Ellis Island is situated in New York Harbour, Jersey City, and is the place that all the immigrants passed through when they came to settle in America in the nineteenth century and up to the middle of the twentieth century. The island is made up of more than 32,000 acres of land, 83 percent of which was created from the landfill that earlier authorities had used to extend the island. Since 1808 the site has been owned and managed by the US federal government.
In 1892 Ellis Island was opened as the federal immigration station and closed for this purpose in 1954. During that period 12 million people passed through the US Bureau of Immigration. An immigration act passed in 1924 placed severe limitations on the number of immigrants coming into the United States. Most immigrants were thereafter processed through overseas embassies and only refugees and displaced persons passed through Ellis Island. A third of America’s population today can trace their ancestry back to an Ellis Island immigrant.
When immigrants arrived at Ellis Island they could expect the process to take anywhere from two to five hours. The hopeful immigrants had to answer a series of questions before they were allowed to enter, anyone who was sick was either sent home or held in a hospital on Ellis Island. There was a problem with the hospital facilities on the island because more than 3,000 immigrants died while they were held there.
Even though they had made the trip as far as Ellis Island, certain immigrants were sent home, particularly if they were only capable of low level work as it was feared that they might prove to be a financial responsibility for the country. Anyone with a chronic disease or a criminal record and anyone who was judged to be insane were sent back to their countries of origin. Many of the immigrants were Jews trying to escape the various pogroms across Eastern Europe; those that were sent back often faced further persecution and death.
Those people who were not admitted into the country and their families, called Ellis Island the Island of Tears, because they had travelled thousands of miles across the ocean only to be sent back. During the 1st World War some of the buildings on Ellis Island were sabotaged by the Germans and damaged. Following the 1924 Immigration Act, Ellis Island became largely a deportation processing and detention centre.
Towards the end of World War 2 and in its immediate aftermath, Ellis Island was used to house people known as enemy aliens. During that time 7000 Italians, Germans and Japanese were held on Ellis Island. In recent years buildings on the island have been refurbished to house a museum. The island is accessible to the public via Communipaw Terminal in Liberty State Park or from Battery Park to the far south of Manhattan. Probably because of the hope and the misery that Ellis Island produced in those people who wished to enter the United States, it has served as a source of inspiration for film makers, writers and artists alike.