Manual of the Mental Examination of Aliens: Ellis Island immigration testing protocol

About the Manual of the Mental Examination of Aliens

Under the Immigration Act of 1907 and subsequent legislation, US Public Health Service physicians at ports of entry were required to identify arriving immigrants with mental defects, mental disease, or epilepsy. The intellectual disability category was particularly difficult to assess because most arriving immigrants did not speak English. The 1918 Manual codified the standard procedure.

The Manual prescribed a multi-stage examination. First, a brief visual screening of all arrivals as they walked through the inspection lines (the PHS officer would tag suspected cases with chalk marks). Second, a more thorough individual examination of tagged cases using non-verbal instruments where language was a barrier - typically Knox Cube, Healy Pictorial Completion, and Pintner-Paterson form boards. Third, for cases that remained ambiguous, a full Binet-Simon administration through a translator.

The Manual is a primary historical document for understanding how early-20th-century US immigration policy intersected with psychometrics. It is also an unflinching record of an era when intelligence testing was used in service of restrictive immigration policy. The Manual itself is a procedural document and largely free of overt eugenic content, but the procedures it describes were sometimes used to deny entry to thousands of immigrants flagged as mentally deficient.

The 3 subtests

Take the full 40-item test

US Public Health Service 1918 Manual of Mental Examination of Aliens. Used at Ellis Island and other ports for immigration screening. 40 items covering verbal comprehension, simple arithmetic, basic information.

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Source

All test materials and historical content on this page are transcribed from:

United States Public Health Service (1918). Manual of the Mental Examination of Aliens. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. PHS Miscellaneous Publication No. 18.

Public domain - US government work. The Manual was the standard procedural guide for PHS surgeons performing immigrant mental examinations at Ellis Island, Angel Island, and other major US ports of entry. Read it on Internet Archive: view it on the Internet Archive.