The United States naturalization test is administered to immigrants, refugees and other lawful permanent residents in the United States.
During this test, their English reading, writing and speaking ability is examined. They are also asked 20 civics questions of which they must verbally answer 60% correctly.
A big pushback some give against immigration is that we want to have a unanimous culture; to agree on values that keep our nation safe. We would not want people coming in who do not believe in democracy or freedom.
While some of this sentiment is healthy and expected, we undeniably thrive off of different cultures, religions and perspectives.
Yet there is a pretty big misconception that many immigrants and refugees in the United States come in holding harmful ideology.
What might be surprising to right-wing anti-immigration advocates is that the majority of immigrants are Christian, and many coming to the United States do so because they admire what we stand for, or at least what we used to stand for.
Since this growing, harmful idea that immigrants do not uphold our American values presented itself to me, I decided to ask the same thing of college students.
It seemed easy enough, so I thought asking students could be a great way to see where students are.
Do we know enough about our own system to uphold its values?
The test
I asked 10 students and staff members a random assortment of 10 questions from the U.S. civics test, each student being told they can answer as many questions as they wanted.
Most students answered between one and three questions, out of those only three students got one question correct.
Only one of 10 walked away with a passing percentage, a lower passing rate than immigrants taking the naturalization test.
Given these results, is immigration or education the real problem in our country?
I would choose every single time to have neighbors defined by courage and compassion, rather than those defined by birthplace and hate.
You can answer the questions I chose here.
Tanner Smith is a columnist. Contact him at [email protected].
ROBERT LEE KOLLER • Apr 26, 2026 at 8:14 pm
“Given these results, is immigration or education the real problem in our country?” This question is too simple. Both the management of immigration, a function of our institution of government, and the social institution of education, are replete with problematic challenges. But there are also many endemic problems associated with our other three cultural institutions. Simply stated, we are not limited to but one, or singular, “real problem in our country.” There are many of equal magnitude and ill-effect.