ELLIS ISLAND A HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN DREAM

At the turn of the 20th century, they crossed the Atlantic Ocean leaving a miserable, persecuted or uncertain existence in Europe for New York’s wide avenues, Brooklyn’s profitable gambling dens or Hollywood’s Highlights. Like 12 millions of other emigrants, they landed on Ellis Island, first outpost of the American federal immigration station in the Upper New York Bay, ultimate gateway to the United-States of America. In those decisive hours, when their fates do not belong to them and are in someone else’s hands, where federal immigration inspectors decide who is approved and who is sent home, the Melting Pot was born, built up of the teeming masses arriving from the Old Continent.