Becoming an American may have just become more difficult.U.S. green card holders applying to be naturalized citizens will now, as of Monday, face a changed civics test that critics say is both more complex and more subjective.In a September statement announcing the implementation of the new test, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) spokesperson Matthew Tragesser said that “by ensuring only those aliens who meet all eligibility requirements, including the ability to read, write, and speak English and understand U.S. government and civics, are able to naturalize, the American people can be assured that those joining us as fellow citizens are fully assimilated and will contribute to America’s greatness.”[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]USCIS director Joseph Edlow, who took office in July, claimed last month that the previous test was “just too easy” to pass. “We need to make it a little bit more challenging,” Edlow said. “We’ve got to make sure that people are actually understanding what it means to be a U.S. citizen, what it means to get that benefit.”Stephen Mihm, a professor of history at the University of Georgia, however, wrote in Bloomberg last month that the updated test would remain “useless” as a barometer of “Americanness,” pointing to a 2018 survey that showed just one in three Americans would pass the previous version of the exam if they took it. Rights organizations have also urged USCIS to halt the rollout of the exam, claiming that it will disproportionately burden individuals with “low literacy, limited financial resources, lack of access to preparation materials, and older applicants who may find the increased complexity difficult to navigate.” In an Oct. 10 letter to Edlow, a group of organizations wrote that the civics test changes “create inequities in the testing process, making it harder for certain populations to succeed, which undermines the principle of fairness in the naturalization process.” Edlow defended the changes, saying: “I don’t want this test to be so hard that it’s impossible, but I want it to be thought-provoking questions. A question of simply, ‘Hey, name two federal holidays’ and ‘name one branch of government’ or ‘name your governor’—it’s simply not enough. We need to know more.”Mihm, however, wrote that the updating of the exam “fits into the White House’s broader effort to make life harder for immigrants.” Trump’s second-term Administration has not only pursued a promised crackdown on illegal immigration, but it has also sought to overhaul a number of legal pathways to visit or live in the U.S.—from redefining birthright citizenship to threatening to denaturalize citizens to revoking visas on the basis of speech to introducing a paid path to citizenship to scrutinizing citizenship applicants for “anti-American views.” Here’s what to know about the latest changes to the test for naturalization applicants.A brief history of the citizenship examThe exam is perhaps one of the most well-known parts of the U.S. citizenship application process, but it has undergone many changes since its origins in the courtroom, where decades ago individual judges could quiz applicants’ knowledge of civics or national history—though the process wasn’t standardized—to see if they met the 1802 Naturalization Act’s requirement that applicants be “attached to the principles of the constitution of the United States.” But amid growing frustrations over the influx of migrants in the early 1900s, U.S. officials debated imposing new immigration restrictions to ensure “quantity and quality as not to make too difficult the process of assimilation,” according to Smithsonian Magazine. A congressional commission was created in 1907 that ultimately recommended requiring a literacy test, calling it the most “feasible method” to assess the quality of migrants entering the country. But after vetoes by successive Presidents, a literacy test wasn’t implemented until 1917, when Congress overrode Woodrow Wilson’s veto.In the meantime, Congress had established the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization in 1906 to “have charge of all matters concerning the naturalization of aliens.” Under that law, citizenship applicants had to be able to speak English but the courts still oversaw the determination of applicants’ civic knowledge. According to USCIS, in the bureau’s nascent years, it received concerns from some judges, applicants for citizenship, and other groups about people being unfairly denied citizenship because they lacked specific knowledge—leading the bureau to develop a program to help immigrants learn about civics and history.In the 1910s and the 1920s, naturalization examiners, instead of judges, began asking applicants questions about civics and U.S. history. The bureau also published its first Federal Textbook on Citizenship in 1918 to allow applicants to prepare. But without a standardized test, some of the reported questions seemed arbitrary (i.e. “How high is the Bunker Hill monument?”). That changed in the 1930s, when the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) under Commissioner D.W. MacCormack ordered “a definite and uniform procedure” to evaluate applicants for citizenship. According to the Federal Register’s notice on the 2025 test, MacCormack emphasized then that the tests were meant to “demonstrate the attachment to the principles of the Constitution rather than memorization of facts, and that the examination be uniform, fair, and devoid of ‘trick questions.’”Basic knowledge of U.S. history and civics became an explicit requirement for naturalization under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. The test stayed oral, however, and the degree of questioning was “determined by the alien’s education, background, and interactions with the examiner,” according to the Federal Register.Linguistics expert Antony John Kunnan wrote in a 2009 academic article that standardization “was only raised when aliens seeking citizenship through the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 were required to meet educational requirements.” Applicants who qualified under the Act, according to the Federal Register, could opt to show their understanding of U.S. history and government by taking a prescribed course. For others, the INS developed what became known as the “100 civics questions,” based on content from Federal Textbooks on Citizenship.Still, the INS began the process of revising in 1997, after a study by accounting firm Coopers and Lybrand found that the agency “had no standard naturalization test content, testing instruments, test protocols, or scoring system.”The U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform also released a report in 1997 that showed INS offices widely differed in the ways they administered the civics and literacy tests and in the threshold number of correct answers required for passing. It also added that the assessment methods weren’t meaningful: “the civics test, for example, relies on memorization of discrete facts rather than on substantive understanding of the basic concepts of civic participation” and that “U.S. history and civics test should assess whether applicants understand the basic principles of U.S. government: for example, what it means to have freedom of speech or the freedom to assemble.” In 2000, the civics test’s questions were standardized, but eight years later a new, more difficult test was implemented, requiring 6 correct answers from 10 questions chosen from a pool of 100 questions, as well as an English test that required applicants to demonstrate their ability to read, speak, and write a sentence in English. The New York Times reported in 2007 that some immigrants could pass the previous version of the civics test “without any study,” and immigration officials told the paper that the 2008 exam aimed to compel even highly educated applicants to study. Historians lauded the new set of questions, the Times reported, saying that they covered ideas about the workings of American democracy and the diversity of the groups which influenced U.S. history.Since then, the 2008 version of the test has largely been used. But in December 2020, Trump’s first-term Administration rolled out an update, which replaced questions about geography with more complex questions about history and historical personalities’ biographical details, which could possibly trip up applicants. The pool of possible questions was raised to 128, and the requirement for correct answers raised to 12 out of 20 asked. Critics also panned the Trump Administration’s 2020 test for having an alleged conservative bias. But that version of the test was short-lived, as President Joe Biden’s Administration, reverted it to the 2008 version in early 2021, based on a preliminary “determination that the 2020 civics test development process, content, testing procedures, and implementation schedule may inadvertently create potential barriers to the naturalization process.”The latest changes—and what might come nextThe 2025 civics test is similar to the 2020 one, except officers will only be required to ask questions until the applicant either passes or fails the test. For example, if an applicant answers nine questions incorrectly, they have failed the exam, and the officer will not ask the remaining questions.The overall shift from 2008 to 2025 also reflects Trump’s first-term Administration’s move away from simple, one-word or short-answer questions, basic geography questions, and questions with minimal civic content to more specific and more complex ones that require better understanding of history. The question bank has been made public for applicants to review. Some differences between the 2025 test and the 2008 one include questions on Dwight Eisenhower, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and more explanation-based questions like “Why did the United States enter the Persian Gulf War?” or “Why did the United States enter the Vietnam War?” (Answers: “To force the Iraqi military from Kuwait” and “To stop the spread of communism,” respectively.)Applicants who already filed for naturalization before Oct. 20 will still take the 2008 version of the exam. And, according to the Federal Register, for applicants who “qualify for special consideration because they are age 65 or older and have resided in the U.S. as a lawful permanent resident for at least 20 years,” USCIS will administer a 10-question test formed from a “specially selected bank of 20 test questions” from either the 2008 or 2025 tests.The civics test, however, is just the beginning of potentially tougher screenings for those who wish to apply for American citizenship.Edlow said last month that he’s looking “at other potential ways to move forward,” such as having applicants write an essay. The essay format, Edlow told Axios, could involve questions that “really show an attachment to the Constitution.”Critics, however, worry about potential biases. “They are opening the door for more biased decision-making based on arbitrary factors like race,” Eric Welsh, a partner at Reeves Immigration Law Group, told Axios. “It’s extremely dangerous and a slippery slope.”There is also a proposal from Rep. Randy Fine (R, Fla.) to conduct the citizenship test entirely in English. Currently there are legal provisions that allow some applicants to have the test administered in other languages.But Edlow has also indicated that he wants to evaluate the English language proficiency of test takers, beyond the current simple reading and writing exercises.“I want adjudicators to really be listening and talking throughout the interview,” he told Fox News in August. “Switch up some of the wording… and see if the individuals are still able to comprehend the questions. That’s a better gauge of readiness.”