Trump administration plans to make US citizenship tests more difficult

United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Joseph Edlow revealed Thursday that he plans to update the U.S. citizenship test to make it more difficult, and also change employment visas for skilled foreign workers.

Edlow, who previously worked as the deputy director for Policy and chief counsel at USCIS, became the new citizenship chief earlier this month and has promised to "restore integrity in our legal immigration system." 

The new chief said he hopes to make citizenship tests more difficult by increasing the amount of questions that applicants are required to answer. 

Currently, immigrants hoping to become naturalized citizens are required to answer six out of 10 multiple-choice U.S. civic questions correctly in order to pass, but under the first Trump administration they had to answer 12 out of 20 correctly.

“The test as it’s laid out right now, it’s not very difficult,” Edlow told the New York Times. “It’s very easy to kind of memorize the answers. I don’t think we’re really comporting with the spirit of the law.

“I think [immigration] absolutely should be a net positive,” he later said. “And if we’re looking at the people that are coming over, that are especially coming over to advance certain economic agendas that we have and otherwise benefit the national interest — that’s absolutely what we need to be taking care of.”

Edlow also highlighted potential changes to H-1B work visas, by favoring companies that plan to hire foreign workers higher wages, rather than companies that bring in foreign workers to save money by paying them less than Americans.

“I really do think that the way H-1B needs to be used, and this is one of my favorite phrases, is to, along with a lot of other parts of immigration, supplement, not supplant, U.S. economy and U.S. businesses and U.S. workers,” Edlow said.

The new director did not state when he expected the new changes to be announced.