• Immigration officials at Ellis Island had to process an average of 5,000 people per day and for them processing people simply became a numbers game.
• Also be aware that immigrants often could not spell their own name. Many errors passed through the system (in addition to the usual problems of misspelling that occur in old documents).
• Immigrants who arrived with proper documentation (such as a passport, as shown below) were much less likely to have spelling issues. Even if the immigrant could not spell their own name, the name on the passport would be written by a government official from the old country who was much more likely to know how to spell it.
• Some immigrants who arrived in America also deliberately masked or hide their identity. New country, new life, new name. This was typically done to hide an immediate problem from the old country (such as a criminal past or an unfortunate family situation).
• Many immigrant did not want to bring problems with them from the old country to the new country. In fact, the reason some immigrants decided to go to America was specifically to avoid serious problems at home, such as a potential jail term.
• Another reason immigrants masked their identity was out of concern they may be rejected. In other words, they had a reason to lie. For example, indentured servitude was not allowed in the United States (and would be grounds for rejection) even though some companies in America tried to recruit people in Europe under these conditions. Basically, the company would pay for the passage to America in exchange for a couple of years of labor (this approach apparently was tried by some coal companies in Virginia according to Ellis Island officials). These immigrants were likely coached by the company that recruited them on how to lie to immigration officials.
• Some Americans also tried to recruit indentured servants from Europe using a similar approach. Immigration officials were on the lookout for this kind of activity and would reject immigrants based on indentured servitude.
