Quotes About Ellis Island

Beginning with a trip out to Ellis Island, I saw for myself where thousands of European immigrants took their first steps onto American soil, bringing with them nothing but their ambition: people such as Erich von Stroheim and Adolph Zukor.

And your husband? Where is he?" I was tempted to tell him it was none of his business. After all, we'd paid for the tickets, hadn't we? "He's in New York. Waiting for us." "He'd better be," the man said. "If he doesn't come to collect you from Ellis Island, they'll just send you straight home again. They don't want women and children who'll be a burden on the state.

At Ellis Island, I mean, you didn't go there if you arrived in first class. It was only the poorest, the people in the worst shape.

Most émigrés arrived at Ellis Island in New York, invariably confused and exhausted from an unpleasant and dangerous voyage. Health inspectors checked every immigrant, and while the inspections were not particularly rigid, people were routinely refused entry. Often it was a child, leaving the mother with a sort of Sophie's choice—whether to go back to Europe with the rejected son or daughter or stay with her husband and other children.

The family was herded through Castle Garden, the first immigration station established in the United States, predating Ellis Island by four decades.8

Well, I do want to talk about the challenges at the border. New Mexico, if you will, has become an Ellis Island and we want to take that issue seriously and we're not going to shy away that it presents significant challenges.

I know very little about my great grandparents, who came through Ellis Island in the early twentieth century, settled in Baltimore, and spoke only Yiddish.

I always remember to go on the Staten Island Ferry because it's the most amazing view of New York. And it's free! You see Ellis Island, and it conjures up something of that great moment: you know, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. It's staggering.

Ellis Island lies in New York Harbor 1,300 feet from Jersey City, New Jersey, and one mile from the tip of Manhattan. At the time of the first European settlement, it was mostly mud, sand, and oyster shells, which nearly disappeared at high tide.

Americans love the story of the immigrant who comes through Ellis Island with no possessions but struggles to success and happiness. It is the story that most defines us, and we tell it to ourselves over and over. But for the real immigrants, each story was different, and the happiness of the ending changed with every telling.

My grandparents used to tell me stories about their trip to Ellis Island from Russia and life on the Lower East Side of New York.

They come through Ellis Island, where Giorgio becomes Joe, Pappavasiliu becomes Palmer, Evangelos becomes Evans, Goldsmith becomes Smith or Gold, and Avakian becomes King. So, with a painless change of name, and in the twinkling of an eye, one becomes a white American.

The diversity in the CNN makeup room - it's like Ellis Island! No, it's like Noah's Ark: there are two of everything.

My grandparents, they came through Ellis Island in 1923, and you know, I'd heard all the stories.

My hands are clammy. It's a terrible kind of anticipation, not knowing what we're walking into. The last time I felt this way I was in the waiting rooms at Ellis Island.

My hands are clammy. It's a terrible kind of anticipation, not knowing what we're walking into. The last time I felt this way I was in the waiting rooms at Ellis Island. We were tired, and Mam wasn't well, and we didn't know where we were going or what kind of life we would have. But now I can see all I took for granted: I had a family. I believed that whatever happened, we'd be together. A policeman blows a whistle

You like Nick a lot, don't you, Nora? Dorothy asked. He's an old Greek fool, but I'm used to him. Charles isn't a Greek name. It's Charalambides, I explained. When the old man came over, the mugg that put him through Ellis Island said Charalambides was too long...too much trouble to write... and whittled it down to Charles. It was all right with the old man; they could have called him X so they let him in.

No, my family is Russian, Georgian, via Ellis Island.

You, the Spirit of the Settlement ... Not understand that America is God's crucible, the great melting-pot where all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming Here, you stand, good folk, think I, when I see them at Ellis Island, here you stand in your fifty groups, with your fifty languages and histories, and your fifty blood hatreds and rivalries...