Ellis Island

I just spent the past two days on a field trip to Ellis Island with my older son Nicholas and his fifth-grade class. Immigration has long been a fifth-grade theme at his school, and this field trip is one of the highlights of their year.

It was a great trip. I highly recommend it, even if you don't have a fifth grader to take along. (I especially recommend the self-guided audio tour.) With the immigration issue so heated these days, it would be good if more Americans visited Ellis Island and reminded themselves that the issues today are similar to the issues that concerned people when their grandparents and great-grandparents arrived here.