sentences:  Additionally, the proximity to Europe, as well as the prominence of Ellis Island as an immigrant processing center, made New York especially but also the cities nearby a "landing wharf for European immigrants," who represented an ever-replenished supply of diversity of thought and determined workers.By contrast, the other major source of trans-oceanic immigrants was China, which was farther from the U.S. West Coast than Europe was from the East, and whose ethnicity made them targets of racial discrimination, creating barriers to their seamless integration into American society.By 1950, the region held over one-fifth of the total U.S. population, with a density nearly 15 times that of the national average.