Federal immigration authorities have redesigned the list of civics questions that immigrants need to study before becoming citizens.
Surprisingly enough, in this age of dumbed-down tests, the new exam is an improvement.
Gone are some innocuous trifles, like “Who wrote the Star-Spangled Banner?” – replaced in large part by questions that require at least some deeper thinking about American ideas and institutions.
For example:
* “What country did we fight during the Revolutionary War?” is now “Why did the colonists fight the British?”
* “How many branches are there in the United States government?” is now “What stops one branch of government from becoming too powerful?”
And no potential citizen will now have to “name one purpose of the United Nations.”
The test’s format remains the same: Applicants are given 100 questions (and answers) to study; they pass if they get six of a randomly chosen 10 right during an oral exam.
Says the director of Citizenship and Immigration Services, Emilio Gonzalez: “This test genuinely talks about what makes an American citizen.”
That’s a welcome change of tone from the bitter recent battles over immigration reform, where too many “immigrants’ rights” advocates acted as if insisting on the rule of law amounted to racism – and that U.S. citizenship is a global entitlement.
The important thing about the new test, then, is its affirmation that becoming American requires some understanding of what America is.
The usual suspects, of course, are already howling.
One of the groups consulted in the revision, the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, condemned the test’s “abstract and irrelevant questions.”
Not that immigrants themselves are complaining, though.
Indeed, thanks in part to improvements in the clarity of questions, 92 percent of citizen hopefuls in a pilot program passed the new test on their first try, up from the current 84 percent rate.
In other words, learning America’s heritage isn’t all that difficult.
And even if it were, the prize – citizenship – makes the effort worthwhile.