In July 2010 I boarded a non-stop flight from Buenos Aires, Argentina, to New York City. I was moving to the US to chase my dream of becoming a journalist and attend Columbia University for a Master's degree.
My intention was to finish the 10-month program and fly back home, where I had left a fully furnished apartment, a cat living with my parents, and a boyfriend who had agreed to a temporary long-distance relationship. But then I got a job and a work visa. My career started to take off, so I focused on staying in the US.
Since the day I moved here, I've had seven different immigration statuses, and on December 2021 I became a naturalized US citizen.
The process from when I first moved here to now has cost me thousands of dollars, took many months of waiting impatiently for updates, and most recently required a citizenship test to prove that I knew enough about US history, civics, and the government to become a citizen.
The whole thing was nerve-wracking because my ability to legally stay in the country was at stake. It required a lot of time filling out paperwork and looking through travel dates, back taxes, addresses lived in, and every detail of my personal life. But the easiest part was the civics test. I had over-prepared because I'd never studied American history before.
What the citizenship test is like
Once I filed all the paperwork required to apply for citizenship, I was given an interview date in which I had to go over some personal details, take an English test, and take a civics test. I was required to pass both tests to be scheduled to take an oath and become a citizen.
The English test is pretty straightforward. In my case, I was asked to read a sentence from a screen. Mine was "In which month is Columbus Day observed?" After I read it, I was then instructed to write a sentence that the interviewer read out loud for me. Mine was "Columbus Day is in October."
Then we moved on to the civics test. You are encouraged to study ahead of time, and all 100 questions that can be asked are available online. You can even download an app to test yourself, which I did regularly for two weeks until I was getting every single question right over and over again.
You pass the civics exam with six questions right out of 10. I was only asked six questions because I got all of them right.
The questions were so easy that at one point I wondered if they were trying to trick me to say something wrong.
What I was asked for the civics portion
The six questions I was asked were:
- What ocean is on the West Coast?
- Who wrote the Declaration of Independence?
- Who is the current president?
- What party is the current president from?
- What are the two political parties in the US?
- What did Susan B. Anthony do?
After we were done with the test, my interviewer and I chatted about her desire to travel to Argentina, and what my plans were to celebrate after having passed.
What happens after the test
I was told by my interviewer that I'd receive a letter in the mail with my oath date, which she guessed would be only two weeks after my test date. It turned out to take a bit longer, and a month after I passed my test, I took the oath and became an American citizen with a handful of other immigrants.
Because of COVID precautions, the group was small and the ceremony was quick, but we all cheered and waved our little American flags to celebrate the monumental milestone we had all achieved.
After the ceremony, I drove home and ate homemade red, white, and blue cupcakes my American husband and three children had baked for me. I felt liberated and finally home.
