Paying for the Statue of Liberty wasn’t just a problem for its builder. People in the United States also had a hard time finding the cash to construct its base. They held art shows and auctions to raise money. Because of this, we now have a famous poem called “The New Colossus.” You can find that poem engraved inside the statue’s pedestal. A poet named Emma Lazarus wrote and auctioned it off to raise money for the statue. The poem compares the Statue of Liberty to a famous statue called Colossus from ancient Greece. It also gives the Statue of Liberty another nickname: “the Mother of Exiles.”

An exile is a needy person looking for a new country to live in. Do you know anyone whose ancestors came to America through Ellis Island? People guess that nearly half of Americans have at least one ancestor who did! Ellis Island sits just off the tip of Manhattan in New York. The island opened as an immigration station in 1892. Millions of immigrants passed through it. Jewish immigrants landed there to escape unfair treatment in places like Russia. Italians flooded in because they could not make enough money at home. People came from many other countries too. Some came to get away from war. Others made the journey because their homelands had run out of food or water.

These immigrants spoke different languages. They ate different foods. They practiced different religions. But they had something very important in common—hope. They believed they would get a new start in America. They would finally have freedom. As their ships neared Ellis Island, they caught sight of the Statue of Liberty. She represented just what they were looking for. To them, she was a great, big “Welcome!”