Ellis Island was an island on the New York Harbor. It was used for and inspections place for immigrants. A lot of immigrants were kept at Ellis Island for about a day or two before they were inspected. Even though they were kept there for a while most of them were allowed to go into the U.S.
The inspection that each immigrant had to go through was about five hours long. They had to pass a physical inspection and anyone who had like a cold that was contagious was sent home. The main health disease was tuberculosis. After they passed that they had to go to the government inspector and he would go over documents and asked the immigrants questions to see if they met legal requirements to come to the United States. Some of the requirements were that they couldn’t have committed a felony, they had to show that they could work, and that they had some money.Ellis Island was created by Edward Lippincott Tilton and William Alciphron Boring. They got a gold medal at the Paris Exposition for building Ellis Island’s building. It opened in 1892 and closed in 1954.1907 was the biggest year for immigrants that passed through Ellis Island. There were 1,004,756 immigrants that passed through that year. The daily high was in that year with an estimate of 11,747 immigrants that passed through that day.Ellis Island was the main immigration inspection place in the United States from 1892 to 1924. There were estimates of about 17 million immigrants that went through Ellis Island.
A man, Louis Adamic, described the night he spent at Ellis Island. He said that there weren’t enough blankets and he shivered all night. He listened to the dreams of others in many different languages. The building was so big. The dining room seated 1,000 people.During World War I, the building on Ellis Island suffered a little damage. The ceiling needed to be repaired. There were fewer immigrants who came through during the war, but soon after the immigrants returned.
In 1924 the Immigration Act of 1924 was passed and it didn’t allow immigrants to come into the United States from overseas. Ellis Island then became a deporting place.Ellis Island today is a museum and you have to take a ferry in Jersey City, New Jersey to get to it. From Ellis Island you can take a ferry to The Statue of Liberty.I think that Ellis Island was very important to our country. If we didn’t have some kind of requirements and just let anybody in think what our country would be like today. If people with diseases came into the United States some of us might not be here because our ancestors might have gotten sick and died.
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