Waiting at Ellis Island…and Bored
Haas waited eleven days, wondering why he couldn’t leave, sitting bored in the waiting areas. He compared the waiting room to a church, “it was just the way it was pews, you know. And you just slid down the pews till you got to the end.” He had money, he had a place to go, but the problem was his paperwork. The line declaring where he would be working or going to school, proving he had somewhere to go, was blank.
Ellis Island officials mailed the paperwork to his Spring Green relatives to finish filling it out and send it back. Ellis Island officials detained Haas while he waited for the paperwork to be sorted out and sent back, but never told him why. Haas didn’t find out his detention was for paperwork until he arrived in Spring Green and asked relatives what happened.
