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Ellis Island was 'the door to America' which was opened on January 1 st, 1892. Immigrants came here from their countries to stay in ours. It was a major immigration station for the United States from 1892 to 1943. It has been part of the Statue of Liberty since 1965.
Between 1880 and 1900 9 million immigrants arrived in America, which was the largest number of arrivals in a 20 year period. The immigrants mostly stayed in the New England areas, such as New York and Massachusetts. This alarmed older Americans, because they feared that the country and system would fail because of the new 'impurities' in the land. In other words the shift in nationalities.
The first immigrants to come to Ellis Island were from Ireland, Germany, England, and Scandinavian countries. By 1896, Italy, Russia, Poland, Spain, Greece, and Eastern Europe started to come, until 1924 when an immigration restriction law was imposed. This was a means of protecting the American wage that was earned. Congress also passed this act to provide for the examination of immigrants to exclude convicts, polygamists (which is someone who is married to two or more people at the same time), prostitutes, people suffering from diseases, an people liable to public charges. While on Ellis Island the immigrants had to go through many different tests and examinations. Doctors would check for diseases, and the slightest problems made the immigrants go back to their home countries.
The immigrants often came back on many attempts only to be sent out once again. They never gave up though, because they still kept coming for the 'American dream'. Immigrants needed money to come to America. Sometimes they would get their money from 'loan sharks'. Loan sharks are unlicensed lenders who will lend you money when no one else will. They often target unemployed people, immigrants, or lone parents.
The loan sharks would lend the immigrants money and they would recollect it along with a little profit from interest. Other times immigrants would get money from family already living here. Ellis Island could be heaven for one family, and hell for another. Many people were sent out, no matter what their age. Families were broken apart because some members would be sent back, and some were allowed to stay. There were many reasons motivating the immigrants to come to America.
A few of them were mainly being free, and having better jobs. So economic opportunity, and religious or political freedom. They wanted to be around a free atmosphere, where they didn't have to be controlled and follow rules. Another reason was because they wanted to be reunified with their family. Some of their family had already ventured out to America before them, and told them about America's benefits and they decided to follow along. America's land was cheap, and had an abundance of hiring jobs.
Once immigrants heard about this they were ecstatic and immediately planned on coming to America. For the abundance of jobs America was hyped up in many countries as the 'land of opportunity'. Really the motivation for immigrants coming to America can be summed up in two words; 'push' and 'pull'. The push is the need to leave their country in order to survive.
The pull is because they were attracted to the new way of life in America. Some of the struggles that some immigrants ran into was the loans that they had to pay off to the loan sharks. The payments kept getting bigger and they sometimes had to take out another loan to pay off the first loan. Another struggle a lot of immigrant families struggled was being taken advantage of. They didn't speak the language, so a lot of the time they were taken advantage of in working conditions and given lower wages. As a result of being taken advantage and having lower wages the families had to live off paycheck to paycheck, just to get.
Immigrants also couldn't really find suitable jobs. Basically immigrants had false illusions about America and they were ignorant on how the "free" America worked. The lower wages, lead to poor living conditions. They often got sick, so they couldn't pay for medical bills. Then came the loss of work, because they got sick, and needed rest. The working conditions weren't so great either.
That's where the immigrants were treated poorly, and it was dirty so they got sick from working. Basically they were doing slave labor, and getting payed an unreasonably low amount for their work. The Statue of Liberty has been around for decades, and has been the nations leading attractions. People from all over the world have come to see it. The Statue of Liberty is the very symbol of what America is all about. There is a Museum including descriptions, objects, and photographs about the arrival of millions of immigrants or new Americans.
They started building the statue in 1875 in France. In 1886 it was finally completed after being dismantled and shipped from Paris.
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Research essay sample on Statue Of Liberty Ellis Island