I ought to be kicked out of this country. I just took an online naturalization test and bombed it.
Out of 100 questions, I got 60 right. And this is only because they were no-brainers, or the answer to the question was given in the next question.
The very first question was, "What are the colors of our flag?" If you answered, "red, white and blue" you, too, would be correct.
From there on, the questions alternate between utterly useless information, like "How many representatives are there in Congress?" (The answer is 435, not "too many") to the truly banal "Why did the pilgrims come to America?" Answer: "For religious freedom," which makes me wonder what the deal is with all of this "In God We Trust" bally-hoo.
The issue of the questions on the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Government and History Naturalization Exam being too easy is up again, and with good reason.
According to www.uscis.gov, every year 400,000 immigrants take this test, and while we may know that they know that we know they know the colors of our flag, we have absolutely no idea who these people are; more importantly, what kind of citizens they will be.
Dr. Richard Lanyon, a professor in the ASU psychology department, happens to know a thing or two about tests.
An Australia native, Lanyon took the naturalization test in the early 1980s. He said that in order to predict how good of a citizen a person might be, we would have to add a cognitive test to the existing immigration requirements.
He also added that with such an addendum to the tests, "everyone would be lying all over the place. An excellent predictor would be to observe a person's past behavior and compare that to their present circumstances if all the environmental circumstances stayed the same."
I doubt that'll work out, but the only other option would be to make the test easier, or to not have one at all.
However, the proposed questions are supposed to ask what it means to be an American citizen, and how can that be defined?
I was not the only one to fail these important questions on the exam.
Carlos Reyes, a psychology senior and Arizona native, also missed some "I-want-to-be-an-American" trivia questions.
One question that the folks who wrote the exam definitely got wrong though, was number 87: "What is the most important right granted to U.S. citizens?"
Exam answer: "the Right to Vote." But anyone who knows their history knows that it took a long time for folks to get their ducks in a row as far as women and African-Americans are concerned, and most of them were natural citizens.
So really, there's no easy way of determining if someone is citizenship-worthy.
And as you can imagine by the fact that I get to write this column, I would argue that the most important right guaranteed is freedom of speech, despite what that silly test might say.
Angela Leighton is not a political science major (nor wants to be), but can be reached at angela.leighton@asu.edu.
