In his artist's note at the end of The Arrival, Shaun Tan acknowledges that his drawings of the man's immigrant processing experience are based on photographs taken at Ellis Island. An island just off New York City, Ellis Island was a significant entry point for immigrants to the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Originally called Kioshk by the Mohegan Native Americans who lived nearby, Ellis Island was little more than a minor, uninhabited sandbar south of Manhattan. The Dutch claimed the island in 1630, and it changed hands several times over the 1700s. In 1808, New York State bought the island for ten thousand dollars following the death of its owner, Samuel Ellis.
With immigration increasing significantly, in the late 1800s the federal government invested in turning the island into the first federal immigration station. The preparations included digging wells and doubling the island's size with landfill from ships and the New York City subway tunnels being dug at the time. On its opening day in 1892, Ellis Island processed seven hundred immigrants, and 450,000 in the first year. Among those refused entry to the United States in the era were sex workers, criminals, "lunatics," "idiots," and Chinese people. People could also be sent back if the inspecting doctors diagnosed them with a disease considered dangerous to public health. Legal inspectors would also deny entry to people they suspected would become a public charge.
In the twentieth century, Ellis Island continues admitting millions of new arrivals, while simultaneously refusing other people deemed undesirable by the state, including people with physical and mental disabilities, and children who arrived without guardians. After WWI broke out, Germans seized in East Coast ports were interned at and deported from Ellis Island. During the Russian Revolution, the island was similarly used for immigrant political radicals. The government also introduced a literacy test for immigrants passing through Ellis Island.
After falling into disrepair and disuse in the 1930s and 1940s, Ellis Island closed as an immigrant processing facility in 1954. It is now run as a museum open to the public. Although it was only active for several decades, Ellis Island was open during a period of mass migration to the U.S. It is estimated that forty percent of American citizens have at least one ancestor who passed through Ellis Island before settling in the country.
