Ellis Island Experience

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As part of my back east trip over Memorial Day, a friend and I made our way to Liberty Park, Ellis Island, and the statue from France. Although the prior day might have been an easier day to visit the islands based on reports, I think we chose the perfect day to appropriately experience these islands as they ought to be. Before I get on with the particulars of why, allow me to explain some things. Although they demanded photo ID, it was never requested, and it would have been nice to know how long the wait actually might be since the line was deceptively short, as it wound its way down the south side of the building out of sight of the entrance. It might have been nice to know that if you order online you can skip ahead in the line.

You begin your visitation of the islands in reverse to that order in which the 12 million immigrants who passed these shores so did. As you first enter the complex, you walk along the tracks, now almost retaken by the forest, where immigrants faced their final farewells and made way into an undiscovered country. It represents the third degree of separation. They began by leaving all they knew behind in their home countries, the people, the customs, and the neighbors. Along the journey, they made new friends and lost others who were dear on the month-long sea voyage. After Ellis, they parted ways with these as well to head to different parts of the Americas, and it is here that we came together with strange neighbors as they might at the time.

No sooner than we set foot on Ellis Island than we felt strange. At first it was a mixture of relief and sadness at the same time as we became aware of feelings not our own or part of the exhibits themselves. In one room, I felt dizzy and nauseated and had to leave. We felt as if the building were swaying, as if at anchor, but everyone else seemed quite unaffected by it. I can only imagine how much worse the feeling might have been in the buildings opposite, where the sick and dying were quarantined. Oddly juxtaposed to this, there were children playing ball and snack vendors, most of the tourists quite unaware of any emotions beyond their own, forgive the word, morbid curiosity at the exhibits. Then, like the migrants did, we saw the Statue only from the ship before we made our way south to Baltimore.

Ellis Island is a solemn place. Although the people who came through here came to America for better prospects, it was not a place of happiness and jubilance. It was a bureaucratic nightmare. The red tape made them wait in lines, speak to strangers, and nervous for their futures. Would they be allowed entry? Would they still have their luggage? If you look at the exhibits, some of the pictures taken when the facility was first procured to make a monument represent a more honest truth than the clean and washed halls that a visitor actually sees. Ellis Island threatened to hold them back from their hopes and dreams with New York and all of America beyond in their sights.

The only thing stronger than duct tape is Red Tape. The Red Tape of the experience helps guarantee that you can have an authentic Ellis Island Experience if you so choose. I am not sure that most of the children and students or the proud locals who know how to game the system get the reality of this place, but I am grateful I went when mature enough to feel what it might have been like for those people. Some of my ancestors are among them.