My amendment would add an additional $2 /2 million in order to accelerate that process even further. I had an opportunity to visit Ellis Island several weeks ago. I must tell the Members that it was a very moving experience. * Since Ellis Island was first opened up around the turn of the century as a way station to those immigrants who were coming to our country for the first time. 16 million people have passed through Ellis Island on their way to becoming citizens of our country. I was informed by the National Park Service that today literally one out of every two Americans in the entire country can trace in one way or another the origin of their own family in America to that initial process which their forebears went through on Ellis Island. So I just want to say. in conclusion. that it seems to me that in this bicentennial year it would be entirely appropriate for the Congress to recognize the fact that Ellis Island is really what America is all about. We are a nation of immigrants. and I think that if we could restore those facilities and turn them into a meaningful monument to the immigrants who did so much to make this country great. we would have a fabulous facility. not just for those who live in New York. but for Americans throughout the length and breadth of this land. so they could get a sense of what it was like when their forefathers first came to our country many years ago.
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immigrants