What was the literacy test of 1917?
What was the literacy test of 1917?
The Immigration Act of 1917 (also known as the Literacy Act and less often as the Asiatic Barred Zone Act) was a United States Act that aimed to restrict immigration by imposing literacy tests on immigrants, creating new categories of inadmissible persons, and barring immigration from the Asia-Pacific zone.
Why did the Immigration Act of 1917 include a literacy test?
Although this law is best known for its creation of a “barred zone” extending from the Middle East to Southeast Asia from which no persons were allowed to enter the United States, its main restriction consisted of a literacy test intended to reduce European immigration.
How did the Immigration Act of 1917 affect immigrants?
The Immigration Act of 1917 drastically reduced U.S. immigration by expanding the prohibitions of the Chinese exclusion laws of the late 1800s. The law created an “Asiatic barred zone” provision, which prohibited immigration from British India, most of Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, and the Middle East.
What was the literacy test for immigration?
In the early 1890s, they decided a literacy test, requiring each adult immigrant to demonstrate his or her ability to read and write, was the most practical method of reducing the number of annual arrivals. Its proponents first used clearly reactionary arguments.
What is the purpose of literacy test?
A literacy test assesses a person’s literacy skills: their ability to read and write have been administered by various governments to immigrants.
What three tests did immigrants have to pass?
Immigrants in the early 1900s were examined for physical and mental illness, questioned about their ability to support themselves financially, and challenged on whether they held radical views. As part of the inquisition, the U.S. Public Health Service administered primitive intelligence tests.
What required a literacy test for immigrants over 16?
The 1917 Act implemented a literacy test that required immigrants over 16 years old to demonstrate basic reading comprehension in any language. It also increased the tax paid by new immigrants upon arrival and allowed immigration officials to exercise more discretion in making decisions over whom to exclude.
What did the literacy test do?
Description. After the Civil War, many states enacted literacy tests as a voting requirement. The purpose was to exclude persons with minimal literacy, in particular, poor African Americans in the South, from voting.
How long is the literacy test?
How long will the test be? The test is made up of two 75 minute sessions with a 15 minute break in the middle.
When was the grandfather clause passed?
A half-dozen states passed laws that made men eligible to vote if they had been able to vote before African-Americans were given the franchise (generally, 1867), or if they were the lineal descendants of voters back then. This was called the grandfather clause. Most such laws were enacted in the early 1890s.
What did chalk marks on an immigrants clothing mean?
Exemplifying this notion, PHS regulations encouraged officers to place a chalk mark indicating the suspected disease or defect on the clothing of immigrants as they passed through the line: the letters “EX” on the lapel of a coat indicated that the individual should merely be further examined; the letter “C,” that the …
What was the first test used to check if immigrants were healthy?
The first test was a “six-second physical.” A doctor looked for any signs of illness or contagious diseases. The doctor noted whether the immigrants limped or were short of breath, if their eyes were red, if they acted disturbed or seemed otherwise abnormal.