The Department of Homeland Security is proposing making changes to the exam that people take before becoming naturalized citizens:
The Bush administration yesterday unveiled dozens of new questions that may be added to the nation’s naturalization test, and immigration advocates are concerned that the changes could make it more difficult for millions of legal immigrants to become U.S. citizens.
Immigrants seeking citizenship who now answer questions such as “What are the colors of our flag?” would be asked “Why do we have 13 stripes on the flag?” if the new questions are approved. Other queries include “Who sold the Louisiana Territory to the U.S.?,” “Name the writers of the Federalist Papers” and “What did the abolitionists try to end before the Civil War?”
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Some of the questions are simple, such as “What country is on the southern border of the United States?” The answer is Mexico, the home country of most legal and illegal immigrants.
Others are more difficult. “What alliance of North American and European countries was created during the Cold War?” The answer is NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
The new test and its questions were drawn up because “over the past 10 years . . . the standardization and meaningfulness of the naturalization test have come under scrutiny,” according to a statement by the American Institutes for Research, an independent firm that helped design the pilot program.
The sad thing is that the naturalized citizens are more likely to know the answers to these questions then some native-born Americans.
