The golden door

On a small island in New York harbor stands a giant statue of a robed woman. She looks out to sea, her right arm holding a torch high in the air. She is the Statue of Liberty, one of the best-known landmarks in the world.

For millions of immigrants the Statue of Liberty has been their first sight of America. The story of the American people is a story of immigrants. More than 75 per cent of all the people in history who have ever left their homelands to live in another country have moved to the United States.

Between 1840 and 1860 more immigrants than ever before arrived. Most came from Europe. Poor crops, hunger and political unrest caused an estimated five million Europeans a year to leave the lands of their birth at this time. Moreof them went to the United States than to any other country.

Among these immigrants were many Irish people, German people, Italians, Poles, Greeks, Russians, Jewish people and others. So many immigrants wanted to enter the United States in the late 1800s that the government found it difficult to keep check on them. To control the situation it opened a special place of entry in New York harbor. This place was called Ellis Island. All intending immigrants were examined there before they were allowed to enter the United States. Ellis Island was opened in 1892. During its busiest times it dealt with almost 2.000 immigrants a day. Between its opening and 1954, when it closed its doors, more than twenty million people waited anxiously in its halls and corridors. Immigration officers asked these people questions to find out if they were criminals or mentally abnormal. Doctor examined them for disease.

The flood of immigrants worried many Americans. They accused immigrants of taking jobs away from American-born workers, of lowing standards of health and education, and of threatening the country's traditions and way of life by bringing in «un-American” political ideas like anarchism and communism.

In the I920s Congress passed laws to limit all kinds of immigration.