Ellis Island Screening Guidelines
“The excitability of the southern Italian and the Hebrew are well known. It is easy to excite in them almost maniacal action. The stolidity and indifference of the Slav would suggest melancholia if presented by the Hebrew. The sanity of an Englishman would be questioned if on slight provocation he evinced the external manifestation of emotion that would occur in the Sicilian. The German girl takes her examination seriously and her sanity would at once be suspected if she saw the same reason for light remark and laughter as the girl from Ireland. Some races are extremely emotional, others slow; and unless the normal is known it is impossible to pick the abnormal. In short, . . . the first essential is to determine the race or type of individual and to have a good knowledge of his racial characteristics.”
-1914 Immigration Guidelines
“Liberty Enlightening the World” is the giant statue of a woman holding a blazing torch that grades New YorkHarbor. To millions of immigrants who marveled at the statues as they arrived in the United States, “Miss Liberty” became a symbol of the freedom and opportunity this country offered. Emma Lazarus wrote this poem about the statue in 1883. It was inscribed on a bronze plaque inside the pedestal of the monument in 1903.
The New Colossus
By Emma Lazarus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “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-tost to me.
I lift my land beside the golden door!”
Excerpted from: “Who is an American? The Immigrant Experience in American History” by Peter Feinmen
“Samuel F. B. Morse was upset, very upset. The Hudson Valley was being overrun by the wrong kind of people. Everything he hoped to accomplish was being threatened by the new immigrants who were overwhelming the natives (who now included Dutch and Germans as well as English) of good stock. Here is how the painter and future inventor of the telegraph described the situation in Foreign Conspiracy against the Liberties of the United States (1835) based on a series of articles he had written for the New York Observer:
Foreign immigrants are flocking to our shores in increased numbers, two thirds at least are Roman Catholics, and of the most ignorant classes, and thus pauperism and crime are alarmingly increased. . . The great body of emigrants to this country are the hard-working, mentally neglected poor of Catholic countries in Europe, who have left a land where they were enslaved, for one of freedom. . . They are not fitted to act with the judgment in the political affairs of their new country, like native citizens, educated from their infancy in the principles and habits of our institutions. Most of them are too ignorant to act at all for themselves, and expected to be guided wholly by others [the priests]. Morse’s ire (anger) against a supposed great papal conspiracy was, if not a majority opinion at the time, very popular. . . Morse called for naturalization laws to prevent the lifeboat of the world from capsizing: “Our naturalization laws were never intended to convert this land into the almshouse of Europe.” Morse didn’t want Europe’s tired, its poor and its enslaved masses incapable of being free – he didn’t want the Catholics. . .
Name ______Date ______
Mr. Valenti & Mrs. Longobardi
Reactions to Immigration
Document Description / Positive or Negative Response? / How do you know? (use evidence from the document)Focus Question: What arguments did nativists use against the wave of “new” immigrants arriving to this country?