“The moment of arrival was euphoric, and then silence fell upon them. They were afraid they wouldn’t be let in. The question on everyone’s mind was ‘Will we enter or not? Will they let us pass?’”

This is the scene Maurizio Igor Meta told me he repeatedly came across in the many diaries he read, written by European immigrants coming to New York via steamship in the late 1800’s. The sentiments they felt, of excitement and hopefulness, were laced with uncertainty and dread as their ship drifted toward Ellis Island. Oh, the stories they heard of the grandness that awaited them in America! But their fate was suspended in air, to be determined by the immigration inspectors.