A Jigsaw Puzzle Was Given to Ellis Island Immigrants to Test Their IQ | Hacker News Reader

A Jigsaw Puzzle Was Given to Ellis Island Immigrants to Test Their IQ

smithsonianmag.com

84 pointsdankohn1106 comments

It looks like part of the problem is that somebody simplified what the puzzle was supposed to look like: https://intelligencegroup581.wikispaces.com/file/view/feat_p...

A bit easier when the pieces are the right shape, and the black ink isn't missing or worn off.

Edit: Another historical picture with yet another configuration of the same puzzle: http://imgur.com/a/URP4m

Edit: Please note "Part of the Problem". I agree it still has issues.

Hm. Its still abstract. Without telling me "a face in profile" I could totally misinterpret the blocks. That ear - wow. And the mouth - why isn't the paint reflected in the shape of the block?

And who's to say how many took the test with the paint worn off?

Further, I'd say this has no fewer cultural references than any other IQ test. Doing a block puzzle at all is cultural. Understanding that the ink and the shapes were independent parts of the problem. That a face could be drawn in profile. That a face can be represented just by eyes, lips, ears, and painted mouth. That anybody would draw important conclusions about your future from a child's toy.

I can't help thinking the adjective "feeble minded" applies more to people that genuinely thought aptitude for solving such a puzzle said much about the employability and mindset required to integrate into early American societies than the immigrants bemused by the request and the puzzle's rather poor design...

Well, the article says they rejected 0.1% of the applicants for "feeble mindedness", and yet the rate of mental retardation in the adult population seems to be about 0.6%

So it really doesn't seem that many people had trouble solving it.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00040023.htm

More to the point, I doubt there was much correspondence between the small set of people expelled for not completing the puzzle to the assessor's satisfaction and the (arguably larger) set of people whose presence in the United States was likely to prove problematic.

If we have a culture where doing block puzzles is a thing, what does a potential immigrant's inability to understand the concept say about his potential to assimilate?

They'd learn. Its a human thing.

Not beyond a certain imprinting age. See any story about feral children and their inability to integrate.

Wait, did they actually deliberately photograph it upside down (i.e. with the features face down)?

Immigration is a lot like hiring. You want smart people with good cultural fit. Not in the sense that everyone must be the same culture, but the ideals and ethics of the two cultures must be rooted in similar things.

The puzzle is a bad implementation of the idea that we should test for intelligence. Again, like hiring. This is the fizz buzz test with all the same problems

No, really it's not. America has been changed for the better by many immigrants who had "ideals and ethics" quite counter to what dominated American society at the time. Many European Jewish immigrants, for example, fought for labor rights and racial equality based on their treatment in their home countries. This was much to the chagrin of anti-Semitic "titans of industry" like Ford and Disney, who are absurdly still held up as paragons of American culture.

The dynamism of American society exists precisely to the extent that we don't let unthinking appeals to the validity of the status quo guide our behavior.

> Many European Jewish immigrants, for example, fought for labor rights

Like Alisa Rosenbaum?

so for example in any given country, you think the people who voted for president x, and the people who protest against him, both share the same culture ... the same values

is culture something that can change, do you think your culture, values .. changed over time, or could have

anyway .. check immigrants for crime records, check them for what they did, or do .. not what they think (or what you think they may do, based on what you think of their ideas), because you know what immigrants spend few years 3 to 6 usually in any country before being granted citizenship, during that time if they break the law in any major way, killed someone for example, this in most countries will prevent them from being granted citizenship ... so you see there is a way to see if they fit, and that is ... if they respect the law ... and the law should be fair, and the law can be changed, this is only to preserve freedom of expression and thinking

and i agree immigration is not like hiring, because a country is not like a company, companies are not democracies .. companies have owners, countries dont

"a country is not like a company, companies are not democracies .. companies have owners, countries dont"

I disagree - the citizens of a country are its owners.

no they are not, this is exactly my point, you dont own your country ... you just have a vote ... which you dont always use , sometimes your vote will win, sometimes not

what separate a citizen from a resident is ... in most place i know .. the right to vote

and an owner does need a vote .. he may have some restrictions imposed by law, or how to use what he owns, but beyond that .. he can do whatever he want with what he owns, not permissions needed

Says you. But shouldn't the citizens be the ones to decide what to do with their country, and whether they're 'owners' or not, whatever that means?

Yet we have high-sounding words in law, about rights and pursuing happiness. Denying that to others is the highest hypocrisy, is it not?

Hypocrisy would be forbidding immigration to others, while expecting other countries to allow it for yourself. I expect no such thing, and indeed most countries don't allow unlimited immigration.

And the US is not the only place where one can pursue happiness.

Seems like excuses for the hypocricy. "All men are created equal" means all men. Not just Americans.

if you own your country, this makes you responsible for the actions of your country

say you country goes to war and kill innocent people, are you really responsible ... yes, only in the case a vote was cast and you voted yes on the war

but in general you are not really responsible, because you dont own it, and because you dont own it, you dont control it ..

You're responsible proportional to the amount of influence you could've had. If you were a celebrity of a large nation and this large nation begins an unjust war, if you didn't speak out against it, you are responsible to some degree.

Just like shareholders in companies have the responsibility to vote for proposals that keep the company running.

And if the people vote for strict immigration restrictions, including those based on immigrants' beliefs, that decision should be respected as much as any other, should it not?

and the people who voted no, and lost the vote they are what .. non-owners

winnings the vote, doesnt give you owners ship of the country, it gives you ownership of the vote

Elections have consequences.

Not in America, no. This country was explicitly founded on a fear of majoritarian tyranny eroding what its founders saw as inalienable rights.

The reason why we have a constitution that permanently enshrines things like freedom of speech and religion is exactly because the founders worried that some form of "democratic despotism" would try to vote them away.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority

All the owners of a company (ie shareholders) have are a vote as well. They might not use it, they might not win.

Few major companies have a singular owner who can act as dictator.

Also, in the USA, idealistically citizens do not require permission to do whatever they want. All rights are given to the states & people; the federal government is specifically given delimited authority that it can manage.

you cannot really compare a citizen to a shareholder (if you cannot sell it, you dont own it)

    1- not all shareholders have votes 
    2- as a shareholder your vote is proportional to your owner ship
    3- you can sell your shares, you cannot sell your rights of citizenship .. to another immigrants for example

they are not the same .. they are just not .. maybe on the surface from far far away they look the same .. to you

maybe as a citizen it feels good to think you own your country, but you dont .. really you dont

In a company having the right to vote means you're a shareholder. Citizens are shareholders of their own countries.

Also, people get too fixated on the right to vote. That's not what defines a democracy, it's just a means to an end. A democracy is defined by a set of liberal values and freedoms and the vote is there to prevent those values and freedoms from being taken away.

> he can do whatever he want with what he owns, not permissions needed

Well, big companies have multiple owners, so one owner cannot do what he wants unless he has a majority. Also a company is subject to market forces, customers voting with their wallet.

So really, an owner can only do what he wants for as long as (1) he can afford it and (2) his peers tolerate it.

In a society we are all interconnected. People that fuckup get marginalised.

> In a company having the right to vote means you're a shareholder. Citizens are shareholders of their own countries.

Being a shareholder means you have volunteered part of your personal treasure to be part of an on going enterprise in the hopes of earning more treasure.

In the modern world, native citizens put nothing up for their vote. Taxes are not voluntary, nor are they required for a vote.

> Also, people get too fixated on the right to vote. That's not what defines a democracy,

That is simply, plainly wrong. Words don't change to mean what you want them to mean. The essence of democracy, that which literally defines it, is voting.

>Well, big companies have multiple owners, so one owner cannot do what he wants unless he has a majority. Also a company is subject to market forces, customers voting with their wallet. So really, an owner can only do what he wants for as long as (1) he can afford it and (2) his peers tolerate it.

Your thinking is very muddy.

> The essence of democracy, that which literally defines it, is voting

No dude, party members in the Eastern Europe's communists countries also voted. Our dictators called our stalinism a democracy.

The essence of democracy is the rule of law and the individual freedoms of the citizens, which makes it possible for citizens to participate, the vote being a means to an end and not being possible without the rule of law and without those freedoms.

And I'm not assuming too much here, but within this context, my opinion is that if you haven't lived under some form of dictatorship, you don't know what you're talking about.

I take your point about the fetishization of voting in the modern West. It is sometimes taken to silly extremes. And I agree that voting is not sufficient for democracy. But I still maintain voting is necessary. Democracy is government of the people.

Late Latin from Greek dēmokratia, from dēmos ‘the people’ + -kratia ‘power, rule.’

I don't know of any mechanism other than voting for gleaning the popular will.

> my opinion is that if you haven't lived under some form of dictatorship, you don't know what you're talking about.

I cam't agree with that. Your experiences make you special, as do mine me. But if you really believe what you wrote, no further discourse from you can enlighten me or others until we too have lived under despotism.

> I don't know of any mechanism other than voting for gleaning the popular will.

Sortition (choosing public officials randomly) is one possibility.

Democratic centralism FTW!

i said this in another reply if you cant sell it, you dont own it

citizens cannot sell their shares of citizenship, they are not like shareholders

> This is the fizz buzz test with all the same problems

What is your opinion on fizz buzz problems? I've found it to be a tremendous help in the early interviewing process.

Here's my issue with it. I've taken a few programming classes. I could easily write fizzbuzz as soon as I understood the syntax for loops. So, we're talking day 1 of programming class. I could write it in like 4-5 different languages right now. It would take some work, but I might even be able to figure out how to write it in assembly. I still haven't written an actual program beyond the simple exercises where you are trying to run a calculation and get a specific output from the command-line.

I suppose it's good at filtering out people that don't even know the syntax of a programming language, but do such people apply to programming jobs frequently enough for fizzbuzz to be useful?

Edit: Didn't intend to offend people. I just can't comprehend why a person would apply for a job when they don't know how to do it. I now get that it's a bozo-check, I'm just surprised there's s need for it. I hire in a similar industry and while we run into a lot of people that are obviously bad and or inexperienced, they usually at least know the basics.

Passing fizzbuzz isn't meant to indicate that the person is a good programmer.

Failing fizzbuzz is a quick way to indicate that the person is not a good programmer.

Do you really have people apply that don't even know the syntax for a single language?

I don't work in hiring, but from what I've read online, it is unbelievably common.

That's interesting. I struggle with imposter syndrome, so I only apply to things I feel pretty confident about. I've also never failed to get an offer though.

It's more common than you think, I really didn't expect it to happen that often until I've started interviewing people.

Of course it's a minority, but a simple test like a fizzbuzz that we can be done with in a matter of minutes can save a lot of time to both parties.

I interviewed one, and it was a second-round interview! Granted, it only happened the one time, but it's a funny anecdote.

Failing the test is an indication that the person is 'not' a programmer.

You are mostly right, but are there any cases that a programmer wants to join a company and he can't even write a FizzBuzz program?

I have asked that question to all the programmers that I've worked with (with various levels of skill) and all of them can write it.

Is there any data on that? I would love to know if that test actually have helped recruiters to identify bad programmers. Like if they can explain what Ajax is and how it works, but fail to make a FizzBuzz program...

Sorry if it's a bit off topic

> You are mostly right, but are there any cases that a programmer wants to join a company and he can't even write a FizzBuzz program?

Maybe I'm just being cynical but once you get involved in the process of screening candidates you realize that people will literally apply to any job regardless of their ability to perform it. So yes, there are thousands of cases every day where someone wants a programming job and can't even write FizzBuzz.

> I have asked that question to all the programmers that I've worked with (with various levels of skill) and all of them can write it.

Then you now understand the standard of person that gets filtered out by fizzbuzz.

It happens. Interviewed somebody for my company and asked them to write a little bit of code that would print a Fibonacci sequence, one of the other old chestnuts. It didn't go well, and neither did his employment when my boss hired him anyway...

Yes. I've interviewed "developers" who failed FizzBuzz, and one who took 20 minutes to come up with a solution. I've never even specified a required language for it, and generally accepted pseudo-code.

> but are there any cases that a programmer wants to join a company and he can't even write a FizzBuzz program?

It's not even restricted to pogramming.

I've been involved in some recruitment for an English NHS trust, and people just apply whether they're qualified or not.

Some jobs have a hard requirement for a particular professional registration (you have to be a registered nurse, for example), and that will be clearly stated in the ads and job spec, but you still get people applying who are not nurses, and who don't even have any registration (allied health professionals).

You'll see someone who's done the equivalent of band 4 admin work, with maybe a bit of managements, applying for director level positions.

The purpose of fizzbuzz is not to select for people with good programming ability; it's to eliminate people with no programming ability or knowledge whatsoever.

It's just a bozo bit check to filter out the bullshitters and the severely incompetent. Doubtless there are better ways to do so, but it's such a pervasive trope among anybody who's paid attention to software engineering culture for more than five minutes that it's a huge red flag if you get blank stares and flailing when it is brought up.

> do such people apply to programming jobs frequently enough for fizzbuzz to be useful?

speaking as someone who does hiring at a large software company: yes, yes they do. In significant numbers.

Having inflicted even easier versions of FizzBuzz on interviewees, I think you'd be highly surprised at the results. About ~30% of developers could not write any form of a loop, in any language, pseudocode or otherwise. This involved a sample size of about 100.

My personal theory is that many of these people constantly fail interviews and therefore skew statistics by reapplying, i.e. at any point the active market is filled with them. Nevertheless, I was shocked.

This is a real effect.

If you have 100 people, 95 of them are competent and put out 6 resumes every 3 years (on average 2/year), and 5 of them are incompetent and put out 100 resumes every year, then in a typical year the average hiring manager will see 95x2 = 190 resumes from competent applicants and 5x100 = 500 resumes from incompetent applicants. Over 70% of your pile of resumes consists of incompetents even though they're only 5% of the population you're sampling from. (Numbers are all made-up.)

Article in a math journal here: http://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/upload_library/22...

It's interesting, thanks for the link.

Coincidentally, I also experienced a similar effect to the somewhat famous "two humped camel" programming aptitude test [1]. This paper argued that you can split candidates into two normal distributions based on aptitude. In my own tests, what I experienced was more of an extremely long tail on the right side, which is actually somewhat similar to the linked paper.

In our own tests, had a bunch of people fall into the 40-60% range, but there was a small bunch of people clustered around 100%, which are just people who could have scored 100%+ being binned down to the max score, and not a second normal distribution.

[1] http://www.eis.mdx.ac.uk/research/PhDArea/saeed/paper1.pdf

The author of "The Camel Has Two Humps" later retracted[0] that paper.

[0] http://retractionwatch.com/2014/07/18/the-camel-doesnt-have-...

My problem with this comment is that it really sounds like you haven't even tried to use the fizzbuzz for a hiring process.

And if you haven't, what point was there in you commenting?

Here's one of the original blog posts that afaik made FizzBuzz famous back in 2007, it deals with your issue:

http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/01/dont-overthink-fizzbuzz....

My comment ended with a question. The point was to gain an understanding of why this process is common and/or useful.

I'm interested because I work in a related field and I may eventually try to become a developer. I was just curious why this is viewed as useful when it seems so easy to me, a person that isn't ready to be a developer.

Another reason I'm curious is because it's hard for someone learning to program to determine what the barrier to entry is. As in, how much do I need to know before I apply for a junior role? I don't like wasting people's' time.

Ah, ok. There are three things you probably don't realize.

1. While you think anyone can learn fizzbuzz on day 1, a significant proportion of the population do not grasp the logic behind variables and loops (40% I seem to remember, don't quote me).

AFAIK the argument about why this is still rages, it might be because we're terrible at teaching programming logic, or it might be that they're really not capable.

These people can still graduate with a CS degree.

2. There's loads of people who apply for jobs that have absolutely no experience. Lies, half-truths, etc. This happens in all fields. They believe they can learn on the job, not knowing what they don't know.

3. The basic math of bad applicants vs good applicants. Good applicants only apply for a handful jobs (or none at all!). Bad applicants will make hundreds or even thousands of applications trying to get the job they want. See Joel's "Everyone thinks they’re hiring the top 1%":

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/01/27/news-58/

1 + 2 + 3 = lots of fizzbuzz failures

Making FizzBuzz a great way of weeding them all out.

>a significant proportion of the population do not grasp the logic behind variables and loops (40% I seem to remember, don't quote me).

>These people can still graduate with a CS degree.

How the heck can someone graduate with a CS degree without grasping variables and loops? These are fundamental to computer programming. Variables are fundamental to algebra. You can't get a CS degree without knowing algebra. Are you talking about some kind of diploma-mill degrees or something?

A lot of CS degrees are easier than you think. Tons of cheating + disinterested professors = grads who can't code.

I'm starting to wonder if fizzbuzz is becoming so widely known that the type of people who would otherwise fail it are now googling and memorizing how to write it.

Maybe the industry needs a new sanity test.

As is the fate of all human endeavors, the task of writing fizzbuzz has been taken over by automation: https://github.com/trbabb/StackFizzBuzz

[NOAA HUMOR WARNING: Conditions extremely arid]

It's very widely known among developers who read HN or bl9gs in general. Which is a good filter on its own.

I agree, the analogy was meant to convey that, like the puzzle, it's imperfect but it's a quick way to get info. The jigsaw puzzle, Imo is not as great of a "bar" as fizzbuzz but they serve similar purposes to varying degrees of efficacy

perhaps the sims would be a better test

Comments like this make me lose faith in HN readers. These were human beings. This wasn't a job interview. Not caring for a human being on the grounds of IQ is a really disturbing thought.

A lot of people here are probably above average in intelligence (or consider themselves so), so may have trouble relating to people who are discriminated against based on their perceived intelligence, though some are no doubt minorities and can relate on at least at some level.

Many probably also believe that being more intelligent means you're superior and more deserving than someone who's less intelligent. There's also a lot of anti-immigrant, "defend the homeland from the foreign hordes" sentiment around the world these days.

I'd wonder how these people would react to the idea of having even native-born people have to take a citizenship test that included some IQ test when they turned 18, and if the failed they'd lose their citizenship. I bet many elites would be ok with that because they'd expect themselves and their children to pass, but I'm not so sure about the rest. They'd probably feel they were entitled to citizenship just because they had a lucky birth.

On the other hand, we're stuck with the dubs who were lucky enough to be born in this country, and there's more than enough of them already. We don't need to import more low-functioning people, rather the opposite.

It's idiotic the way we gate the top end of people trying to immigrate here legally, but were opening the floodgates on the low end. If someone is talented enough to get an H1B visa, or graduate from a top university, those are the people I'd roll out the red carpet for, rather than shackling them in pseudo indentured servitude or kicking them back to their home countries when their student visas expire.

I think it's more like who to permanently allow into your home, rather than hiring. After all, you don't just work in your country, you live there too.

That's a misleading metaphor. A country that includes 300 million people cannot be a safe place like a home, or even a workplace. Anything you might be afraid of is already here, somewhere.

It may be there, but in what quantity? Please don't imply all countries are equally safe.

And why should fear be the only cause to bar entry? Is that the standard you'd use for your home? I'd start with close friends and family, myself, then go from there.

> Is that the standard you'd use for your home?

One doesn't (and shouldn't) run a country like a house.

Do not confuse a house with a home. After all, you have a homeland, not a houseland.

I'm not interested in semantic gotcha games.

You get to limit your house to friends and family. Have at it.

You don't get to limit your country to that. Hell, you don't even get to limit your property to that, if you've got a sidewalk on it.

The difference between a house and a home is much more than semantics.

And much how the members of a household influence who to let in, the citizens of a country decide that as well, via voting.

Or do you consider yourself a higher authority on what they 'get' to decide on?

Our system, at times, doesn't let us vote to impede human rights. Gay marriage is now the law of the land, because the Supreme Court deemed there to be a right to it despite legislative efforts. The right to a fair trial isn't always popular, but we don't get to vote on it. The right of the KKK to march and speak isn't popular, but we don't get to vote on it.

Same with immigration - courts have blocked plenty of enforcement measures and violations of human rights like long-term detention of children. There's a reason "majority rules" isn't the only way we do things in the US and most other democracies.

Why do you make this analogy at the level of a country? Why not at the level of a street, or a town, or a county, or a state? Would you be okay with, say, Massachusetts limiting immigration from Michigan? Would you be okay with people on 51st street refusing to let people from 120th street move in? If not, what makes you feel different about immigration at the national level?

Because a country is home to all its citizens, limiting internal immigration like that is stealing bits of the country from other citizens. And since doing that is illegal (I'm guessing in most countries), you'll have to conquer those bits by force... at which point you'll just have a new, smaller country.

The statement "an X is home to all its citizens" is true for any X.

> Not in the sense that everyone must be the same culture, but the ideals and ethics of the two cultures must be rooted in similar things.

[Citation needed]. The cultures should only be compatible - not necessarily rooted in similar things. Japanese zen-buddhist shame culture is not rooted in similar things as America's typical protestant Christian guilt culture. To my knowledge Japanese immigrants did (and still do) integrate well.

Humans are ridiculously adaptable, I would argue the reverse of your argument - that there is no culture on earth that precludes any immigrant from flourishing in modern, secular western countries. In fact, voluntary immigrants are preselected for willingness to adapt.

Compatible is a better word for what I meant. Thanks

> Humans are ridiculously adaptable

[Citation needed].

I disagree. America has been and should continue to be a diverse melting pot, accepting peoples and ideals from all corners of the globe. We shouldn't try to weed out people based on something like intelligence or a vague notion of "cultural fit," as though some people should be held to a higher standard to live in this country based purely on an accident of birth. We should accept immigrants based on capacity. I know it sounds quaint and hokey, but I really believe in the words engraved at the foot of the statue of liberty:

    Give me your tired, your poor,
    Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
    The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
    Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
    I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

This is at least the second article in few weeks of self-congratulatory, virtue-signaling-masked-as-history we've seen from Smithsonian.

From this article I see two takeaways:

1) Despite the tome of the article, this test seems reasonable. If we take as given that we don't want to accept adults mentally incapable of caring for themselves, this test seems reasonable, and the described level of exclusions, less than 1000 for over a million immigrants, it seems very reasonable.

2) HUMILITY. The people operating Ellis Island 100 years ago were as self-assured of their beliefs as is everyone reading this article today. Consider how foolish we will look in 100 years.

Definitely super great to dismiss any appeal to morals or decency as "virtue signaling." Definitely not the sort of nihilism that corrodes and destroys civil society.

Pointing out "virtue signaling" is nihilism? I learn something new every day.

Maybe not nihilist but claiming people's opinions are not sincerely held beliefs based on nothing more than you disagreeing with them seems pretty pessimistic to me. It's just the new way to say SJW.

It's best to just let your eyes glaze over and your attention wander whenever anyone uses the term 'virtue-signalling'.

Dismissing all appeals to morality as virtue signaling is moral nihilism. This is not a complicated idea to grasp.

If only that was what the person you were responding to was doing, eh?

Defining virtue signaling as the action or practice of publicly expressing opinions or sentiments intended to demonstrate one's good character or the moral correctness of one's position on a particular issue.

The tone and substance of this article is not to illuminate the practices of the past in a relevant historical context, but rather to denigrate them and celebrate our own era. "Look how far we've come."

What changes would you make to this article to make it "illuminate the practices of the past in a relevant historical context" instead of denigrating those practices? I also don't see any reference to the modern era, could you point out some quotes celebrating "how far we've come"?

On the contrary, this article gives plenty of historical context: its entire purpose is to place the entry test in the context, first, of the tests which preceded it, and second, of the ideologies (eugenicist) which it reflected.

If all reflection on how far society has come are mere "virtue signaling," how can you have historical discussions on moral issues at all? You'd have to start with the premise that moral progress is impossible.

I'm not throwing around the word "nihilism," I'm using it because I think it's clear that the implication of your style of argument is the destruction of any kind of moral progress. Any society that is to progress morally must be able to define what it is progressing from.

If this test excluded less than 0.1% of the immigrants, why bother? The immigrants we're taking in who will become successful will pay more than enough in taxes over their lifetime to pay to the costs of those who need care. Just take them in and accept it as the cost of doing business. The ethical implications seem to outweigh the marginal gains.

>> As crude as the puzzle test may seem today, it reflected the belief that healthy immigrants should be admitted

Jigsaw puzzles can be quite tricky, beyond the simple wooden one used in the Ellis Island Immigrant test. The most difficult Jigsaw puzzles I have seen are the ones made from Pictures of Picasso [1], Edward Munch [2], Salvador Dali and other modern painters

[1] Picasso: https://www.zestoy.com/oiloncanvas/jigsaw-puzzle/zmtlltgg/1/...

[2] Munch: https://www.zestoy.com/oiloncanvas/jigsaw-puzzle/zoxpwnju/1/...

[3] Ellis Island: https://www.zestoy.com/englishinterstellar/jigsaw-puzzle/zpf...

Would they break up families? To me that is the most immoral part of immigration policies and having borders.

Kind of. The whole family could go back. Or they could decide to leave one behind. It was sort of "Sophie's choice" as I understand it.

I think I'd have been deported - the facial profile that's made by the puzzle is bizarre looking, the kind of thing that you'd do and be convinced you'd got the wrong end of the stick.

Me too! It just doesn't look right and I probably would try all combinations over and over and overthink it too much until they decide that I must be "feeble minded"

As another commenter pointed out, there was a face drawn on the pieces, which made it pretty straight forward

https://intelligencegroup581.wikispaces.com/file/view/feat_p...

> Within a decade, though, anti-immigrant, eugenic and racist forces would persuade Congress to pass the Immigration Act of 1924, which dramatically cut back immigration of Italians, Eastern European Jews and other groups considered undesirable.

I guess people with names like:

Leo Szilard

Enrico Fermi

Albert Einstein

Robert Oppenheimer

and so on.

For more such foreign names please refer to the Manhattan Project bios [1]

[1] http://www.atomicheritage.org/bios

They were just testing immigrant fingers for aptitude on assembly lines.

I don't see why y'all are knocking the test, except for maybe the claim it measured 'IQ' (which is a questionable concept in its own right.)

I guess it didn't change much, it's just now Google which is judging fizz buzz tests! :)

"We're going to call it 'extreme vetting'."

This kind of history is what strikes me as so absurd about anti-immigrant rhetoric about "doing things the right way." If the ancestors of wide swathes of the American populations were judged by modern standards, they would have been turned away. Instead, their great-great-grandparents solved a jigsaw puzzle and had someone size them up to see if they "looked like they had TB" before they were let in the door. Their entitlement to some kind of imagined cultural patrimony is such an obvious historical fiction.

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