The "Save Ellis Island!" Campaign--and Why It's Important to Learn Ellis Island's Past Realities as We Save It

No doubt you've seen some of the current ads running on cable news stations showing various well-known celebrities absorbing the rich ambience of Ellis Island and its decaying buildings as they tell you to donate money to help in restoring those buildings. These "Save Ellis Island!" ads may be some of the most meaningful commercials you'll see on TV in a recent landscape (at least on Fox News) of asininity permeating Madison Avenue and letting law firm ads from Binder & Binder tell you to not let the government screw with you. Most people I've talked to (upon seeing the Ellis Island ads for the first time) say they stop everything they're doing once they see the commercials featuring Katharine McPhee gently singing "This Land is Your Land" as she walks the old hallways of what appears to be the dilapidated building that once housed sick beds for diseased immigrants. We also get a bit of a snicker when members of "The Sopranos" stick their mugs into the camera as they walk the rickety buildings and tell you it's "a good idea to donate, yo!" Not that we need to have any scare tactics of sleeping wit da fishes to realize how worthy of a cause it is.

I've also noticed that a lot of people who respond positively to these outstanding ads don't really know a lot about Ellis Island's history. The ads wisely play up the inspiring side of immigrants who came through (20 million of them is today's arguable estimate)--despite a lot more complex history still haunting the walls of those structures. Some of those aspects of history are a far cry to how we handle immigrants entering our borders today. At the same time, part of that treatment at Ellis Island can't be analyzed any other way than showing the extremist (if not elitist) measures America took in who entered this country in those days.