Immigration
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50 free Immigration trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Immigration has shaped almost every country on Earth. People have crossed oceans and borders to escape hunger and war, to find work, or simply to start again, and the places they reached were changed by their languages, food, music and ideas. This quiz covers the story from several angles: the stations where newcomers were inspected, the laws that opened and closed the door, the vocabulary every student of the subject meets, famous people who began life in another country, and great movements of people on other continents. A few questions test popular myths against what the records show. It is written for classrooms from upper elementary through middle and high school, for family history fans, and for anyone who wants a fair, fact-checked challenge. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you can play straight through or print the set for a group.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01After a 1998 Supreme Court ruling, most of Ellis Island's land officially belongs to which state?
New Jersey
New Jersey was awarded the 22.8 acres of landfill added over the years to enlarge the island. New York kept about 4.7 acres, including the original island.
Q 02Which poet wrote The New Colossus, the sonnet on a plaque inside the Statue of Liberty's pedestal?
Emma Lazarus
Emma Lazarus wrote the sonnet in 1883 to raise money for the pedestal, and it played no part in the 1886 opening. A friend had it cast in bronze and mounted in 1903, sixteen years after her death.
Q 03Which Bavarian-born immigrant to Gold Rush San Francisco later shared the patent for riveted jeans?
Levi Strauss
Levi Strauss came west to open a branch of his family's dry goods business, not to make clothes. A Reno tailor named Davis invented the riveted pants and asked him to help apply for the 1873 patent.
Q 04The failure of which crop in the 1840s drove more than a million people to leave Ireland?
Potato
Potato blight destroyed the staple food of Ireland's poor, and roughly a million people died as well. Hunger and departures together cut the country's population by 20 to 25 percent.
Q 05Which physicist, abroad when Hitler took power in 1933, never went home and settled in Princeton?
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein joined Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study and became an American citizen in 1940. He also kept the Swiss citizenship he had gained as a young man for the rest of his life.
Q 06Which coffee-growing country has the most people of Japanese descent outside Japan?
Brazil
Brazil counts about two million people of Japanese descent. The first 781 workers landed at the port of Santos in 1908 aboard the ship Kasato Maru, bound for plantations in São Paulo state.
Q 07Which office does the US Constitution reserve for natural-born citizens, barring every immigrant?
President
President, along with the vice presidency, is the only office closed to them. Austrian-born Arnold Schwarzenegger could serve as a state governor but can never run for the White House.
Q 08Which rock singer was born Farrokh Bulsara in Zanzibar and fled with his family to England in 1964?
Freddie Mercury
Freddie Mercury was 17 when his Parsi family escaped a violent revolution and settled in Middlesex. He had spent much of his childhood at British boarding schools in India.
Q 09Which metaphor for America's mix of cultures was popularized by a 1908 Israel Zangwill play?
Melting pot
Melting pot entered everyday speech after Zangwill's play of that name opened in Washington with Theodore Roosevelt in the audience. Critics who think cultures stay distinct prefer the image of a salad bowl.
Q 10Which colorful nickname is given to the US document that proves permanent resident status?
Green card
Green card comes from the greenish color of earlier versions of the document, once called an alien registration receipt. Holders are required to carry it at all times.
Q 11A family from Italy immigrates to Argentina, but which verb describes their leaving Italy?
Emigrate
Emigrate comes from the Latin for moving out, while immigrate comes from the Latin for moving in. Both words describe the same journey, seen from the two countries involved.
Q 12Which term do geographers use for conditions like war or famine that drive people out of a homeland?
Push factors
Push factors are the troubles at home, such as hunger, drought or a lack of jobs. Their opposites, pull factors, are the things that attract a migrant to the new place.
Q 13Which legal process, usually ending with an oath of allegiance, makes an immigrant a citizen?
Naturalization
Q 21Which immigration station in San Francisco Bay held detainees who carved poems into its walls?
Angel Island
Angel Island detained and interrogated new arrivals from 1910 to 1940, and more than 200 of the poems they left behind have been recovered and restored.
Q 22Which 1882 law was the first major US measure to bar a whole national group from immigrating?
Chinese Exclusion Act
The Chinese Exclusion Act, signed by Chester Arthur, barred laborers for ten years, then was renewed and made permanent. Repeal came only in 1943, when the two countries were wartime allies.
Q 23Who signed the 1965 Hart-Celler immigration act at the foot of the Statue of Liberty?
Lyndon B. Johnson
Naturalization rules vary from country to country, but most require a minimum period of legal residence and some knowledge of the national language or culture.
Q 14Which protection may people fleeing persecution seek abroad under a 1948 UN declaration?
Asylum
Asylum is set out in Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The idea is far older: ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Hebrews all recognized a religious right of sanctuary.
Q 15Which word, from the Greek for scattering, describes a people living far from their homeland?
Diaspora
Diaspora was first used for the exile of the Jews from their homeland in ancient times. The word has since been borrowed for many other peoples settled far from home.
Q 16Which term for hostility toward foreigners combines Greek roots meaning stranger and fear?
Xenophobia
Xenophobia first appeared in print in a London newspaper in 1880, describing English attitudes toward the French. The same article paired it with its opposite, xenomania.
Q 17Which Latin legal term describes citizenship by birthplace, a rule found mostly in the Americas?
Jus soli
Jus soli means right of soil and came down from English common law. Its rival, jus sanguinis or right of blood, passes citizenship from parent to child and is linked to the French Civil Code of 1804.
Q 18Which term describes money migrant workers send home, a flow far larger than global foreign aid?
Remittances
Remittances reached about 780 billion dollars in 2021, sent to some 800 million people. Foreign aid that year totaled roughly 200 billion dollars.
Q 19Which cheapest class of sea travel sent passengers to Ellis Island while richer ones skipped it?
Steerage
Steerage passengers were ferried to the island for inspection, while first- and second-class travelers typically bypassed it altogether. The name likely comes from quarters near the ship's rudder.
Q 20The Bracero Program, begun in 1942, brought farm workers to the United States from which country?
Mexico
Mexico supplied workers under millions of short-term contracts between 1942 and 1964, the largest foreign worker program in United States history. The Spanish word bracero means a manual laborer.
Lyndon B. Johnson chose Liberty Island for the ceremony because his administration saw the law as historic. It abolished the national origins formula that had shaped who could enter since the 1920s.
Q 24Before Ellis Island, which former entertainment venue in Manhattan was New York's immigrant depot?
Castle Garden
Castle Garden received more than 7.5 million arrivals between 1855 and 1890. Built as a fort, it later became the first home of the New York Aquarium.
Q 25Ellis Island inspectors used a buttonhook to examine immigrants' eyes for signs of which disease?
Trachoma
Trachoma, a bacterial infection that can lead to blindness, could get an Ellis Island arrival sent back. It spreads through contact with discharge from an infected person's eyes or nose.
Q 26Ellis Island officials never renamed immigrants; they copied names from which travel records?
Ship manifests
Ship manifests were the only immigration records for people entering the country, so the renaming story is a myth. Inspectors, who knew three languages on average, often corrected mistakes instead.
Q 27Restaurant cook Wong Kim Ark's 1898 Supreme Court win confirmed birthright citizenship under which amendment?
Fourteenth
The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, makes citizens of people born in the United States. Wong, born in San Francisco, had been refused re-entry after a trip abroad.
Q 28Which nickname stuck to the anti-immigrant American Party of the 1850s?
Know Nothings
Know Nothings were required to say they knew nothing when outsiders asked about the movement. It ran Millard Fillmore for the White House in 1856 and declined rapidly after his defeat.
Q 29Which 1980 exodus carried some 125,000 Cubans to Florida after Fidel Castro opened one port to them?
Mariel boatlift
The Mariel boatlift took its name from the Cuban harbor where the boats loaded. Cuban Americans organized the flotilla, and within days as many as 300 boats were collecting passengers.
Q 30Which neighborhood, home to the Tenement Museum, once drew the bulk of New York's immigrants?
Lower East Side
The Lower East Side packed newcomers into crowded tenements around 1900, and part of it was once known as Little Germany. The museum preserves apartments at 97 Orchard Street, home to immigrant families from 1863 to 1935.