Citizenship & naturalizationPOLICY UPDATE
Revising Guidance on Naturalization Civics Educational Requirement
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is issuing policy guidance in the USCIS Policy Manual to implement the 2020 Naturalization Civics Test with some modifications (“2025 Naturalization Civics Test”), which helps ensure proper assimilation of lawful immigrants into the United States and promote a unified American identity and attachment to the Constitution, laws, and founding principles of the United States. This update also provides clarification on the requirements an alien must demonstrate to sufficiently establish knowledge and understanding of civics as required under section 312 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).
Effective date and application
1, signed June 5, 2003 (effective March 1, 2003), including broad authority
Key changes
- U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is issuing policy guidance in the USCIS Policy Manual to implement the 2020 Naturalization Civics Test with some modifications (“2025 Naturalization Civics Test”), which helps ensure proper assimilation of lawful immigrants into the United States and promote a unified American identity and attachment to the Constitution, laws, and founding principles of the United States. This update also provides clarification on the requirements an alien must demonstrate to sufficiently establish knowledge and understanding of civics as required under section 312 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).
- Provides that USCIS will administer the 2025 Naturalization Civics Test to aliens who file for naturalization on or after October 20, 2025.
- Increases the general bank of civics test questions to 128 (from 100), the number of test questions for the exam to 20 (from 10), and accordingly, the number of correct answers needed to pass the civics test to 12 (from six).
- Provides that officers stop the test when the alien correctly answers the minimum number of 12 questions required to pass the test, or answers nine questions incorrectly. This is the only
- Retains the 60 percent passing score (which also applies to the 2008 Naturalization Civics Test and applied to the 2020 Naturalization Civics Test).
- Confirms that USCIS continues to administer a test containing 10 questions (requiring six correct answers) out of a specially selected bank of 20 questions to aliens who qualify for special consideration because they are age 65 or older and have been lawful permanent residents for at least 20 years.
