Essay On Ellis Island

Ellis Island was an extremely important part of United States History. It is where most Europeans came through by boat into the United States. Ellis Island was important to immigrants too, this was because when they entered New York harbor they saw the Statue of Liberty, which is a sign a United States freedom. The immigrants came to the United States for many reasons, oppression from their former countries, famine, economy, or sickness.

Sickness and having a low standard living are major problems with poorer countries. When their people moved to America they could potentially bring strange diseases to us. At the Ellis Island facilities in particular they tried to do their best at keeping deadly disease out of the countries by way a quarantines. Being quarantined is when a group of people are separated from others so that the disease doesn’t spread. I believe. I believe that it was necessary to have these facilities because the cost would be too great otherwise and that the Ellis Island staff did very well in accommodations of living for all the immigrants even though there were several outbreaks in the times it was open. I believe that this is true because of how long Ellis Island was active for even though they had many troubling incidences as well as because of the care that the staff put into making people safe. Unfortunately for the people these quarantines were also very terrifying, being alone with people you don’t know, having strange diseases, worried about death and seeing others die, I can only imagine how bad it was. Some people were forced to stay at the infirmary for weeks and months; they would be separated from their families and brought to different islands. For example, in 1758, Beldoe’s island or Liberty Islan...

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...e paper that Ellis Island facilities and staff did very well in trying to prevent extreme outbreaks of terrible and terrifying diseases. “Infectious diseases, particularly in epidemic forms, commonly trigger retributive and discriminatory instincts, so that actual quarantines often impose inhumane, stigmatizing, or even penal treatment upon persons who are confined based on caprice or even prejudice. But well-run quarantines confine only those whose continued integration in the general population has been reasonably adjudged to expose others to infection and, moreover, impose no burdens beyond those necessary for protecting against this harm.”[4]. These quarantines for the good of the people and for the good of the country, without them most of the people in the United states probably never would have been born due to having ancestors killed from spreading disease.