Primary inspection

At Ellis Island, steerage passengers went up to the Registry Room, or Great Hall, where Public Health Service doctors scanned each person for signs of illness. Next came an immigrant inspector, who had the ship's manifest and questioned each arrival on the answers recorded there. Interpreters helped, and for most people the whole process took three to five hours.

The primary inspector's job was to keep the line moving. Anyone he suspected might belong to an excluded class he held for a hearing before a Board of Special Inquiry, marking the manifest's left margin. Only about two percent of arrivals were finally excluded.