The pilot questions for a new U.S. citizenship test released yesterday focus more on concepts of American civics rather than specific facts, but officials said they did not try to make the test harder.
Immigrants taking the test still will be able to memorize acceptable answers to a bank of potential questions they receive as part of the naturalization process, but U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Emilio T. Gonzalez said that the study of civic concepts will give prospective citizens an understanding of what it means to be an American.
“What we’re trying to do is get to a greater meaning of why you’re there raising your hand” to take the oath of citizenship, Mr. Gonzalez told reporters.
About 5,000 volunteers will take the optional pilot test early next year in 10 cities: Albany, N.Y.; Boston; Charleston, S.C.; Denver; El Paso, Texas; Kansas City, Mo.; Miami; San Antonio; Tucson, Ariz., and Yakima, Wash. Those who fail the pilot test will have the standard two chances to pass the current exam.
Of the 96 potential questions currently used in citizenship tests, 57 were rephrased for the new test, which has 144 potential questions. Alfonso Aguilar, chief of the Office of Citizenship, said USCIS hopes to pare the list of potential questions to 100 by dropping those that are missed most frequently.
Each pilot exam, like the current test, will contain 10 of these questions, and applicants still must give six correct answers to pass.
The new exam will be standardized and written at the “high beginning” language level, Mr. Aguilar said.
Once the redesign is complete, USCIS will have spent $6.5 million over six years. Immigration advocacy and reform agencies say that is excessive.
“I would have written it for them for $1 million,” said Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform.
Mr. Aguilar told The Washington Times that the goal for the test is to encourage learning and identify with the nation’s values. “What we don’t want is just pure memorization of facts that are not going to allow you to understand those values,” he said.
Christina DeConcini, policy director for the National Immigration Forum, said the revised test questions may raise requirements for English language skills too high. “It’s about barriers to letting people become citizens,” she said.
Fred Tsao, policy director for the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, which expressed concerns about the redesign, said the broader range of material will require immigrants to learn more for the test, which in turn will make citizenship teachers’ jobs more difficult.
The test rewrite resulted from the recommendations of a commission led by Rep. Barbara Jordan, a late Texas Democrat.
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