American Passage Quotes

“Between 1900 and 1907, 63 percent of all immigrants barred from the country were kept out because officials”
― Vincent J. Cannato, American Passage: The History of Ellis Island

“On March 27, 1907, 16,000 immigrants entered New York Harbor; May 2 brought 21,755. Ellis Island had to process over a million people in 1907 alone, which came to over 2,700 per day, every day.”
― Vincent J. Cannato, American Passage: The History of Ellis Island

“From 1904 to 1914, almost 25,000 immigrants would be debarred for trachoma,”
― Vincent J. Cannato, American Passage: The History of Ellis Island

“Over 857,000 immigrants arrived during Williams’s first year, of whom about 60 percent were Italians, Jews, and Slavs. These new immigrants were overwhelmingly male (including 89 percent of all Croatians and 81 percent of all Italians), overwhelmingly unskilled (including 96 percent of all Ruthenians and 89 percent of all Lithuanians), and mostly between the ages of fourteen and forty-five.”
― Vincent J. Cannato, American Passage: The History of Ellis Island

“If Washington was the father of the country and Lincoln the savior of the union, then Theodore Roosevelt was the philosopher of the modern nation. He believed that immigration was central to the question of American identity.”
― Vincent J. Cannato, American Passage: The History of Ellis Island

“By whom was passage paid?” “Ever in prison or almshouse or supported by charity?” “Whether a polygamist” “Whether under contract, express or implied to labor in the United States”
― Vincent J. Cannato, American Passage: The History of Ellis Island

“Over 8 million immigrants passed through Castle Garden between 1855 and 1890.”
― Vincent J. Cannato, American Passage: The History of Ellis Island

“Castle Garden was a state operation, created largely at the behest of immigrant aid societies, designed to protect and aid new arrivals to America. Ellis Island was a federal operation, created in response to the national uproar at perceived changes in the type and nature of immigration at the end of the nineteenth century.”
― Vincent J. Cannato, American Passage: The History of Ellis Island

“Newspaper headlines in 1891 screamed: “Lunatics and Idiots Shipped from Europe” and “The World’s Dumping Ground.”
― Vincent J. Cannato, American Passage: The History of Ellis Island

“Every independent nation has, and must have, an absolute right to determine who shall come into the country, and secondly, who shall become a part of its citizenship, and on what terms….”
― Vincent J. Cannato, American Passage: The History of Ellis Island

“smacks of discrimination and insensitivity,”
― Vincent J. Cannato, American Passage: The History of Ellis Island

“Sabbath Desecration”
― Vincent J. Cannato, American Passage: The History of Ellis Island