Eng 99
WO p.35 – 36
Ellis Island: Dream and Nightmare
NOTE: This is not the only way to construct this paragraph! If you have a sentence that is
different, and you’re not sure if it’s correct or not, ask me – or, even better, take the key
and your copy to the Loft and go over this with a tutor, one-on-one, for half an hour.
Ellis Island, which sits in the Atlantic Ocean off the shores of New York City and
New Jersey, was the first stop in the United States for 16 million European immigrants
between 1892 and 1924. The immigrants were a diverse group which/that included
craftspeople, farmers, tradespeople, laborers, and intellectuals. Many were political exiles
trying to escape persecution, and a few were political revolutionaries. All of the
immigrants shared a dream of a new life in a new world. In 1891, the U.S. Bureau of
Immigration began to restrict entry to the country; immigrants with mental problems,
disease, and criminal records were barred from entering. The immigration officials
conducted many rigorous exams that determined the eligibility of arriving immigrants.
They administered a thorough physical, tested for English literacy, investigated political
beliefs, and rejected over 4 million applicants, most of whom were sent back to Europe.
However, there was an appeals process which required immigrants to be detained in jaillike dormitories on Ellis Island. The detainees were separated from their spouses and
slept in double- or triple-deck beds. Additionally, they washed in huge public bathhouses
that held 200 people at a time. More than 3,000 rejected detainees chose to die rather than
return to their homelands. They committed suicide because their dreams of a new life had
turned into a nightmare.
Relative clauses are highlighted in blue. Again, there is more than one way to write most
(if not all) of the sentences. The checklist for relative clauses:
 Do you have a relative pronoun followed by a verb and then the rest of the clause?
 Does the relative clause directly follow the noun it modifies?