Angel Island

On Saturday, I went to Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay with a few of my friends. We biked around the island. It's very beautiful. I had the opportunity to visit the immigration station. For many years, Angel Island was the admission point for most of the immigrants coming into the US from Asia. It was very much like Ellis Island in New York. Some immigrants only stayed for a few days while others were detained for indefinite periods of time. For a long time, the US government discriminated against Chinese immigrants. Chinese people were put through rigorous interviews to make sure the immigrant was who he claimed to be. Even immigrants who were telling the truth about their origins had trouble passing the interviews. Many of the Chinese people kept at the station wrote poems on the barrack walls expressing their sadness at being kept for so long on the island. You can still see the poems written in Chinese characters at the immigration station.