(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) Not content with dumbing-down public schools and institutions of higher learning, the Biden administration’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced this week that it will make the naturalization test easier to pass by reducing the difficulty of the English-speaking section and editing the civics section.
The English-speaking section will have more daily conversational subjects, instead of more formal subjects, according to the Daily Caller. The standardized criteria for assessment will be changed, too, by reducing the examiner’s discretion to judge the quality of responses.
“Applicants will respond to three color photographs randomly selected from a bank of approximately 70 images that directly correspond to an ordinary usage scenario,” the notice stated.
The civic section will also eliminate the “fill-in-the-blank” test where candidates have to answer a question from memory and replace it with a multiple-choice format that increases the probability of a candidate selecting the right answer by 25%.
“Primarily, this is about responding to suggestions from the wider community that we’ve received over the past couple of years and making it more fair,” a USCIS official said.
The changed test will enter a five-month trial period next year before being adopted. Current citizenship applicants will use the previous test.
After stepping into the Oval office, President Joe Biden signed an executive order that directed government agencies to “identify [and remove] barriers that impede access to immigration benefits” and conduct a “comprehensive review… of the civics and English language tests.”
To grant citizenship status only to immigrants who deserve it, the Trump administration had previously made some changes.
“In November 2020, the Trump administration promulgated a new syllabus for the naturalization test, raising the pass threshold to answering 12 out of 20 questions correctly (instead of 10, previously), with a larger question bank of 128 questions,” the Caller reported.
“Officials claimed that the test would ‘provide the applicant with more opportunities to learn about the United States as part of the test preparation process.’”
“The Trump administration’s version of the test contained additional questions about Founding Fathers such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, as well as questions about the Civil War, the spread of communism, the 14th Amendment and the War on Terror, among others,” the news outlet added.
“The Biden administration promptly rescinded the new test months later when it took office, reverting back to a 2008 version utilized during the George W. Bush administration.”
