Testing for Citizenship: The U.S. Naturalization Test

Abstract

Although the United States has had a language requirement for citizenship (through the naturalization process) since the first decade of the 20th century, very little research and discussion has taken place in academic circles about this requirement, which has been enforced for the past two decades through a test and testing practice to which millions of citizenship applicants have been subjected. Overall, the requirement (and the test) is said to promote “civic integration,” “political allegiance,” “social cohesion,” and/or “social harmony.” The main question addressed in this article is whether the requirement (and the test), its purpose, content, administration, and consequence provide the impetus for citizenship applicants to integrate or develop a civic nationalism. I will apply the Test Context Framework (Kunnan, 2008) to the U.S. Naturalization Test and testing practice. This framework argues for the examination of the wider context of testing including the political, economic, and legal contexts in which a test is deployed for a fuller understanding of the testing practice.

Notes

¹The Naturalization Test does not apply to the following two groups: (1) Children born in the United States, including the 50 States and the District of Columbia and in most cases, U.S. territories such as Puerto Rico, Guam, the Northern Maraina Islands, and U.S. Virgin Islands as well as current States that were territories at the time of the birth of some individuals now living (example, Alaska and Hawaii), are considered U.S. citizens at birth (unless born to foreign diplomatic staff), regardless of the citizenship or nationality of the parents (the jus solis principle, the “right of soil”); (2) children born outside the U.S. to at least one parent who is a U.S. citizen are granted U.S. citizenship (the jus sanguinis principle, the “right of blood”).

²See Kunnan (2009) for discussions of the history of legislation and political attitudes from 1790 to the present that propelled the development of the English literacy test and the Naturalization Test.