In this sweeping, often heart-wrenching epic, Vincent J.

and N.J.) - History, Immigrants - New York (State). This measured book helps to place in perspective discussionssure to matter to genealogists and those engaged in political discourseof Ellis Island and the idea of immigration as a privilege rather than a right. American Passage captures a time and a place unparalleled in American immigration and history, and articulates the dramatic and bittersweet accounts of the immigrants, officials, interpreters, and social reformers who all played an important role in Ellis Islands chronicle. Publication date 2009 Topics Ellis Island Immigration Station (N.Y. With a focus on how 'actual people created, interpreted, and executed immigration laws,' Cannato maintains that regulation, which sometimes degraded into restriction, formed part of Progressive era reform and growing federal involvement to safeguard what was deemed the public interest. doi: 10.1017/S0022050711000179 Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to America. From eyewitness accounts, Cannato weaves together a poignant testament to the hopes and fears of 'huddled masses yearning to breathe free.' 'Never before has Ellis Island been written about with such scholarly care and historical wisdom.

Cannato writes that understaffing resulted in only perfunctory screening for mental, physical, and moral traits that might have made newcomers public charges, and he disabuses readers of the fallacy that examiners, rather than steamship officials or immigrants bent on assimilation, changed entrants' last names. Cannato delivers a definitive history of Americas landmark port of entry. He follows its reincarnation as a detention center for wartime aliens and as a monument and museum, which he admits may celebrate uncritically 'ethnic triumphalism' and upward mobility.

Using a variety of primary sources, Cannato (The Ungovernable City) describes Ellis Island as a place and as an experience for the approximately 12 million immigrants who passed through it from 1892 to 1924. About the Book By bringing us the inspiring and sometimes unsettling tales of Ellis Island, Vincent Cannato s American Passage helps us understand who we.

American Passage by Vincent J. Cannato