Ellis Island

noun

1. an island in upper New York Bay: a former U.S. immigrant examination station.

Ellis Island

¹

1. An island in the harbor of New York City. The chief immigration station of the United States was on Ellis Island from 1892 to 1943, a time when millions of people, especially from Europe, came to the United States.

Ellis Island

²

1. Island in the harbor of New York City, southwest of Manhattan.

1990 marked the opening of the Ellis Island Immigration Museum.

Ellis Island lies near the Statue of Liberty, which made an impressive sight for people approaching the United States for the first time.

Part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument.

From 1892 to 1954, it served as the prime immigration station of the country. Some twelve million immigrants passed through it during this time.

Example Sentences

He has said his family, immigrants from Europe, took the name “Ellison” after Ellis Island.

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First she must sail to England second class, then make her way through Ellis Island, where people are treated like cattle and single women like sexual prey.

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In the densely packed, mostly-immigrant community Hernandez calls “the Ellis Island of the West Coast,” a 35-acre green space serves as the “front yard and backyard” for tens of thousands of working-class residents.

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If the so-called Ellis Island of the West — 83% Latino, with a border town’s enduring economic and family ties to Mexico — can pull up the proverbial welcome mat, any Latino-majority area can.

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“My grandparents arrived at Ellis Island traumatized by the unfathomable murder of their families in the gas chambers of Auschwitz while the world let it happen.”

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