First person narrative accounts of Immigrantion to the USA

I found it hard to find first person narratives of what it was like on the journey to America but found these two extracts on what it was like at Ellis Island where the Immigrants got processed.I found these 2 extracts on a site called immigration their stories.

They also questioned people on literacy. My uncle called me aside, when he came to take us off. He said, "Your mother doesn't know how to read." I said, "That's all right." For the reading you faced what they called the commissioners, like judges on a bench. I was surrounded by my aunt and uncle and another uncle who's a pharmacist-my mother was in the center. They said she would have to take a test for reading. So one man said, "She can't speak English." Another man said, "We know that. We will give her a siddur." You know what a siddur is? It's a Jewish book. The night they said this, I knew that she couldn't do that and we would be in trouble. Well, they opened the siddur. There was a certain passage they had you read. I looked at it and I saw right away what it was. I quickly studied it-I knew the whole paragraph. Then I got underneath the two of them there-I was very small-and I told her the words in Yiddish very softly. I had memorized the lines and I said them quietly and she said them louder so the commissioner could here it. She looked at it and it sounded as if she was reading it, but I was doing the talking underneath. I was Charlie McCarthy!

-Arnold Weiss, Russian, at Ellis Island in 1921, age 13



An official-looking lady came toward me and said, "Is somebody waiting for you?" I said, "Oh, yes, my relatives, they're waiting for me." And nobody was waiting for me, nobody. I had nobody. Then I saw the officials approaching another man and they asked him, "Are you Jewish?" He said, "Yes." "Anybody waiting for you?" "No." The official said, "Well, we'll take care of you. We have a Hebrew sheltering organization. Come with us, we'll feed you and take care of you until your relatives pick you up."" Then sheepishly I said to the woman who had approached me before, "I lied to you, because of what I've been through in Hungary." She put her hand on my shoulder. She understood. I didn't realize I was free, I wasn't going to be put in prison.

-Endre Bohem, Hungarian, at Ellis Island in 1921, age 20

The 2 extracts are very different as one explains how hard the tests and scrutiny was of immigrants coming into the country and the other explains America in a free and democratic light giving hope to people who have known and looking after their immigrants.