Mdeso

    > The 5 year old has gone to the baby sitter, I will see how she does
    > tomorrow.
    > I know the questions are in a booklet, is it available on line?
    > I think I know 6, could have a good shot at 3 and 1 would be a guess.
    > But if you have 100 questions and answers to remember and most of them
    > are general knowledge anyway, it should not be too bad.

The questions would be hard if you didn't study. For instance, the
majority of my wife's family and our USC friends could only get 4 or 5
of those questions right. The average USC would not have a clue (or even
care) how many representatives there are in congress!! It's just a
matter of studying the 100 sample questions in the weeks leading up to
the interview. But hopefully people realise that not everyone gets all
"easy" questions like who is the current president, and what do we
celebrate on the 4th of July.

Andrea874

    > I agree with you, andrea! I'm wondering, if someone's English isn't
    > good enough to understand the meaning of those questions (there's some
    > hard vocabulary in there!), will they fail? Can they have an
    > interpreter? Do they have to go learn more English for another year
    > or two and then try again? Hmmmm....
    > Rene

Seriously. I mean I'm Canadian, and therefore grew up learning as much
US history as Canadian, and I have no idea what most of the answers are.
In fact, I just asked my husband and he has no idea either. I cant
imagine how hard it would be for someone who grew up in an entirely
different culture/language, etc

Boiler

    > Seriously. I mean I'm Canadian, and therefore grew up learning as much
    > US history as Canadian, and I have no idea what most of the answers
    > are. In fact, I just asked my husband and he has no idea either. I
    > cant imagine how hard it would be for someone who grew up in an
    > entirely different culture/language, etc

I do not remember studying US History etc per se, must have been a few
bits and pieces that came in by default.

Nobody makes you take this test, it is up to you. If to quote a famous
poster here you can not be arsed to do a little homework then easy, do
not apply.

And linguistically, I do still find some of the differences odd and am
forever being corrected, but when in Rome....

1Duckie

    > I'm a new poster to this forum, but have been a frequent visitor over
    > the past couple of years. You guys have been an excellent source of
    > information and entertainment over that time. I wanted to thank all of
    > you for sharing your experiences and offering advice. I never posted a
    > question, as everything I needed to know had already been asked. But
    > now I want to give something back by providing my timeline and
    > experience, as my journey from fiance to US citizen is almost
    > complete. Hopefully this will be of help to some people out there.
    > Jan 2001 - applied for fiance visa in Sydney, Australia
    > Jun 2001 - attended interview in Sydney and received approval of
    > fiance visa
    > Jul 2001 - entered US
    > Aug 2001 - married in Minneapolis, MN
    > Sep 2001 - filed I-485
    > Apr 2002 - received 2 yr conditional green card
    > Jan 3 2004 - filed I-751 with NSC (90 days before green card expired)
    > Jan 3 2005 - filed N-400 with NSC (still no word on I-751)
    > Feb 24 2005 - had fingerprints taken in St. Paul
    > Mar 16 2005 - received notice to appear for interviews for both
    > Removal of Conditions(with my wife) and Naturalization
    > Apr 14 2005 - attended both interviews (took only 30 mins)
    > Apr 20 2005 - received N-445 notice of Naturalization Oath Ceremony in
    > St. Paul on May 18 2005.
    > With all of our applications, we submitted almost everything we could
    > lay our hands on: joint bank statements, utility bills, mortgage, tax
    > returns, travel records, wedding invitations, xmas cards, affidavits
[q1]> from friends, photos

desidivazz

Congratulations on almost finishing the process from fiance visa to
Naturalization. My husband and I are almost there we will be eligible
to apply for citizenship in October of this year. We started about 6
months after you guys did but we had a slight delay because we moved to
another state in between and then came back to the area we live in now.

As for the other posters comments about the Naturalization test. My
grandmother who was 74 at the time failed the test. She does not speak
much english at all, just very basic like "hi my name is" and "today i
going out"...very very basic. If she was called for an interview a year
later, it wouldnt have mattered how bad her english was cause shes
eligible to get naturalized because of her advanced age. She kept her
Greencard and now her dream to become a citizen seems further away. The
lady asked her "Who was the first president?" something to that effect
and my grandmother answered "I love america since I came in
1985"...hehe poor thing. Then she said "She has no clue what I asked I
am sorry she failed the test". I dont know the cut off's with age, but
I assume that if a person is in failing health but has lived in the US
for the past 20 years, the citizenship test might be a bit more lax.
Anyways she's content being a Greencard holder, but being a US citizen
has always been a dream of her's. Good luck to all new test takers.Bye

Boiler

    > Congratulations on almost finishing the process from fiance visa to
    > Naturalization. My husband and I are almost there we will be eligible
    > to apply for citizenship in October of this year. We started about 6
    > months after you guys did but we had a slight delay because we moved
    > to
    > another state in between and then came back to the area we live in
    > now.
    > As for the other posters comments about the Naturalization test. My
    > grandmother who was 74 at the time failed the test. She does not speak
    > much english at all, just very basic like "hi my name is" and "today i
    > going out"...very very basic. If she was called for an interview a
    > year
    > later, it wouldnt have mattered how bad her english was cause shes
    > eligible to get naturalized because of her advanced age. She kept her
    > Greencard and now her dream to become a citizen seems further away.
    > The
    > lady asked her "Who was the first president?" something to that effect
    > and my grandmother answered "I love america since I came in
    > 1985"...hehe poor thing. Then she said "She has no clue what I asked I
    > am sorry she failed the test". I dont know the cut off's with age, but
    > I assume that if a person is in failing health but has lived in the US
    > for the past 20 years, the citizenship test might be a bit more lax.
    > Anyways she's content being a Greencard holder, but being a US citizen
    > has always been a dream of her's. Good luck to all new test takers.Bye

On the other hand if you have been here 20 years, you might have picked
up a bit of the language by now.

She may be in her 70's now, but she was in her 50's then.

And if was a big dream, would you not have done something about it in
all those years?