2024 GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy recently declared that all U.S. high schoolers "should be required" to pass the same civics test that immigrants must pass to become U.S. citizens.
The entrepreneur, author, and "America First" GOP candidate proposed his idea to Twitter Friday along with a sample of civics questions from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) website that young citizens should know.
Ramaswamy tweeted, "Every high school student should be required to pass the *same* 128-question civics test required of legal immigrants to become citizens. The fact that this is controversial in America is a damning indictment of our Republic’s health. See test questions below & try it yourself."
Below his caption, Ramaswamy shared four pages from the U.S. government’s citizenship test guide, which featured the typical civics questions found on the citizenship test along with their answers.
The test included questions like, "What is the supreme law of the land?"– with the answer being the "(U.S.) Constitution" – or, "How are changes made to the U.S. Constitution?" – with "Amendments" and the "The amendment process" as the answers.
Other questions required test takers to answer how many U.S. Senators there are and accurately state how long their terms in office are.
During the naturalization process, aspiring U.S. citizens are interviewed a USCIS officer who asks them 10 civics questions from a list of 100. Candidates must answer at least six questions correctly to pass the civics portion of the broader naturalization test.
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The candidate’s proposal for a civics test for high school students ginned up some strong reaction on the social media platform. Political science professor Nicholas Giordano responded to Ramaswamy’s post by mentioning just how bad young Americans are on this topic.
Sharing his Campus Reform column on how his students "cannot pass a basic citizenship exam," Giordano claimed, "Agreed. Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority cannot. Every semester, I give my students the citizenship exam & 86% of them fail. I then do a constitutional exercise, & they cannot distinguish the #American #Constitution from the Russian constitution."
Author and conservative journalist Ryan James Girdusky offered an idea to Ramaswamy’s post, saying, "Legal immigrants have to pass like 10 of these questions out of 128… and they can take them in their own foreign language. Why don’t we make the test to become an American harder?"
HuffPost White House correspondent S.V. Dáte took the opportunity to hammer former President Donald Trump, saying, "Donald Trump would almost certainly fail this test."
Medical doctor and medical freedom activist Dr. Molly James expressed supported for the candidate’s post, tweeting, "This is a good idea."
