I am looking for an official copy of the ship manifest when my ancestor came through Ellis Island. On ancestry.com I have found the manifest showing him arriving in the port of New York in March, 1907 on the SS Patricia, which departed from Hamburg. When I search the official Ellis Island archives, however, nothing comes up. I've tried every variation I can think of - broad searches, narrow ones, those just with an S* in the last name box (which is the only required element in their search feature), and turned up nothing. All I can think is that this particular manifest is not digitized and accessible via their search.
The issue is, without finding him on their website, I can't request the record, so I can't show official proof of my ancestor's emigration.
Does anyone know what I can or should do? The Croatian consulate sometimes asks for this and sometimes doesn't, but I may not know until my actual appointment, and if I go through all of the steps of a citizenship application only to have this be a final, insurmountable obstacle, I'll be crushed.