It's the exam that fails: how the INS citizenship test misses the point.

• Author: Aizenman, Nurith C.
• Position: US Immigration and Naturalization Service

How the INS citizenship test misses the point

As a young man in Ethiopia, Binyam Tamene was not exactly the silent type. "I thought the world was free, and I was saying things openly," he remembers. The Communists then in power weren't quite so progressive. They arrested Tamene and imprisoned him along with many of his friends. A good number of them were killed, but Tamene survived and found refuge in the United States. So when the INS officer administering Tamene's naturalization exam asked him what the benefits of U.S. citizenship were, lofty thoughts of freedom and democracy came rushing to mind. But Tamene had been forewarned that as far as the local INS office was concerned, that's not what American citizenship is about. So he bit his tongue and gave the answer he'd memorized from the INS' study materials: "Being a U.S. citizen will get me a U.S. passport, make me eligible for federal jobs, and allow me to bring over relatives" He aced the test.

Tamene's answer may have made a mockery of his emotional decision to renounce his homeland and seek full membership in our society, but his instinct to play it safe was a wise one. According to U.S. law the INS must ensure that citizenship applicants demonstrate "a knowledge and understanding of the fundamentals of the history, and of the principles and form of government, of the United States.' However, INS headquarters in Washington allows its officials in the field tremendous discretion in assessing those qualifications. It is up to each individual examiner to decide what and how many questions to ask at a candidates interview, how many questions the candidate must get right to pass the test--and what constitutes a right or wrong answer.

As a result, the citizenship exam can often be either unconscionably hard, or laughably easy. Immigrants who land an unforgiving examiner are simply out of luck. "I know of people who were asked difficult things like, `What's the 13th amendment' or, What's the 26th amendment,'" says Mary Ellen Ros of the New York Association for New Americans. One INS examiner in Baltimore was notorious for asking the question, "What was the last federal holiday?" Immigrants who failed to provide the correct answer--Martin Luther King day--automatically failed the entire test. Perhaps the most harrowing incidents are those uncovered by Juan Jose Guttierez of One Stop Immigration in Los Angeles: "I've documented cases where INS agents have asked such questions as, `What's the...