How many U.S. senators are there?
What does the Constitution do?
What is an amendment?
Where is the Statue of Liberty?
Who vetoes the bills?
The above are few U.S. citizenship test questions that were asked to some Americans. Many believe that native-born Americans would have answered all these answers correct. But they answered many questions wrong. They were able to answer elementary level questions like ‘What is the name of the President of the United States?’, ‘What is the capital of the United States?’, ‘Where is the Statue of Liberty?’, ‘Who was the first President?’. But there were not able to answer questions like ‘We elect a U.S. representative for how many years?’, ‘What is an amendment’, etc.
This lack of knowledge of the country’s history and government has led some school systems in the U.S. to make basic knowledge of the U.S. history a requirement for graduation. They believe that this will make the students know how the U.S. government works. Some states like Arkansas and Kentucky have included the civics questions asked in the naturalization test in the school social studies curriculum.
Lawmakers in some states like Minnesota are looking to add a full course to study the country’s most important documents. They believe that this way the students will get a deeper understanding of the American democracy.
Though native-born citizens were aware of things related to the history and the geography, they were not able to answer questions related to the constitution and powers granted to the federal and the state governments. Native-born citizens believe that they must know well about the country and its government. They say that schools must include this test and make it a requirement for the high school students to pass this test to get their diploma.
This test is an important part of the U.S. citizenship process. An immigrant applying for citizenship must answer six questions correctly out of ten randomly asked questions from the 100 civics questions, during the naturalization interview.
Following is a sample test with answer at the bottom.
- Who is in charge of the executive branch?
- What is an amendment?
- How many amendments does the Constitution have?
- If both the President and the Vice President can no longer serve, who becomes President?
- Who wrote the Declaration of Independence?
- When was the Constitution written?
- What did Susan B. Anthony do?
- Who was President during the Great Depression and World War II?
- What ocean is on the West Coast of the United States?
- Under our Constitution, some powers belong to the federal government. What is one power of the federal government?
Citizenship Test Answers
- the President
- a change to the Constitution or an addition to the Constitution
- twenty-seven (27)
- the Speaker of the House
- Thomas Jefferson
- 1787
- fought for women’s rights, fought for civil rights
- Franklin Roosevelt
- Pacific Ocean
- to print money, to declare war, to create an army, to make treaties
Chick here for the Pass the US Citizenship Test and Interview DVD that has all the 100 civics questions.
