Trump Revives 12-Question Citizenship Test That Biden Said Created ‘Barriers’ For Immigrants

The Trump administration is changing the tests that immigrants must take to become a citizen to ensure that only those with “the ability to read, write, and speak English and understand U.S. government and civics, are able to naturalize.”

“American citizenship is the most sacred citizenship in the world and should only be reserved for aliens who will fully embrace our values and principles as a nation,” U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesman Matthew Tragesser said Wednesday. He added that the changes are so that “the American people can be assured that those joining us as fellow citizens are fully assimilated and will contribute to America’s greatness.”

In 2020, near the end of Trump’s first presidency, USCIS increased the number of questions on the Naturalization Civics Test from 10 to 20. The bar for passage was still low: applicants only had to answer 12 out of 20 correctly, the same as the previous requirement of 6 out of 10. The questions were drawn from a slightly larger pool of 128 instead of 100.

The lengthier test was administered from December 2020 to April 2021. But the Biden administration reverted to the easier version, stating that the 20-question test “may inadvertently create potential barriers to the naturalization process.” It said the move was part of Biden’s “Executive Order on Restoring Faith in Our Legal Immigration Systems.”

A newly published notice in the Federal Register said that the prior determination “was not supported by data or other evidence,” and “the revised test was in place for too short a time” to make such a conclusion. The move to make it easier to become a citizen came as the Biden administration ushered a flood of immigrants into the country.

The Trump administration said tests are administered orally, and prospective citizens can stop taking the test as soon as they answer 12 questions correctly, and that the necessary study materials will be available online.

“Demonstration of English and civics knowledge is essential to showing an alien’s commitment to fulfill the rights and responsibilities of U.S. citizenship and to actively assimilate into American society,” the notice read. “Understanding the rights and responsibilities of citizenship, engaging with the government, and fully contributing to the democratic process all rely on a basic understanding of U.S. government and civics. Further, knowledge of U.S. government and civics enables naturalized citizens to more fully engage with local and federal government agencies and be active and responsible members of their local communities, furthering the success of our democracy.”

The change comes as a flood of foreigners reject American ideals, such as pluralism, the separation of church and state, and freedom of speech. Mobs of Arabs on college campuses took to lawlessness to protest Israel. This week, the Muslim mayor of Dearborn, Michigan, told a Christian man he was “not welcome here” after he questioned why the city was honoring a man who praised Hezbollah. In Texas, imams threatened shop owners who didn’t abide by Sharia law.

USCIS said the civics test is only “the first of many” changes to be announced in the coming months.

The agency has also “announced several changes, including restoring robust vetting for all aliens and stricter reviews of disability exceptions to the English and civics requirements. USCIS has also provided officers guidance on assessing aliens’ good moral character, looking for positive contributions to American society instead of a mere absence of bad behavior,” it said. Those include reviewing the social media of aliens to ensure that they don’t celebrate terrorism.

On Tuesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the Trump administration will, for example, revoke or deny visas to foreigners who celebrate the assassination of Charlie Kirk. “We should not be giving visas to people who are going to come to the United States and do things like celebrate the murder, the execution, the assassination of a political figure. We should not. And if they’re already here, we should be revoking their visa,” he said.