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 > Citizenship Exams to be made more "Meaningful" By Louie Gilot El Paso Times December 9, 2005 The naturalization test given to immigrants aspiring to become U.S. citizens will be redesigned within two years to make the questions 'more meaningful,' Alfonso Aguilar, chief of the office of citizenship for Citizenship and Immigration Services, said Thursday in El Paso. The new test will not be more difficult, Aguilar said, but it will be more substantive than the current test, which hasn't been changed since it was drafted in 1986. The current questions are 'very trivia-based,' Aguilar said. 'You have seven questions about the flag in there. What color are the stripes? What color are the stars? You have questions about what form to use to apply for citizenship. That doesn't teach you anything. When immigrants are studying for it, they get very little civic context out of it.' The test is a pool of 96 questions about U.S. history and civics, from which immigration agents pick 10 questions at random. It is administered along with a short written exam, a reading test and an interview. Rita Sariana, a naturalized citizen who now gives free classes to prepare immigrants for the test, said she agreed with the spirit of the redesign. 'The more we know, the more we appreciate the United States like we appreciate the country we came from,' she said. The law mandates that new citizens not only understand the functioning of the U.S. government and have a basic knowledge of English, but also show an attachment to the United States, Aguilar said. Ouisa Davis, the executive director of the Diocesan Migrant and Refugee Services, said the current test falls short. 'It doesn't evaluate somebody's commitment to becoming a citizen. It leads to memorizing, and when people memorize, they don't retain the information,' she said. Aguilar's office has already spent $4.5 million on the redesign, and Aguilar said he was committed to spending no more than $6.7 million in total on the project. The new test is being drafted with the help of private consultants and is expected to be done by January 2007. The government will then give immigrants' advocates a year to study the questions and spread the word among immigrants, Aguilar said. Aguilar also wants to make sure the test is administered uniformly across the United States. He may also make the test the first step of the naturalization process instead of the last step, he said. The Bush administration began working on the changes in 2001, but had to scrap its first effort because of concerns about how the test was developed. Each year, more than 450,000 immigrants, including more than 10,000 members of the military, pass the test and become U.S. citizens, officials said. |
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