More or less free until about 1875, the admission of foreigners onto American soil was gradually subjected to restrictive measures, initially defined and applied locally (by port or municipal authorities) and later centralized in a bureau of immigration responsible to the federal government. The opening of the Ellis Island reception center in 1892 marked the end of virtually unregulated immigration and the advent of official, institutionalized and, so to speak, industrialized immigration. Between 1892 and 1924, nearly sixteen million people passed through Ellis Island, at a rate of five to ten thousand a day. The majority spent a few hours there; no more than two to three percent were turned away.

Essentially, Ellis Island was a sort of factory for manufacturing Americans,* a factory for transforming emigrants into immigrants; an American-style factory, as quick and efficient as a sausage factory in Chicago. You put an Irishman, a Ukranian Jew, or an Italian from Apulia into one end of the production line and at the other end — after vaccination, disinfection, and examination of his eyes and pockets — an American emerged. But at the same time, as the years passed, admission became more and more strictly controlled. Gradually the Golden Door swung shut on the legendary America where turkeys fell onto your plate fully cooked, where the streets were paved with gold, where the land belonged to everyone. Immigration slowed down, in fact, after 1914, initially because of the war, later because of a series of discriminatory measures both qualitative (the Literacy Act) and quantitative (the quota system) that virtually denied entrance to the “wretched refuse” and “huddled masses” whom, according to Emma Lazarus, the Statue of Liberty was meant to welcome. In 1924 the responsibility for immigration procedures was transferred to the American consulates in Europe; Ellis Island was reduced to the status of detention center for those immigrants whose papers were not in order.

During and immediately after World War II, Ellis Island fulfilled its implicit destiny by becoming a prison for individuals suspected of anti-American activities (Italian fascists, pro-Nazi Germans, communists, and supposed communists). It was definitively closed in 1954. Today it has become a historic landmark, like Mount Rushmore, Old Faithful, and Bartholdi’s statue, managed by Rangers in Boy Scout hats who conduct tours through it four times a day, twelve months a year.

Not all immigrants were obliged to pass through Ellis Island. Those with enough money to travel first or second class were quickly examined on board ship by a doctor and an immigration officer and could land without further ado. The federal government assumed that these immigrants had the wherewithal to look after themselves and were not likely to become wards of the state. The immigrants who went to Ellis Island were those who traveled third class, that is, in steerage, which in fact meant below the water line in the hold, in vast dormitories not only without windows but practically without ventilation or lighting, where two thousand passengers were crammed together on tiers of straw mattresses. The trip cost ten dollars in the 1880s and thirty-five dollars after World War I. It lasted about three weeks. The food consisted of potatoes and salt herring.