America is a “Nation of Immigrants.” Discussions of which immigrants and how many to admit have been one of the major themes of our history. This Emory Libraries exhibition features a selection of documents from the United States federal depository collection related to immigration and naturalization. These include 19th-century immigration reports, a variety of new citizen training manuals, photographs of arrivals on Ellis Island, and recent Congressional hearings on the future of legal and illegal immigration.
Please visit the exhibition on Level 1 of the Woodruff Library, where the government documents collection is housed. Details on all of the documents in the exhibition are available in the complete bibliography.
More information on immigration and many other topics is available in the depository collection. See the library's Government Documents Frequently Asked Questions for information about using the collection.
The United States Immigration Commission issued its 41 volume report to the United States Senate during 1910 and 1911. Popularly known as “The Dillingham Report,” these landmark documents chronicle a comprehensive investigation into immigration in the United States at the beginning of the 20th century.
Stanford University Libraries Social Sciences Resource Center has digitized the reports, which are available, full text searchable, at: The Dillingham Commission Reports
Topics covered by the Commission include:
American Memory has digitized historical collections of the Library of Congress and other institutions. Digitized texts, manuscripts, photographs, prints, visual and sound recordings are thematically arranged into more than 100 online collections.
Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty National Monument are administered by the National Park Service, part of the U.S. Department of the Interior. Both Federal and private agencies offer online information about this famed East Coast entry point. Less well-known, the Angel Island Immigration Station in the San Francisco Bay was the West Coast port of entry and exclusion from 1910 to 1940.
Assembled in 2003 from the formerly dispersed network of federal security activities, Homeland Security has the mission to “secure the nation.” Current information about immigration enforcement and services can be found on a number of Homeland Security websites.
Background image from the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division: Levick, Edwin. Immigrants on an Atlantic Liner. 1906.
