It’s estimated that 40% of all current US citizens have an ancestor who passed through Ellis Island in New York Harbor. This federal immigration station was open between 1892 and 1954. Third-class passengers—those who could not afford more expensive tickets to the US—had to pass medical and legal inspections at Ellis Island before being allowed into the country. Many immigrants at this time came from Russia and eastern Europe, escaping war, drought, famine and religious persecution. Shira and her family left Russia due to violent attacks against the Jews known as pogroms.

The Statue of Liberty, located on Ellis Island, would have been the first sign of arrival for Shira and many immigrants like her. In 1903, Emma Lazarus’s poem “The New Colossus” was engraved on a bronze plaque at the base of Lady Liberty. The poem ends with these famous lines:

...Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

The poem engraved on the Statue of Liberty is best described as expressing
A. a welcome to immigrants.
B. a threat to foreign governments.
C. something meaningless but beautiful.
D. greed and selfishness.