What Is 'Back of the Line' Citizenship for Unauthorized Immigrants in the U.S.?

"While preference may be given to the parents of citizen children, and English-language fluency will likely be non-negotiable prerequisite..."



Have you seen actual evidence that the Obama administration will actually require real English fluency somewhere? The "revised" citizenship exam only requires, according to Price-Waterhouse experts who created it, a "high-beginning" ESL level of English. Translation into non-academic/bureaucratic jargon: that's a second grade literacy and speaking level.



As a former director of a citizenship center in Los Angeles County during the Clinton "let's naturalize everybody and win in 1996", I saw first-hand how broken the INS interview process became. The still standing 1911 requirement that citizens must be "able to read, write, and speak English" was interpreted to mean "can people answer 'yes' and 'no' to simple questions and answer two one-sentence dictations. The most common dictation? "I live in LA." Wow! Standards!



The revised test, however, is barely an improvement. As Mayor Giuliani noted during his failed presidential campaign, it's reasonable for citizenship applicants to actually meet the legal critieria - as written - that they "can read, write, and speak English."



Given the history of Clinton-Bush-Obama administration of watering down this simple legal requirement, I see no evidence that "English-language fluency will likely be non-negotiable prerequisite" in 2011 and 2012. Do you?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost