Read this excerpt from Immigrant Kids.Now the examinations began. First the immigrants were examined by two doctors of the United States Health Service. One doctor looked for physical and mental abnormalities. When a case aroused suspicion, the immigrant received a chalk mark on the right shoulder for further inspection, L for lameness, H for heart, X for mental defects, and so on.
Read this central idea found in Immigrant Kids, by Russell Freedman.Inspection officers on ships and workers at Ellis Island often treated immigrants poorly on their journey to a new life.
Read the excerpt from Immigrant Kids, and then answer the question.Most immigrants passed through Ellis Island in about one day. Carrying all their worldly possessions, they left the examination hall and waited on the dock for the ferry that would take them to Manhattan, a mile away. Some of them still faced long journeys overland before they reached their final destination. Others would head directly for the teeming immigrant neighborhoods of New York City.
Read this excerpt from Immigrant Kids.The writer Angelo Pellegrini has recalled his own family's detention at Ellis Island:We lived there for three days -- Mother and we five children, the youngest of whom was three years old. Because of the rigorous physical examination that we had to submit to, particularly of the eyes, there was this terrible anxiety that one of us might be rejected. And if one of us was, what would the rest of the family do?
Read this excerpt from Immigrant Kids, by Russell Freedman.My mother, my stepfather, my brother Giuseppe, and my two sisters, Liberta and Helvetia, all of us together, happy that we had come through the storm safely, clustered on the foredeck for fear of separation and looked with wonder on this miraculous land of our dreams.Giuseppe and I held tightly to Stepfather's hands, while Liberta and Helvetia clung to Mother. Passengers all about us were crowding against the rail. Jabbered conversations, sharp cries, laughs and cheers -- a steadily rising din filled the air. Mothers and fathers lifted up babies so that they too could see, off to the left, the Statue of Liberty.
Read this excerpt from Immigrant Kids, by Russell Freedman.Edward Corsi, who later became United States Commissioner of Immigration, was a ten-year-old Italian immigrant when he sailed into New York harbor in 1907:My first impressions of the New World will always remain etched in my memory, particularly that hazy October morning when I first saw Ellis Island. The steamer Florida, fourteen days out of Naples, filled to capacity with 1600 natives of Italy, had weathered one of the worst storms in our captain's memory; and glad we were, both children and grown-ups, to leave the open sea and come at last through the Narrows into the Bay.My mother, my stepfather, my brother Giuseppe, and my two sisters, Liberta and Helvetia, all of us together, happy that we had come through the storm safely, clustered on the foredeck for fear of separation and looked with wonder on this miraculous land of our dreams.
Read this central idea found in Immigrant Kids, by Russell Freedman.Immigrant families made many sacrifices to come to the United States.
Read this central idea found in Immigrant Kids.The inspection process at Ellis Island was frightening for new immigrants.
Read this excerpt from Immigrant Kids, by Russell Freedman.But the journey was not yet over. Before they could be admitted to the United States, immigrants had to pass through Ellis Island, which became the nation's chief immigrant processing center in 1892. There they would be questioned and examined. Those who could not pass all the exams would be detained; some would be sent back to Europe. And so their arrival in America was filled with great anxiety. Among the immigrants, Ellis Island was known as "Heartbreak Island."
Read this central idea found in Immigrant Kids.Immigrant travelers endured miserable ship voyages because they were so anxious to get to America.
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