WASHINGTON TIMES

ENGLISH SPURNED BY FLOOD OF CITIZENSHIP APPLICANTS

Section: A

Page: A1

Thomas D. Elias
SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Illustration: Box, POP QUIZ, By The Washington Times

LOS ANGELES - More applicants than ever before are winning American citizenship without having to learn enough English even to answer the rudimentary questions on the multiple-choice test given by the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Besides INS-operated test centers, all of the 828 other organizations authorized by federal authorities to give citizenship tests can now administer them in languages other than English.

Foreign-language tests - often given in Spanish, Korean, Vietnamese and Tagalog (spoken in the Philippines) - have been available at INS offices since 1967 to any citizenship applicant who is over 50 and has lived in this country more than 20 years. Applicants over 55 who have lived here legally more than 15 years also are not required to take their tests in English.

Not even the INS knows precisely how many applicants for citizenship fall into those categories. "We're not tracking those numbers," says INS spokeswoman Kelly Richfield.

But the Educational Testing Service, the largest private firm administering citizenship tests, does keep track of how many foreign-language tests it gives.

The company, headquartered in Princeton, N.J., reports that about 7 percent of those taking the exam on its most recent test date - Dec. 16 - took it in Spanish. This was the first time the ETS and its more than 400 affiliated testing centers had offered the test in a foreign language. The ETS says it plans to offer the exam next year in several other languages, including Korean and Vietnamese.

"We shipped 700 Spanish-language tests for our Dec. 16 test date," reported Julietta Contreras, director of field activities for the ETS New Citizen Project. Her company expected to test 10,000 citizenship applicants on that date, about one-sixth of this month's national total.

Spanish-language tests, the ETS reported, were given in Florida, New Jersey, Texas, Arizona, Virginia and California.

The citizenship crush and accompanying expansion of foreign-language testing may be a result of the Proposition 187 ballot initiative, which aimed to deprive illegal immigrants of most government services. Most of its provisions have been struck down by federal courts.

"Legal immigrants, people who have lived here and paid taxes for decades, saw that vote as a major threat," said Bobbi Murray, an official of the Los Angeles-based Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights. "They saw it as a first step, with an attack on the rights of all immigrants to follow."

Since passage of Proposition 187, the INS has received more than 60,000 citizenship applications per month.

One local center offering the civics exam in Spanish is the Heritage of Aztlan Educational & Cultural Foundation in Bakersfield, Calif., which has helped more than 4,500 immigrants start the citizenship process since 1992.

"Many of these people have been here a million years," says the organization's director, Jess Nieto. "They're older in age. Why should they have to take the English test?"

Because if they don't, they can't hope to be full-fledged citizens, responded Dan Stein, executive director{D-} of the Federation for American Immigration Reform. "English is the grand pillar of American assimilation," Mr. Stein asserts. "This is all part of a dumbing-down trend and worrying about whether the applicant feels good. Teddy Roosevelt said we need to have a shared sense of what it means to be an American. That includes English as a common language."

Daphne Magnuson of U.S. English, a 640,000-member group dedicated to making English the only official language in the United States, agrees: "To participate in the democratic process, people must know English. By allowing these tests in other languages, the government is sending a destructive message."

But those arguments aren't persuasive to some applicants.

"I see that if I don't become a citizen, they may take away some of my rights," said Guatemalan native Arturo Gonzales, a self-employed sheet-metal worker waiting to take the test in Spanish in Los Angeles. "I have lived here 27 years, and I speak English. But I think I understand the questions better in Spanish."

Because the INS doesn't even keep track of how many non-English tests it gives, no one knows precisely how many of the new citizenship applicants speak less than passable English.

But a 1993 survey by the California Research Bureau found that fully 70 percent of all immigrants in that state, both legal and illegal, claimed to be proficient in English.

"That still leaves 30 percent, most of whom have paid taxes for many years," Miss Murray said.

****BOX

POP QUIZ

Some questions typical of those on the citizenship test:

1. When is Independence Day?

a. May 30

b. July 4

c. Sept. 7

d. Nov. 24

2. The first president of the United States was:

a. Abraham Lincoln

b. James Madison

c. Thomas Jefferson

d. George Washington

3. A president is elected every

a. year

b. two years

c. four years

d. six years

4. Where is the United States Capitol?

a. Washington, D.C.

b. New York City

c. Philadelphia

d. Boston

5. Freedom of speech and religion are protected by

a. The Declaration of Independence

b. The Bill of Rights

c. Early laws of Congress

d. State laws

Source: Immigration and Naturalization Service

R0026765-123095