“i want to go home,
but home is the mouth of a shark
home is the barrel of the gun
and no one would leave home
unless home chased you to the shore.”

– excerpt from “Home” by Warsan Shire

A picture bride paired with her groom having only a photograph to identify him. A family fleeing famine and war at home looking for the best future for their children and grandchildren. Young people searching to recreate themselves and find the American Dream.  Between 1820 and 1920, 34 million immigrants came to the United States looking for freedom and prosperity. 

June is National Immigrant Heritage Month. Outside of indigenous groups and tribal nations that inhabited the land, the United States is a country of immigrants. One, two, three or fourteen generations back, there was a father or mother or grandparent that came to the country from afar to craft a new future.  In old family Bibles, on the back of photographs, in letters, there are stories of people journeying from a thousand ports across the globe for a thousand reasons to restart their lives in a new country that promises equal opportunity to all. A million different stories are told in thousands of different languages all searching for their own slight variations on the same future. 

While most people associated Ellis Island in New York as the primary port of entry for immigrants coming to the United States, processing close to 12 million immigrants and refugees, Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay was a busy U.S. Immigration Station on the West Coast from people traveling from Asia and across the Pacific Ocean. Angel Island was a port of entry but was also used as a detention center to prevent fraud and the spread of disease, so the “Angel Island of the East” often reinforced xenophobic stereotypes as well against communities like the Chinese immigrants who had the longest interrogations and detentions of any group coming through, particularly after the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. From these two ports of entry, we have thousands of traditions, dances, folktales, recipes, and histories that all have woven together to become an integral part of the fabric of our American story. No group is better than the other, no group worse. We are all Americans.

“Our attitude towards immigration reflects our faith in the American ideal. We have always believed it possible for men and women who start at the bottom to rise as far as the talent and energy allow. Neither race nor place of birth should affect their chances.”—Robert F. Kennedy, A Nation of Immigrants

Angel Island State Park offers up an archive of stories from some of the 500,000 immigrants from 80 countries who passed through their doors. Read and listen to their stories here: https://www.immigrant-voices.aiisf.org/