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HIAS established a bureau on Ellis Island in 1904 providing translation services, guiding immigrants through medical screenings, arguing before the Boards of Special Enquiry to prevent deportations, and obtaining bonds to guarantee employable status. We lent some the $25 landing fee and sold railroad tickets at reduced rates to those headed for other cities. We even installed a kosher kitchen, which provided more than half a million meals to new arrivals on Ellis Island.HIAS also found relatives of detained immigrants. Six hundred immigrants were detained during just one month in 1917 because they had neither money nor friends to claim them. HIAS was able to locate relatives for the vast majority who were then released from Ellis Island.We became famous worldwide - and in many languages - as HIAS, the abbreviation that was our first cable address.In 1921, HIAS bought the former Astor Library on Lafayette Street in Manhattan to serve as a shelter providing housing, kosher kitchens, a small synagogue, classrooms for job training and civics education, a playground, and a weekly bazaar for the thousands of immigrants who passed through the doors each year.HIAS works around the world to protect refugees who have been forced to flee their homelands because of who they are, including ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities. For more than 130 years, HIAS has been helping refugees rebuild their lives in safety and dignity.
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