Two years ago, after 17 years of living full-time in the U.S., I became an American citizen. The long, expensive and nerve-raking process culminated in an English language and “civics” test administered by a stern-looking Citizenship and Immigration Services officer.
I was supposed to be accompanied by my immigration lawyer whose job was to ensure that I was dealt with fairly — an example of class privilege that I took full advantage of.
The location of the test was switched at the last possible moment from Lawrence to Springfield, so I went in without the lawyer. I answered some questions about U.S. history and the American system of government, wrote and read a couple of sentences in English, and was then proclaimed “one of us.”
The “civics” questions were not new to me; the government had provided me with a collection of 100 questions, along with “acceptable” answers. (Q: “What is the economic system in the United States?” A: “capitalist economy” or “market economy”). If you offered a different answer than the ones specified in the guide, the USCIS officer got to decide whether you had a clue or not. My officer barely looked up at me as we flew through the six-out-of-10 questions I had to answer correctly.
Going up for citizenship during Trump’s reign made me apprehensive, despite my privileged situation. Would Trump’s people mess with the application procedure and the naturalization test, in their never-ending quest to reduce all types of immigration into the United States?
The answer, luckily for me, was “No.” Actually, it was “No, not yet” because a year and a half later, in November 2020, with just a few months to go before relinquishing control of the government, the Trump administration announced the first major change in the “civics” test since 2008. The bank of questions one had to study now included 128 questions, instead of 100, and applicants had to answer correctly 12 questions out of 20.
More controversially, they added new questions and modified the answers to others in ways that signaled a closer alignment with conservative values. Here are a few examples:
The answer to the question “Who does a U.S. Senator represent?” was no longer “all people of the state,” but rather “citizens of their state,” a category that excluded undocumented immigrants and resident aliens.
The following questions were added: “Why did the United States enter the Korean War?” and “Why did the United States enter the Vietnam War?” The only “correct” answer to both was “To stop the spread of communism.”
The section titled “Principles of American Democracy” in the 2008 test was renamed “Principles of American Government,” arguably a nod to a long-standing idea on the right that America is “a republic, not a democracy.”
A month ago, the Biden administration changed the modification. We’re now back to the 10-question 2008 test. That takes care of the Trump-era prejudice. But the test is still deeply flawed in its logic and assumptions about what it means to be an American. Put simply, half the test looks like a trivia quiz, instead of an instrument for educating new Americans about the priceiples of liberal democracy.
By my count, the test bank has 55 questions about American government, 30 questions about American history, seven questions that could fit in either category, and eight questions about American geography. Of the 55 government-related questions, a few test the applicant’s memory, rather than their understanding of democratic principles (for example, “How many amendments does the Constitution have?”, “The House of Representatives has how many voting members?”).
“I don’t think the citizenship test now, or 25 years ago, or 50 years ago, actually reflects what you need to know to be a functioning U.S. citizen, but rather what the white men in charge imagine is important,” says Jennifer Fronc, a professor of history at UMass Amherst. New citizens, she says, would be better served studying up on the local government that impacts their day-to-day life than learning the names of the writers of the Federalist Papers.
The USCIS decision-makers would also be well-served to remember a few fundamental lessons from pedagogy, says David Glassberg, also a professor of history at UMass. “The purpose of any test — including ones that you give when you’re a teacher — is not really the test itself, but the act of making people study for it. It’s in the studying that people really learn things. I think that having a pretty detailed citizenship test that talks about people’s rights, so that they know when their rights are violated, might be a really good thing,” he says.
I want my neighbor, my child’s teacher, and my own students to know that they have a legal right to film the police going about their business. I want them to know that they can run for the local school board and, if elected, help decide what their kids will study. I want them to know that most American communities run elections at least once a year to fill lots of positions. Then, we can talk about the War of 1812 and “the two longest rivers in the United States” over barbecue, on the Fourth of July.
Razvan Sibii is a senior lecturer of Journalism at UMass Amherst. He writes a monthly column on immigration and incarceration. He can be contacted at razvan@umass.edu.