A week before the US government plans to start a redesigned civics test as part of the naturalization process, a senior immigration official sought on Tuesday to calm nervous immigrants and critics who say the new exam will be more challenging than the current one.
“It’s not harder than the current exam,” said Alfonso Aguilar, chief of the citizenship office at Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that devises and administers the test. “In fact, for some, it may be easier.”
At the crux of the debate is a list of 100 questions that applicants will have to study to prepare for the new test, which will take effect next Wednesday.
During the naturalization interview, an immigration officer will ask the applicant 10 of the questions spanning a range of difficulty. The applicant must correctly answer six questions to pass that portion of the interview.
Aguilar said that in a pilot study of the new questions, 92 percent of participants passed the test on their first attempt, while an average of 85 percent of all applicants pass the current test on their first attempt.
Applicants are given two chances to pass the test. Those who fail twice can reapply for naturalization immediately.
With the test’s redesign, the first since 1986, immigration officials sought to move away from simple trivia and to emphasize basic concepts of US history and the structure of US government and democracy.
Some questions will require a more sophisticated understanding of the US, according to officials and immigrant advocates.
The redesign is part of the US President George W. Bush administration’s efforts to improve immigrant assimilation, Aguilar said.
“This is not a treatise in American history and government, but we try in 100 questions and answers to summarize the basic concepts of American democracy,” he said in a telephone interview, one of a series of interviews he is conducting this week with news media in New York, Miami, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
“We include what is absolutely necessary for somebody to understand what America is,” he said.
Some immigrant advocacy groups have said the test is more abstract and therefore more difficult and will unnecessarily impede some legal residents from obtaining citizenship. Some groups have even reported that fear of a harder test has spurred immigrants to file their naturalization applications before next Wednesday, which would qualify them to take the current test.
Youngsook Na, senior program associate at the Young Korean American Service and Education Center in Flushing, New York City, said that attendance at the organization’s weekly naturalization clinic had doubled in recent weeks as immigrants rushed to file their documents.
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