Immigrant Experience

Angel Island was usually not the first stop for prospective immigrants to San Francisco¹. Upon a ship’s arrival at a dock in San Francisco, officers would go onto the ship to inspect each passenger’s documentation and decide whether the immigrants would be allowed to enter the country directly or if they should be detained at Angel Island for further inspection. Typically, nationality was the deciding factor regarding who was allowed entry and who was detained. Europeans with first or second-class tickets were usually allowed immediate access. At the same time, Asians and other races (e.g., Russians and Mexicans), along with people with health problems, would be sent to Angel Island.

New arrivals at Angel Island, often families, would first be separated by race and sex, except that children under 12 could stay with their mothers². Everyone’s first destination would be the hospital to receive a full medical examination. If they were determined by the station hospital to be of sound health, they would be held at the station’s facilities before and during their immigration hearings. The hearings would often work as an interrogation of the prospective immigrant, involving questions that go into a great deal about the immigrant’s lives.

Angel island was oftentimes very crowded, which, alongside the fact that immigrants would have spent most of their time locked in a dorm room, gave the area a very prison-like feel. Additionally, any in-and-outcoming mail would be screened by guards and detainees weren’t granted visitors until they were either released or deported. Within 10 months of the immigration facilities’ beginning, poems expressing how immigrants felt were found carved into the walls of the men’s barracks.