Immigration III

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     One strain of historical thought that achieved popularity in the 1950s forwarded the notion that immigration - more than the frontier experience, or any other specific event or factor - had been and continued to be the defining element of United States history. In this depiction, the 30 million immigrants who entered the country between 1820 and 1900 had common experiences regardless of their national, religion, or race: namely, in experiencing hardship and alienation, they themselves changed, but they also carried on the development of the nation itself.
     Both casual and formal students of history should, however, be careful in equating the experiences of different groups of immigrants, especially under the somewhat blurring concept of "hardship." The description that all immigrants experienced hardship and immigration fails to account properly for the fact that in the 17th and 18th century millions of Africans were forcibly shipped to the United States and sold into slavery. While this group of people should not be excluded from any full reckoning of the nation's migrants, its alienation and hardship was of a substantially different character from that of the other populations, who migrated more willingly and independently and who arrived under and lived in vastly different conditions. If it is, indeed, the hardship and alienation experienced by the nation's migrants that have above all shaped both them and their nation, then to ignore this distinction would be to distort an important element of what our nation has been shaped to be.

The author of the passage would be most likely to make which of the following recommendations to scholars of immigration in America?

Review: Immigration III


Explanation 

This question of one of multiple types of GMAT question that may sound initially like exercises in mind-reading. Never fear; you are not expected to speculate on the psychology of the author. The primary goal in the wording of the question is to set up an objectively correct answer. What makes the answer to this question objectively correct is that it's consistent with everything stated in the passage, especially the key points, while the other answer choices fail to be consistent with those same points.

Since we know the key points, we can apply that filter to the answer choices: which are consistent with the statements of the passage? Choice (A) lacks support in that the author has not said anything about severity; the author might believe that the suffering of African immigrants was more severe, but the central point of his objection is that dissimilar things have been equated. Choice (B) goes too far. The author does not state or imply that the experience of African immigrants was different in every way. And he does not state or imply that African immigrants should be considered as a special case and not included from all immigrants; on the contrary, he states that "this group of people should not be excluded from any full reckoning of the nation's migrants." So (B) is out. Choice (C) does attack the heart of the author's criticism, but it proposes a solution that the author would consider inappropriate and/or impossible. The author states conclusively that the experience of the African migrants was substantially different and that to consider it the same would be to "distort the truth." (C) would represent such a distortion, so the author would not recommend it and it's out. (D) is not an unusually specific suggestion, but it fits the author's theory perfectly, because it removes the key problem, which is the equating of dissimilar migration experiences while still counting African migrant experiences among this set. (E) is out for reasons similar to those considered for (C).

The correct answer is (D).


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