New changes expected to come to the US citizenship test later next year have raised fears that it will make the test more difficult for applicants with limited English skills, according to naturalized citizens and applicants.
According to CNN, the proposed changes have been announced following a statement last December that the test is due for an update from its 2008 version, which the Biden administration says will improve its accessibility, but many applicants and immigration lawyers disagree.
At the moment, English proficiency is largely tested by an interviewer asking the applicant several questions about elements of their personal life included in the written application, and is a secondary component of the civics test, where the interviewer asks the applicant 10 short questions about US history and civics and gets an oral response.
In the new visual description tests, applicants will instead be asked to describe the content of images, such as everyday objects or activities, which many fear will be significantly more difficult.
Abhay Raju is a naturalized citizen but his wife is pursuing naturalization. He told Indian Eagle’s Travel Beats that tests could impact the process.
“My wife is awaiting her naturalization next year. It would be harder for her to explain pictures in impeccable English,” he said.
Since the current test asks applicants about elements of their personal life, many expect applicants to be more familiar with the language involved than they would be with concepts in images picked by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. That’s especially important for pronunciation.
According to Bill Bliss, an author of a textbook on citizenship, changing the civics and US history component of the test from oral to written multiple-choice will increase it’s difficulty by requiring a greater base of knowledge and limiting possible answers.
For example, there is a question in the current test that asks an applicant to name a war fought by the US in the 1900s, to which there are five acceptable answers; World War I, World War II, Korean War, Vietnam War or Gulf War.
In the proposed multiple-choice test, only one of those would appear as an option, requiring applicants to remember all five wars, rather than just one.
Though the Biden administration hopes to improve accessibility through standardizing the test, concerns over these two changes have drawn criticism that the proposal will do exactly the opposite for many applicants, especially the elderly.
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I would love to see our current (and future) politicians take the citizen test as a first step in running for office. Fail it, and you aren’t qualified to run for office.
ALL of them.