Joining We the People

by Arthur Joel Katz

September 6th , 2006

Hush. Don't tell anyone. My wife is an alien. I realize that many men think their wives are aliens, but mine is a real one. She was born in Britain and emigrated to Canada when she was eight. No, she didn't swim across the St. Lawrence River, but obtained a Green Card to work in the U.S. permanently. Only now, after I have promised never to run for the school board again, is she in the process of obtaining her U.S. citizenship.

So far she had gone through the process of filing the necessary applications. These seem more interested in whether she has ever been a Communist than anything else. Fascism or Nazism would presumably be acceptable as would be various homicidal psychoses. Far be it for me to suggest that she has any such problem, although sometimes when she threatens to kill me if I do something I won't do it.

The forms aside, she had troubles at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services the other day when she went to be finger printed. Her problem is that she speaks English and the Immigration Service person who was doing the finger printing spoke some other language, perhaps Spanish or Farsi. Susan wasn't sure. In any event, she survived this ordeal and is now scheduled for the last hurdle before she is sworn in, the dreaded citizenship test. Susan maintains that she simply can't take tests. I would be sympathetic but for the fact that the Immigration Service handed her a brochure entitled “Learn About the United States: Quick Civics Lessons.”

The brochure contains 96 questions with their answers and accompanying explanations. The good news is that on the citizenship test, the question will all be drawn from only those in the booklet. The bad news is what the Immigration Service, which now falls under the Department of Home Security, thinks important that a perspective citizen know.

The first 11 questions are much of what you might expect----what color is the flag, what do the stars and stripes represent, how many of each—although a little redundant. For example, question 10 asks the country from which we gained our Independence celebrated by Independence day. The answer is given as Great Britain. The next question asks what country did we fight during the Revolution War? The answer is, duh!, Great Britain. Any applicant who wrote in Brazil, Yugoslavia, China or Brazil would be an idiot.

A tricker one is question 15 which asks who elects the President. You might have thought it was the people, but as the pedants at the Immigration Services rightly explain, it is the Electoral College. After explaining that the Electoral College is not a school, the civics lesson goes on to say that the College consists of electors elected by the people of each state and the District of Columbia. Gee, and I though I voted Gore in 2000 and Kerry in 2004. I'll be damned if I know the name of a single elector and I follow these things fairly closely.

In general, questions tend to deal with the mechanics of our government. The ones that go elsewhere are often questions with questionable answers or seem a little much. For example,

Question 18 asks “what do we call changes to the Constitution.” The answer, “amendments.” Yet question 19 nevertheless asks how many “changes, or amendments” there are in the Constitution. Changes, before the Constitution was adopted were probably a zillion. But go ahead, guess the number of amendments. (Answer below.) Question 33 asks what are the duties of the Supreme Court. The answer given is “to interpret and explain the laws”. Interpret, maybe. But have you ever read a Supreme Court decision which “explained” a law? Also in the questionable answers category is the answer to what the Emancipation Proclamation did. The Immigration folks think that if freed the slaves. I think it freed only those slaves who lived in states that were part of the confederacy while slavery remained perfectly legal in states like Maryland. Actually, the thirteenth amendment declared slavery illegal throughout the country.

Hopefully the citizenship test is multiple choice. Otherwise, I suggest most aliens and practically all citizens are going to go adrift trying to name the original 13 states? Try it. (Answer below.) Another is, name the amendments that guarantee or address voting rights. (See below.) In the same league, it beats me why it is important to know that Alaska was the 49 th state added to the union and Hawaii the 50 th . (Two separate questions.).

By a separate page inserted in the brochure, the Immigration Service corrected on their own boners in the printed text. Question 80 asks the applicant to name one right or freedom guaranteed by the first amendment. The answer given is “the rights of freedom of speech, or religion, of assembly, and to petition the Government.” The correction changes that to “The rights of freedom of religion, of speech, of the press, of assembly, and to petition the government.” Apparently the Bush administration wants to suggest that its omission of freedom of the press was accidental.

What bothers me is that the questions seem to ignore questions about what the U.S. is really about. With space limited, why ask who wrote the Star-Spangled Banner? Or, and this flabbergasts me, “name one benefit of being a citizen of the United States?” Answer: “To obtain Federal government jobs, to travel with a U.S. passport, or to petition for close relatives to come to the United States to live.” Given a month of Sundays I would never have come up with that one.. In answer to who was Martin Luther King, Jr., the information supplied mentions that he was a civil rights leader and reports his fight against segregation, but never uses the word “black” or “Negro” or “African-American.”

Another question asks “what special group advises the President?” I would have answered the Christian right, but the Immigration folks insist it is the cabinet and have never heard of Karl Rove.

Finally, I mention question 88 as an example of the bureaucratic mind strutting its importance: “What U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services form is used to apply for naturalized citizenship?” The answer is Form N-400. No point in my teasing that. As a good U.S. Citizen you surely knew the answer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Amendments: 27.

Thirteen Original States: Connecticut, New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Georgia, Delaware, North Carolina and South Carolina.

Amendments that guarantee voting rights: 15 th (right to vote not to be denied because of race), 19 th (right to vote for woman), 24th (anti-poll tax) and 26th (voting age lowered to 18.).