On Friday it was announced that President Donald Trump is changing the U.S. citizenship test. This will be the first change in 10 years.
What We Know:
- The last revision was in 2009 with 100 civics questions. Potential citizens are asked up to 10 of these questions during an interview and have to answer six correctly to pass.
- According to a US Citizenship and Immigration Services official, there is a focus on changing the civics portion of the test, though there could also be updates to the English section.
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The overall national pass rate is 90 percent as of March 2019 and in the fiscal year 2018, nearly 757,000 people were naturalized, USCIS says.
- Despite there being worry over the changes, USCIS Director Ken Cuccinelli told The Washington Post that this is not a way to limit success rates. “Isn’t everybody always paranoid that this is used for ulterior purposes…Of course they’re going to be sorely disappointed when it just looks like another version of a civics exam. I mean that’s pretty much how it’s going to look.” Cuccinelli stated.
- The new test is expected to be implemented in December 2020 or early 2021 as the Trump administration cracks down on legal and illegal immigration.
- Trump also announced last week that he will seek citizenship information from agencies that already collect the data, and will not pursue placing a citizenship question on the 2020 census (the Supreme Court blocked the question from being asked).
Praying this does not impact people negatively.
