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# 72 •novemBER 16 , 2015
thought they had come to the States to
work and then go home. In fact, many of
them didn’t go home: they stayed. Then
we decided that Ellis Island, as the symbol of all Americans, of the American welcome and of the American opportunity,
should tell the story of the entire population of America. So we now tell the story
of America from 1550 to 1892, then the
Ellis Island years, 1892-1954, and then
the post Ellis Island years, from 1954 to
the present. Because America is changing again, now, as people from many
parts of the world continue to come to nally, but they are now. And we have to
live here. Ellis Island is now the National remember that not all the immigrants
Museum of Immigration.
who sailed by the Statue of Liberty and
were processed in Ellis Island, stayed in
The Statue of Liberty is not only the New York. In fact, only about 40% stayed
symbol of New York: it’s the symbol of in New York. The 60% went somewhere
the United States of America, a symbol else.
that tells that America is a nation of immigrants. How many Italians came by Before being Mayor of New York, Fiorelboat, dreamt about a new life when se- lo La Guardia used to work at Ellis Island.
eing Miss Liberty, and then landed to What was his job?
Manhattan after passing the Ellis Island
health examination?
He was an interpreter, and I think he
We have figures, but they didn’t all come
through New York: but there are about
20 million people of Italian descent living in the United States today. The Statue of Liberty was not built for the reason
of welcoming immigrants: it was built
as a welcome, but more as a symbol of
America. It just happened that it was
built in 1886, and in 1892 the Federal
Government decided to use Ellis Island
as a station for immigrants. Now, in the
American cultural mind, the two things
are linked together. They weren’t origi-
36 | WE THE ITALIANS
www.wetheitalians.com
spoke five languages. He was a young
man, they needed people who could
speak different languages out there, and
that was his job. I don’t know how long
he did it, but he did it for a while.
Is there an anecdote coming from the
huge archive of your Foundation, maybe
something not that famous, you could
share with us about the Italian emigration through Ellis Island?
I don’t know if there’s an anecdote spe-