The 21 pictures that show that America really is a nation of immigrants

If there is any doubt immigrants don't build a nation, these pictures prove otherwise

The Statue of Liberty, one of the first sights that would have greeted the immigrants that came into Ellis Island (Getty)

We hear so often that America is “a nation of immigrants” or a “cultural mixing pot” that the phrase has become kind of a tired cliche. But actually seeing that history is a different story. The fascinating photographs below — of people in their native costume passing through Ellis Island in the early 20th Century — hint at just how incredible and unique America's history is as a nation of immigrants.

These photos were taken by Augustus Sherman, an amateur photographer who worked as the chief registry clerk on Ellis Island from 1892 until 1925. Sherman snapped these photographs of people passing through customs in their native costume. They were published in National Geographic in 1907 and once hung on the walls in the headquarters of the federal Immigration Service in Manhattan, according to the Public Domain Review. They are now housed by the New York Public Library.

New York began using Ellis Island as a way station for immigrants on Jan. 1, 1892, and between then and 1954, more than 12 million immigrants used the island to enter the U.S. The National Park Service estimates that over 40 percent of Americans can trace their ancestry back through Ellis Island.

The history of the island is not always a happy one: It also reflects deep racism and ethnic divisions. After World War I, thousands of suspected “alien radicals” were detained on the island, and in the 1920s, it began to turn away immigrants from certain countries or ethnicities, including Southern and Eastern Europe. People with mental and physical disabilities were excluded, as well as the illiterate, and children arriving without parents.

See the incredible images below

Here is a young German man, who the notes classify as a “stowaway”:

(Ellis Island / Augustus Sherman)

Children and women from the Netherlands:

(Ellis Island / Augustus Sherman)

(Ellis Island / Augustus Sherman)

A Greek soldier in national costume:

(Ellis Island / Augustus Sherman)

Men from the Russian Empire:

(Ellis Island / Augustus Sherman)

(Ellis Island / Augustus Sherman)

An Algerian man:

(Ellis Island / Augustus Sherman)

A Bavarian man, from southern Germany:

(Ellis Island, Augustus Sherman)

A soldier from Albania:

(Ellis Island, Augustus Sherman)

Children and a woman from Lapland, the northernmost region of Finland:

(Ellis Island, Augustus Sherman)

A man from Denmark:

(Ellis Island / Augustus Sherman)

Women from Guadeloupe, an island in the Caribbean colonized by France:

(Ellis Island / Augustus Sherman)

A young Hindu man:

(Ellis Island, Augustus Sherman)

Several Italian women in national costume:

(Ellis Island, Augustus Sherman)

(Ellis Island, Augustus Sherman)

A woman from Norway:

(Ellis Island, Augustus Sherman)

Several men from Romania:

(Ellis Island, Augustus Sherman)

(Ellis Island, Augustus Sherman)

A Ruthenian woman, one of the East Slavic minorities under the Austro-Hungarian Empire:

(Ellis Island, Augustus Sherman)

Some women and families from Slovakia:

(Ellis Island, Augustus Sherman)

(Ellis Island, Augustus Sherman)

Copyright: Washington Post