TIME's Ling Liu has an interesting story on Angel Island, the San Francisco immigration station that processed new immigrants, most of them Chinese, to the United States from 1910 to 1940. At one point, the site was scheduled for demolition. Today, it's a historical landmark: The Other Ellis Island.
For many Chinese immigrants, it was place where new arrivals languished in barracks for weeks, months, years before being admitted to the U.S. -- or sent home -- due to the racist restrictions of the Chinese Exclusion Act. It's unfortunate but important part of Asian American history.
Next month, the newly refurbished site will reopen to the public as a museum memorializing this dark period in American immigration. Definitely a place to visit on your next trip to San Francisco. To learn more about the site's grand reopening, go to the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation website here.
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