Meet the New Naturalization Test, Same as the Old Naturalization Test

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (who ever thought we’d be nostalgic for the INS?) rolled out its revamped naturalization test with great fanfare yesterday, and managed to get some pretty extensive media play with it (fronted in the NY Times, for instance). But as I wrote when a pilot version was rolled out late last year, there isn’t really much more than tinkering here. The fact remains that it’s a test that can be passed through memorization, even if the memorization involves a somewhat higher proportion of lofty sounding questions than before. (Here’s a side-by-side comparison of the two.)

The solution? There isn’t one, both because there is no longer a data set that defines membership in the American community and because (even if there were one) the resources required to make the test a more searching one would overwhelm an already overwhelmed immigration bureaucracy. In the meantime, many worthy applicants who may be intimidated by testing of any description will decide not to apply for naturalization. Better just to drop the test altogether and recognize the fading distinctiveness of the national community.