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Steve Schwinghamer

Well, one of the fun things about being at a / working in is that I get really neat public inquiries sometimes.

Today, I had one about how officials tested literacy in the 1920s. In the 1919 amendments (and in the Chinese Immigration Act), the language basically talks about immigrants of age having to read a short paragraph - but reading it in other languages was fine, it didn't have to be English or French.

Okay, so far so good.

BUT of course few of the immigration officers in Canada at that time were polyglots!

How to test, how to test...

They devised an action test, with ten short phrases that gave instructions, and then had one test printed on a card, in English and in translation.

Here are the tests and languages as implemented in the 1920s.

@sps That's an interesting spread of languages given the time period.

@pstewart

Considering the role of the test as a device for exclusion, and that many immigration officers understand otherwise desirable immigrants (white British) could be excused a bit of illiteracy...