Nick Gillespie points to a study by the Public Policy Institute of California finds that “foreign-born men make up about 35 percent of the state’s adult male population, but they are roughly 17 percent of the state’s overall prison inmates.”
Would-be citizens no longer have to know who said, “Give me liberty or give me death,” or who wrote “The Star-Spangled Banner.” But they do have to know what Susan B. Anthony did and who the speaker of the House of Representatives is.
If you’re going to deny citizenship to people who’ve jumped through all these regulatory hoops, why not give the test to Cletus? What share of Americans know the answer to even one of these questions?
The true test of an American (immigrant or native born) is the ability to cut through byzantine bureaucracy to get what you want and need. Anyone on the verge of U.S. citizenship has already passed that test.