The 100 Naturalization Questions and How to Really Improve the
Naturalization Experience
By Alan Lee, Esq.†‡
The new naturalization test with 100 questions announced on September
27, 2007, and to be implemented on October 1, 2008, is more difficult
for immigrants to comprehend, and could only improve the naturalization
experience under certain conditions.
First a few words concerning the questions. The questions without
a doubt are harder because a number of them present choices rather
than rote answers. Our count is 61 new or rephrased questions. Of
the rephrased questions, only 7 are at the same or a lesser degree
of difficulty. For the elderly, the prime concern here in the 100
questions is that elderly minds are not as nimble or able to grasp
concepts as younger ones. These questions will require more thought
to answer correctly. On the easier test for a subclass of the elderly
- persons 65 years or older who have been permanent residents for
20 or more years - U.S.C.I.S. has given with one hand and taken
away with the other. The number of questions there has been reduced
from 25 to 20, but the 20 feature at least 5 harder ones. It appears
that 3 of the harder questions from the current test were pulled
along with others, but that 8 new harder questions were put in their
place.
1. The large fee collected for naturalization, $675,
demands a predisposition for granting applications.
U.S.C.I.S. should be aware that its greatly expanded filing fee
of $675 (from $400 to $675 on 7/30/07) is a large sum to many people,
and the agency should work as hard as it can to pass the maximum
number of minimally qualified applicants. People expect a positive
result with such an invested amount, and adherence or deterioration
or devolution to a test incorporating mostly harder questions would
not be fair play and would seem like highway robbery to failed applicants.
2. Minimally qualified does not mean unqualified.
By "minimally qualified", we are not talking about totally
unqualified applicants, but those who have rudimentary knowledge
of English, civics and history. U.S.C.I.S. should continually train
its examiners over a period of years to be patient and give the
benefit of the doubt to these applicants. This training will take
time, perseverance, and sense of purpose by the agency as it has
unfortunately shown a propensity in the past and even now to begin
adjudications on benefits in an area liberally at first and then
become harder and harder with the passage of time. Although some
may argue that every person who becomes a citizen should be able
to serve on a jury, that is not a realistic expectation. Serving
well on a jury demands at least a good grasp of English, wide vocabulary
(much wider than found on any naturalization study course) and in
many cases colloquialisms. These considerations should not be within
the province of a naturalization test. For the other responsibility
of a citizen, voting, an excellent grasp of English is not necessary
to inform the individual of issues in the country given the number
of ethnic language newspapers and television stations which broadcast
news and diverse opinions on a daily basis.
3. The pilot test results indicate only that examiners
were predisposed to granting or that volunteers for the pilot test
were confident of passage.
U.S.C.I.S. stated in the press release of 9/27/07 that volunteers
who participated in the pilot test achieved a 92.4% overall pass
rate on the first try, and that the pass rates by test component
were: civics, 93.7%; reading 99.8%; and writing 99%. As encouraging
as these figures appear to be, they must be taken with a heavy dose
of salt. Only volunteers took the pilot test and these were most
likely the applicants with good English skills who had confidence
that they could pass any test. This is borne out by not only the
pass rate, but the scores on the component parts. It has been our
long experience that most failures occur in the reading and writing
phases of the test, thus leading us to conclude that the volunteers
were already highly adept in English or that the naturalization
examiners were predisposed to granting the cases.
4. The reading and writing components should indeed
be centered on civics and history topics.
In its press release of 11/30/06, the agency stated that U.S.C.I.S.
would provide applicants with study materials for the proposed test,
to include a civics based vocabulary list, and that the list of
sentences would focus on civics and history topics, rather than
a list of sentences to cover a range of topics. Its press release
of 1/22/07 reiterated that "The difference is that the new
sentences will now focus on civics and history topics, rather than
the general range of topics on the current test," and it further
stated on 9/27/07 that "U.S.C.I.S. will also distribute study
materials corresponding with the revised test beginning in early
2008." If all these are true, U.S.C.I.S. has an opportunity
to both make the test more relevant and capable of passage to a
large number of applicants. Under the current test, applicants with
rudimentary English skills cannot focus their studies as there is
no set vocabulary list for them to be able to read and write. Reading
passages and sentences to be written oftimes seemingly fall from
the sky. A set vocabulary study list if correctly administered in
a test would make it easier to read a passage and write at least
one correctly spelled sentence in the three chances given at interview.
Again though, the fairness of the reading and writing components
would depend upon how many hard words are given to write in a sentence.
For example, a sentence like "The Supreme Court is the highest
court in the land" would probably be acceptable while a sentence
like "The First Amendment guarantees religious freedom"
contains too many long words regardless of their being drawn from
a focused vocabulary list.
5. The 100 questions should be asked in standard English.
If we accept the assumption that there should be more disposition
to grant rather than deny naturalization applications and that applicants
should not need "jury" ready English to pass, a test applicant
should not be frustrated by an examiner's accent, twist of words
in a test question, or speed of speech. For many applicants who
spend hours upon hours of time studying for the test, it seems unfair
to be failed because he or she has been listening to tapes of standard
English in a clear voice with proper cadence only to be confronted
by a naturalization examiner with muddy accent or who speaks quickly
or who asks the same questions in different words. The applicant
in these cases knows the answers, but cannot give them because he
or she did not hear the questions. In this day of high technology,
much can be done to allow applicants to hear the questions clearly
by establishing an audio system in which the 10 test questions for
the day are programmed for the examiner's machine to play back to
the applicant. Such a system would probably even be considered low
tech nowadays and not cost a significant amount of monies. An expansion
of the audio system could also allow the 39 standard questions of
the N-400 application form to be played back to an applicant. (To
reduce the risk that such playback would allow an applicant unfair
advantage, the numerical sequence of the questions could be frequently
changed.)
If U.S.C.I.S. is truly interested in having a more accessible test
with more relevance and not leaving failed applicants with a sense
of being robbed of $675, we encourage it to consider the above recommendations.
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