President Donald Trump’s deputies plan to upgrade the test that migrants must pass to win a share of citizenship from Americans.
“This test is just too easy,” said Joseph Edlow, the director of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agency. Some migrants are cheating their way through the test, Edlow told a public event organized by the Center for Immigration Studies:
Being able to be coached through this process right now is not something that should be allowed … and I’m seeing it unfortunately. I’ve had great conversations with adjudicators in the field in various offices, and I don’t like what I’m hearing. They’re worried, and they’re looking forward to it.
The law sets a high bar for the test, Edlow said:
The statute says we’re looking for attachment to the Constitution, we’re looking for an understanding of the civic responsibility of being a U.S. citizen, we’re looking for actual understanding and ability to read and speak and write the English language … [Just] six out of 10 questions [from a list of 100 public questions] … is what people have to get right [to pass].
Under President Joe Biden, top officials pushed staff to quickly approve work permits and citizenship, in part, because they claimed Americans’ homeland is really a chaotically diverse “Nation of Immigrants” for federal and state governments to manage.
“So instead of answering and confirming an applicant’s answers to every question, they went ahead and asked just very basic, general questions, and based on the answers to those, essentially assumed that the other answers were the same,” Edlow told Breitbart News in August. “It was shortening the interview in a way that would have allowed for more people to go through the process.”
“We need to make it a little bit more challenging,” he told the CIS meeting, adding:
We’ve got to make sure that people are actually understanding the citizen what it means to get that benefit, and that we’re going to do … We’re going to make the test harder, in terms of making the questions a little bit more thought-provoking, I’m looking at ways to move forward. I might even consider moving to a standardized test format [where] applicants would come in on different days, and actually have to … write an essay on “What does it mean to me to be an American?” And let’s see what people actually understand.
“We need to know more …to really understand whether someone has a true attachment to the Constitution as required by the statute,” said Edlow. adding:
I don’t want this test to be so hard that it’s impossible, but I want it to be [about] thought-provoking questions, not a question of simply “Name two federal holidays,” and “Name one branch of government,” or “Name your governor.” That’s simply not enough.
His agency is also upgrading other aspects of the citizenship review process, including intensive reviews of applicants’ characters and affiliations. Officials are also expected to restart the pre-Biden policy of interviewing the neighbors of would-be citizens.
Edlow said the staff at USCIS supports his goal of upgrading the citizenship test. “They’re thanking me for doing what I’m doing,” he said.
“Pretty much of all this comes to I am declaring war on fraud,” Edlow said, adding, “I am declaring war on anyone that … wants to get a benefit but doesn’t want the responsibility of what it means to actually be a U.S. citizen.”
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