Citizenship exam may be revamped
LESLEY CLARK
Miami Herald
Dec 1, 2006
WASHINGTON - The exam that immigrants must pass to become U.S. citizens is being redesigned to ensure new Americans are as familiar with the concept of democracy as they are with the number of stars on the flag.
Immigration officials who unveiled 144 potential new questions Thursday -- which will be tried out in 10 pilot cities, including Miami -- said the changes weren't designed to make the test more or less difficult, ``but more meaningful.''
''We want to get away from rote memorization,'' said Emilio Gonzalez, director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. ``When you raise your hand and swear allegiance to the United States, you really ought to know what you are swearing your allegiance to. Citizenship is more than just test-taking.''
Those who work with immigrants, however, said they fear some of the questions may be too tough for immigrants who lack a grounding in civics or U.S. history.
''We want to encourage people to become citizens, and the last thing we want to do is scare them away,'' said Tammy Fox Isicoff, an immigration attorney in Miami. ``I think they are trying to raise the bar for becoming a citizen. We do want our citizens to understand the essence of what they are becoming, but does it make you a lesser citizen to not know what Susan B. Anthony did?''
Among the questions she singled out for ridicule: ''What is the current minimum wage in the United States?'' (Answer: $5.15, the current federal minimum wage.)
IMMIGRANTS VOLUNTEER
Immigrants applying for citizenship will be asked to volunteer to take the new questions in 10 cities beginning early next year. In addition to Miami, the cities include Albany, N.Y.; Boston; Charleston, S.C.; Denver; El Paso, Texas; Kansas City, Mo.; San Antonio, Texas; Tucson, Ariz.; and Yakima, Wash.
There are no pilot programs in California, one of the states with the largest population of immigrants, but officials said the cities were chosen as a representative sample of the United States, based on geography and volume of citizenship applications.
The agency is hoping for 5,000 volunteers to take the revised test, Gonzalez said. Applicants who choose to answer pilot questions can switch back to the current exam if they get a pilot question wrong. They will still be allowed two chances to take the original test.
Gonzalez said the pilot program will allow the agency to work out problems with the questions and narrow the questions to 100 before taking the test nationwide in 2008. The citizenship test -- in which applicants must successfully answer six out of 10 questions -- now has a pass rate of about 85 percent for first-time takers and 95 percent for the re-take. Immigration officials said they would look to match that rate.
The revisions have been years in the making, spurred by recommendations made in the mid-1990s by the bipartisan U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, which called for the ''Americanization'' of immigrants so they could be better integrated into mainstream American life.
A variety of groups with an interest in immigration -- including groups that want tougher immigration rules -- were consulted as the agency developed the questions, aimed at seeing that immigrants understand American democracy, Gonzalez said.
The redesign committee included Gema Santos, a teacher at the English Center in Miami. Edwina Hoffman, an instructional supervisor with the Miami-Dade County schools, said she expects the new questions to be more challenging, but suggested that instructors who work with immigrants should teach civics and history.
`PEOPLE CAN PASS'
''It's not onerous and certainly with instruction, people can pass,'' she said.
She said some groups had ``wanted to make it much tougher and exclusionary.
''Some of the early versions were a lot more challenging, and that raised a lot of concerns,'' Hoffman said. ``I'm glad they heard from the field that that was not going to work.''
