Children who attend elementary school, middle school and high school in the United States are forced to study American history and government. In the event that a permanent resident puts in an application for citizenship, they must take a civics test in order to determine their knowledge when it comes to these subjects.
Although people might believe that students who went to schools in the United States and thus studied American history and government would be able to answer the immigration civics test easily, USA Today says that a telephone poll that was commissioned last year by the Centre for the Study of the American Dream in Cincinatti’s Xavier University showed just 65% of natural born Americans were able to answer as many as six out of ten of the test questions accurately.
It might seem like a daunting task for immigrants to pass a civics test that many of those who naturally hold citizenship are unable to do, but there is some good news. For one thing, there is plenty of time to study after you put in an application for US citizenship, and for another, many Americans simply do not feel they need to know the kind of information that is included on the test.
“The citizenship candidates who have decided to file their application for naturalization and begin their life in the United States, they want it really bad,” notes USCIS spokesman Christopher Bentley. “That said, it is stuff that people would have learned in Civics 101 class.”
