominately Catholic, states.

Unlike some immigrant groups, the Germans settled widely across the country. German immigrants were concentrated most heavily in the Great Lakes states and in the Midwest.

European Emigration to the U.S 1881-1890

A new source of Irish emigration resulted from more crop failures and increasing political and religious strife. Emigration from England (and to a lesser extent Scotland and Wales) continued, mainly by skilled laborers seeking work in America’s industries and farmers seeking land.

The great wave of European immigration that began around 1880 overlapped with the rise of major steamship lines that competed for immigrant fares. By 1900, the average price of a steerage ticket was about $30. Many immigrants traveled on prepaid tickets sent by relatives already in America; others bought tickets from the small army of traveling salesmen employed by the steamship lines. Before boarding their ship, emigrants went through a procession that included being bathed and “de-loused.”

European Emigration to the U.S 1891-1900

Italian emigration was fueled by dire poverty. Life in Southern Italy, including the islands of Sicily and Sardinia, offered landless peasants little more than hardship, exploitation, and violence. Even the soil was poor, yielding little, while malnutrition and disease were widespread.

By 1870, there were about 25,000 Italian immigrants in America, many of them Northern Italian refugees from the wars that accompanied the Risorgimento – the struggle for Italian unification and independence from foreign rule. Between around 1800 and 1924, more than 4 million Italians immigrated to the United States, half of them between 1900 and 1910 alone – the majority fleeing grinding rural poverty in Southern Italy and Sicily. Today, Americans of Italian ancestry are the nation’s fifth-largest ethnic group.

European Emigration to the U.S. 1901-1910

The anti-Semitic violence of the Russian pogroms drove millions of Jews out of the Russian Empire. In the Austro-Hungarian Empire, people emigrated to escape army conscription and ethnic tensions, such as the forced assimilation of Hungary’s minority groups.

The word pogrom literally means “riot” in Russian. Commonly, the term describes the semi-official persecution of Jews in the Russian Empire that began in the early 1880s. With their situation in Russia basically hopeless, many Jewish families left, the vast majority intent on reaching America. Ultimately nearly two million people emigrated.

Kilkelly(Irish Folk Song)

Kilkelly, Ireland, 18 and 60, my dear and loving son JohnYour good friend the schoolmaster Pat McNamara's so good as to write these words down.Your brothers have all gone to find work in England, the house is so empty and sadThe crop of potatoes is sorely infected, a third to a half of them bad.And your sister Brigid and Patrick O'Donnell are going to be married in June.Your mother says not to work on the railroad and be sure to come on home soon.

Kilkelly, Ireland, 18 and 70, my dear and loving son JohnHello to your Mrs and to your 4 children, may they grow healthy and strong.Michael has got in a wee bit of trouble, I suppose he never will learn.Because of the dampness there's no turf to speak of and now we have nothing to burn.And Brigid is happy, you named a child for her although she's got six of her own.You say you found work, but you don't say what kind or when you will be coming home.

Kilkelly, Ireland, 18 and 80, dear Michael and John, my sonsI'm sorry to give you the very sad news that your dear old mother has gone.We buried her down at the church in Kilkelly, your brothers and Brigid were there.You don't have to worry, she died very quickly, remember her in your prayers.And it's so good to hear that Michael's returning, with money he's sure to buy landFor the crop has been poor and the people are selling at any price that they can.

Kilkelly, Ireland, 18 and 90, my dear and loving son JohnI suppose I must be close on eighty, it's thirty years since you're gone.Because of all of the money you send me, I'm still living out on my own.Michael has built himself a fine house and Brigid's daughters have grown.Thank you for sending your family picture, they're lovely young women and men.

You say that you might even come for a visit, what joy to see you again.

Kilkelly, Ireland, 18 and 92, my dear brother JohnI'm sorry I didn't write sooner to tell youthat father passed on.

He was living with Brigid, she says he was cheerful and healthy right down to the end.Ah, you should have seen him play with the grandchildren of Pat McNamara, your friend.And we buried him alongside of mother, down at the Kilkelly churchyard.He was a strong and a feisty old man, considering his life was so hard.And it's funny the way he kept talking about you, he called for you at the end.Oh, why don't you think about coming to visit, we'd all love to see you again.

-------------------------------------------------------------------recorded by Moloney, O'Connell & Keane on "Kilkelly" (1988)copywrite Green Linnet Music 1983

Give me your tired, your poor,Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door

Source:  Emma Lazarus, Statue of Liberty.

Nothing more manifestly distinguishes the Anglo-Saxon than his intense and persistent energy; and he is developing in the United States an energy which, in eager activity and effectiveness is peculiarly American...Our social institutions are stimulating. In Europe the various ranks of society are, like the strata of the earth, fixed and fossilized...Here society is like the waters of the sea, mobile...everyone is free to become whatever he can make of himself.

Source:  Josiah Strong Our Country (1885).