The Trump Administration is making big moves to change the United States citizenship test around to make it harder to pass, thus screening for potential citizens who are actually willing to learn American history rather than just memorize the answers to test questions, as many suspect has long been happening.
Particularly, President Trump and those in his administration have tried to honor the naturalization system and American citizenship itself as a hallowed institution by changing the format of the questions around to make the test harder to pass, with the new head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services saying the test itself is too easy.
President Trump has long seen the test and the system as something that is very important and must be respected and honored by everyone involved in it, from the Americans who administer it to the would-be citizens who take it. For example, he has called naturalization “one of the most priceless gifts ever granted by human hands.”
So, changes are being made to ensure the test has a high enough difficulty level. Such is what the recently appointed USCIS Director, Joseph Edlow, explained to the New York Times. Director Edlow explained to the paper that he thinks the current test, which is passed by about 90% of those who take it, is too easy and thus not in the spirit of our naturalization laws.
Specifically, Director Edlow noted that the test is easy enough that it can be passed by just memorizing the answers to enough of the question, which isn’t the spirit of quizzing applicants on the American system or history. He said, “The test, as it’s laid out right now, it’s not very difficult. It’s very easy to kind of memorize the answers. I don’t think we’re really comporting with the spirit of the law.”
To fix that, Director Edlow is making a few simple changes that he thinks will help. For one, the current test uses a bank of 100 potential questions and only requires applicants to correctly answer 6 of 10. Edlow is changing the test to the 2020 standard, which has a bank of 128 questions and requires applicants to get 12 out of 20 correct.
Further, in addition to the current English exam and collection of questions, Director Edlow’s USCIS is attempting to add in a speaking section that it hopes will better test English skills, and thus screen out those who haven’t properly learned enough English to integrate well as American citizens.
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For that proposed part of the test, the testing officer would show the applicant photographs of ordinary, day-to-day scenarios like the weather or food, and ask the applicant to describe the scene pictured in proper English. It is unclear if USCIS will be able to push that additional test section through, but many in MAGA see it as important to ensure the naturalization test passes and fails the right people, generally.
Leftists are, predictably, angry about the changes. For example, Mechelle Perrott, citizenship coordinator at San Diego Community College District’s College of Continuing Education in California, spoke to the Associated Press about the proposed format changes and complained that those who didn’t learn how to pass it won’t pass, which seems to be the point.
She said, complaining about the immigrants having to learn to read and write in English to pass the test, “We have a lot of students that are refugees, and they’re coming from war-torn countries where maybe they didn’t have a chance to complete school or even go to school. It’s more difficult learning to read and write if you don’t know how to do that in your first language. That’s my main concern about the multiple-choice test; it’s a lot of reading.”
Watch Trump comment on tests for immigrants regarding religion here:
Trump says that he’ll implement a religious test for immigrants if he is elected: “If you don’t like our religion…then we don’t want you in our country.”
pic.twitter.com/ddo5MuUd8m— The Intellectualist (@highbrow_nobrow) June 16, 2024