The U.S. government will reinstate a harder citizenship test that contains more complex questions than the current version, the Trump administration said Wednesday, part of the president’s tightening of the legal pathways to settle in the United States.
The test is one of the final hurdles for the hundreds of thousands of people who become American citizens each year. The new test will be administered to those who file their applications on or after Oct. 20, according a notice from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Matthew Tragesser, a U.S.C.I.S. spokesman, said in a statement that the revised test would ensure that new citizens are “fully assimilated and will contribute to America’s greatness. These critical changes are the first of many,” he said.
Under the new test, applicants will have to get 12 out of 20 questions correct, instead of six of 10.
The bank of questions has been expanded to 128 questions, from 100, and also features fewer questions with simple, sometimes one-word answers.
Late in his first term, President Trump implemented a revised test, which was in place from Dec. 1, 2020, until April 30, 2021, when the Biden administration scrapped it.
One question on that test that had drawn scrutiny was: “Why did the United States enter the Vietnam War?” The correct answer was, “to stop the spread of Communism.” Another question on that test was, “Who does a U.S. Senator represent?” Previously, the answer had been “all people of the state”; on the test introduced in December 2020, it was “citizens” in the state.
The difference between that test and the one being introduced now is that officers will be required to ask questions until the applicant passes or fails. So, if an applicant answers the first 12 questions correctly, he or she will not need to continue answering all 20 questions.
Joseph Edlow, the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services., said in July that the test was too easy. “The test as it’s laid out right now, it’s not very difficult,” Mr. Edlow said in an interview with The New York Times. “It’s very easy to kind of memorize the answers,” he said. “I don’t think we’re really comporting with the spirit of the law.”
The U.S. government has administered citizenship tests in some form since the early 1900s. There was no standard test, however, so local judges and magistrates administered their own until the Internal Security Act of 1950 made knowledge of U.S. history and civics a prerequisite for naturalization. The current pass rate for the citizenship test, according to U.S.C.I.S., is 91 percent.
Applicants have two chances to pass the test before they must restart the application process from scratch.
Jenny Gross is a reporter for The Times covering breaking news and other topics.
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