BCIS Pilots New Citizenship Test
Posted Apr 04, 2003

The BCIS is considering changing the manner in which it conducts the English, government, and U.S. history tests required as part of the naturalization process. The new formats are being tested on volunteers in Newark, San Antonio, Los Angeles, Sacramento, and Atlanta District Offices. In those BCIS offices, applicants for naturalization are given the current, official test and then asked if they would be willing to take the new, sample test. For those who agree to take the sample test under consideration by BCIS, the score is not part of the decision on their naturalization applications. This is purely for information gathering, in order to measure various aspects of the proposed test.

Under the current testing system, applicants are asked questions from a pre-approved list of test questions. However, there is no uniformity in the way the tests are administered. In some instances, the specific questions to ask are in the control of the testing officer. The BCIS is concerned that this lack of standardization results in fewer passing scores.

We do note that, in our experience with clients of The Law Office of Sheela Murthy, in cases when the officers had control of the questions, they did not appear to purposely pick the more difficult questions. In fact, in some instances, if the individuals were particularly nervous, the officers appeared to try to select questions that were less difficult. Of course, this type of subjective selection may lead to unfair results in some cases.

A private test developing company is redesigning the test. We applaud the BCIS for their efforts to improve the naturalization process. We encourage any MurthyDotCom and MurthyBulletin readers who may be asked to participate in the sample testing to do so in order to help attain the goal of having greater standardization in naturalization testing. For those who may be interested in naturalizing to U.S. citizenship, sample test questions and other information on the naturalization process is available on MurthyDotCom and on the BCIS WebSite.