Starting this month, the Trump administration has decreed that US citizenship applicants correctly answer 12 of 20 questions selected from a set of 128. The new test is slightly more difficult than the 2008 version it replaces, but just as unnecessary. In any form, the test is a useless speed bump on the path to citizenship for law-abiding legal immigrants who are otherwise eligible to become formalised Americans.

For most of US history, there was no standard citizenship test. From 1802, the language of US naturalisation law required that, in addition to proving five years’ continuous residence and taking an oath of allegiance to America, applicants for citizenship — who were limited almost entirely to white immigrants from the Naturalization Act of 1790 until after the Second World War — demonstrate “attachment to the principles of the Constitution”.

But the local judges who administered naturalisation proceedings were free to waive any test or to ask their own questions of applicants. This enabled bigoted judges to abuse their discretion by asking trick questions, similar to the literacy tests used by polling officials in the segregated South, such as “How high is the Bunker Hill monument?” (221 feet and five inches, as every patriotic American knows).

In order to prevent such abuses, Congress transferred authority for naturalisation from judges to federal immigration officials in 1990. In the Fifties, guidelines were introduced for civic exams, but it was not until 2008 that a standard citizenship test was adopted.

Today’s standardised civics test, then, dates back only two decades. The premise of the current test seems to be that, when it comes to naturalising immigrants, the US should favour academic historians, political scientists, and potential future Trivial Pursuit champions with photographic memories for obscure facts. Here’s one example: “There were 13 original states. Name five.” Or this Latin quiz: “The Nation’s first motto was ‘E Pluribus Unum.’ What does that mean?”

If the government is truly worried about dangerous foreign spies and saboteurs in our midst, it should ask questions about popular culture and sports that only “real” Americans might know. During the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944, some of SS Colonel Otto Skorzeny’s English-speaking Nazi commandos dressed in American uniforms and attempted to infiltrate the US lines. In the hope of identifying the German impostors, American sentries asked soldiers they did not know questions such as “Who won the World Series?” British Field Marshal Montgomery was detained for a while when he said he had no idea.

In the Trump administration’s latest version of the citizenship test, some questions have only a single correct answer when multiple answers would be correct.  For example, to the question “Name the U.S. war between the North and the South,” the only correct answer according to the government is “The Civil War”,  not “The War of the Rebellion,” the title of official federal archives from the conflict, or “The War Between the States” or “The War of Southern Independence” or “The Late Unpleasantness”.

Some of the government’s official answers to the test’s questions are also plainly wrong. For example, one correct answer given for “Name one example of an American innovation” is “Light bulb”. Whoever wrote the test seems to believe the myth that Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, when it was — according to the US Department of Energy — the British.

The exercise brings to mind the parody game show “Common Knowledge” from an old Saturday Night Live skit. According to the rules of the game, the right answers were not based on facts but rather on the misconceptions of the typical American high school student. So the answer to all questions about authorship was “Ernest Hemingway”, and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln triggered World War I.

Only one-third of Americans are able to pass the citizenship test. Over half (60%) do not know which countries the US fought in the Second World War, and no more than 13% of Americans can identify the year in which the constitution was ratified, with most believing it was 1776 (it’s 1788).

Should two-thirds of Americans lose their citizenship because they can’t pass this pointless test? A better idea would be to abolish it. Congress only created the current version a generation ago, and for most of US history no such test existed. There’s no reason to throw up this arbitrary barrier for lawful permanent residents who’ve already met every other requirement for naturalisation. Because only Green Card holders take the test, failing it doesn’t reduce immigration — it just prevents them from becoming citizens. That’s a mistake if we don’t want a permanent underclass of legal residents who live and work in America but can’t vote or fully participate in civic life.

While the citizenship test should be dropped for Green Card holders who otherwise fit all requirements for becoming citizens, we should keep the English proficiency exam and test immigrants on their mastery of American vernacular English with only one question:

What is the second-person plural form of address in American English?

1. You.
2. Y’all.
3. Yinz.
4. Youse guys.
5. All of the above, in different parts of the United States.

If you correctly answered 5… congratulations, new citizen! Here is a little flag for you to wave.