Until several years ago, citizenship testing in America had been a laughingstock.
Aspiring citizens to the most powerful nation on Earth were asked insulting questions such as, “What are the colors of the American flag?” English capacity was judged often by the applicant having to speak or write only one simple sentence, such as, “It’s a sunny day.” For a long time, the actual testing was given over, incredibly, to ethnic and special interest lobbies, such as the Hispanic lobbies, whose primary interest lies in bringing more Latinos into the United States. The ethical and financial corruption resulting from that little experiment with our national ethos finally nixed that program.
But my favorite indicator of the depths to which we had sunk in our conception of the value of citizenship was one of the questions then used by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. When the applicant for citizenship was asked why he or she wanted to become an American citizen, one of only three answers was accepted: to bring my relatives here, to get a passport to travel abroad or to get a federal job.
We had downgraded citizenship, the historical pact that we make to secure our civic unity and integrity, to equate it only with physical and financial advantage. No one from outside could have done what we were so blithely doing to ourselves.
But there is hope.
Professionals at the new U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, now located within the Homeland Security Department and the successor to the INS, are working determinedly on a new form, style and spirit of citizenship testing. They intend to create more fairness in testing and require more depth of knowledge of American history on the part of the applicants. So far, the project looks promising.
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At a recent discussion on the “redesign of the naturalization exam,” Gerri Ratliff, the project director, explained that her group is looking at “three big things”: the English test, history and government, and how the tests are administered. She spoke of “making the content of the test more meaningful” and gave this example: Don’t ask the applicant the number of the constitutional amendment that guarantees voting rights. Rather, give him the number (the 24th Amendment) and ask him to show that he “understands the concept, as opposed to a number that doesn’t particularly equip you to function.”
One of the most encouraging things about this project is its deliberate openness.
It is not expected to come to fruition until 2006.
Meanwhile, the immigration agency is consulting historians, professors, political scientists, civics experts and others on the content. A number of test runs of the new exam will be conducted around the country, and the initial findings will be posted for a 60-day public comment period in the Federal Register (www.gpoaccess.gov), where people are invited to give their thoughts.
During this period, those individuals and groups interested in citizenship should be carefully watching what is going on, for there remain in full force the professional interest groups, many of them Hispanic, but also the odd alliance of “open borders” thinking of some on both the far left and the far right.
“A lot of people are going to be watching,” says Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, where Ratliff spoke recently. “There is always the risk that you’ll end up again with the old political correctness.”
But it was John Fonte, director of the Center for American Common Culture at the Hudson Institute, who posed the most profound questions of the discussion.
“The purpose of the test is both cognitive–the history and government that you’re supposed to know so that you can participate in our democracy–but, even more important, normative,” he began. “That is, you can’t simply know the process but have to be attached and well-disposed to the good order and happiness of the United States. The Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta, for example, might have understood the Constitution, but that didn’t mean he was disposed toward the good order of the United States.”
Fonte, a philosopher, then stressed that “concepts such as loyalty and patriotism should be at the center of this test, and in some cases people are uneasy with that; but that is, I think, what most of the American people want.” Moreover, he went on, in a world of increasing transnational ties and continuous high immigration, it’s particularly important that “the naturalization process is really sort of a rite of passage.” Applicants should take the oath of allegiance to the United States understanding (as is surely not the situation today) “that they have a moral obligation to give up all political allegiance, loyalty and citizenship from the birth nations and from non-state foreign powers and, upon taking the oath, their sole political allegiance is to the United States.”
Finally, these issues–crucially important to the soul of our country–are being looked at seriously.
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