Nope .
The last immigrant to come through Ellis Island was Arne Peterssen , a 48 - year - erstwhile merchant seaman from Narvik , Norway , and he did so in 1954 .
From the orifice of the first Ellis Island Immigrant Station on January 1 , 1892 , through Peterssen ’s comer , the U.S. Bureau of Immigration processed some 12 million immigrants on the island . Their first was Annie Moore , a 15 - yr - quondam girl from County Cork , Ireland , who ’d come to the U.S. with her two brothers to join their parents in New York City . ( She ’s the statue . )
By the time Peterssen walked through those doors of the second Immigration Station ( the first had been made of wood and burned down in 1897 ) , the place was n’t really postulate any longer . The Immigration Act of 1924 had greatly restricted immigration to the U.S. and appropriate those who could come to the state to be processed at American embassy in their country of origin . After that , Ellis Island was mainly used to detain immigrant who had problems with their paperwork and to process war refugees and other can someone who could n’t be process at the embassy . During World War II , the island was also used as a training facility for 60,000 U.S. Coast Guard servicemen .
A year after Peterssen was swear out , the Feds declare Ellis Island as excess holding and all but abandoned it . The historic buildings , already in disrepair , kept deteriorating until a decade later , when President Lyndon B. Johnson comprise the island into the Statue of Liberty National Monument . It was list on the National Register of Historic Places and take over by the National Park Service , who smarten up the island up and opened it to the world for guided circuit .
Today , the Ellis Island Immigration Museum host 100 of thousands of visitant each year , while New would - be Americans begin their journey by go for for avisa .
