On August 15, a policy memorandum was released by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) that called for a more difficult citizenship test and an easier route for the federal government to denaturalize.
The director of USCIS, Joseph Edlow, argued that former President Joe Biden relaxed standards excessively, and used this justification to revoke previously granted citizenships.
Edlow seeks to replace the 10-question civics test with a standardized one that asks subjective questions, including, “‘What does it mean to be an American?’ or ‘Who was your favorite founding father?’ — ‘or something that is going to really show an attachment to the Constitution.'” English language proficiency will be further scrutinized, as will whether or not the immigrants exhibit “good moral character.”
While Edlow has conceded that “good moral character” is not a binary concept, the memo defines it along the standards of “community involvement, family caregiving, education level and stable employment.” This creates more questions than answers; can not an unemployed person have good character? Are not family caregiving, receiving an education, and working a job time-consuming endeavors that may be mutually exclusive at times?
Edlow claims that this is a law enforcement decision; the president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, Jeff Joseph, rebutted that any attempt to utilize USCIS in this manner violates the Homeland Security Act, which differentiates the “enforcement functions” of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, etc.
