The citizenship test: New, improved and wrong

Only some of the answers on the government's new test are flat-out incorrect, but many are misleading to would-be students of the Constitution.

By Steven Lubet

Read more: George W. Bush, First Amendment, Opinion, Dick Cheney

Jan. 3, 2007 | With much fanfare, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service recently announced the introduction of a redesigned naturalization test. Trumpeted as a great improvement over the old examination, the new format will "focus on the concepts of democracy and the rights and responsibilities of citizenship." Some critics and immigrants' rights advocates have complained that the new citizenship test is too demanding, asking questions that nearly all Americans, whether native born or naturalized, would be hard-pressed to answer. But the degree of difficulty is not the only problem.

The pilot test and the approved answers (as posted on the USCIS Web site) are riddled with misinformation, inaccuracies and outright errors. As many as 19 of the 144 questions are flawed. They either are woefully ambiguous, or accept simplistic answers that are factually wrong, or exclude answers that are clearly correct. While none of the individual mistakes is earthshaking, the wrong answers will mislead earnest citizenship applicants who use the pilot test as a study guide. It will distort the constitutional understanding of thousands of would-be Americans, and actually penalize those who are the most serious students of the Constitution.

Let's start with the second question, which gets the whole test off on the wrong foot constitutionally. Pilot question No. 2 asks, "What is the supreme law of the land?" The sole allowable answer is "The Constitution." That is only partially right, however, because it excludes at least two other correct answers. Anyone who has read Article VI would know that the supreme law of the land includes the "Constitution, and the laws of the United States ... and all treaties made ... under the authority of the United States." True, the Constitution might be called the most supreme of the supreme, but it's still only one-third of the triad. Someone might answer quite correctly with either of the other two answers and still be marked wrong. Or worse, someone might foolishly decide to take the "concept" concept to heart and provide a more conceptual answer -- like, say, "The supreme law of the land is the law that judges in every state shall be bound by, even if the Constitution or laws of that state are to the contrary." That moderately profound response would presumably be counted wrong, even though it is lifted from the language of Article VI itself.

Pilot question No. 11 introduces another important ideal, but provides another incorrect answer.

Question: What does freedom of religion mean?

Answer: You can practice any religion you want, or not practice at all.

Yeah, right. Just tell that to Muslim women who want to keep their faces veiled while passing through airport security, or rattlesnake-handling Pentecostals, or polygamists, or peyote eaters, or, well, you get the idea. Religious belief -- Jefferson called it "freedom of conscience" -- is protected by the First Amendment, but that has never been extended to cover any and all practices. Thus, according to the Supreme Court's opinion in Human Resources Department of Oregon v. Smith, freedom of religion means that while you may believe anything you want, your religious practices are subject to limitation, or even criminalization, by a "neutral, generally applicable law." But don't write that on your citizenship test, or you might find yourself stateless.

So far, we have mentioned only approved answers that are incomplete or imprecise, but pilot question No. 33 takes the inaccuracies to another level. Its only allowable answer is just plain wrong, and anyone who gave the right answer would no doubt have it marked incorrect.

Question: The president must be born in what country?

Answer: The United States (or, alternatively, America).

The correct answer, however, is that the president may be born in any country whatsoever, or no country at all (at sea or in a plane). The Constitution requires only that the president be a "natural born citizen," and that status is achieved either by birth in the United States or by birth to parents who are both U.S. citizens, the latter potentially living and reproducing absolutely anywhere in the world.

That fah-lunking noise you hear is the sound of the citizenship door slamming shut in the face of the best-informed test takers.

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