Beginning on December 1, 2020, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is implementing a revised Civics test for legal, permanent residents to take as part of their efforts to become naturalized citizens.
This sample quiz includes 20 of those questions.
In a news release the agency said the civics test is administered to applicants who apply for U.S. citizenship and is one of the statutory requirements for naturalizing. Applicants who apply for naturalization on or after Dec. 1, 2020, will take the updated version of the test. Those who apply before Dec. 1, 2020, will take the current version of the test.
Candidates must answer 12 questions correctly, out of 20 in order to pass.
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In 1965, Charleston, West Virginia was home to about 85,000 residents — now, that number has almost halved. The people who are left look a lot like the population in the rest of the state — namely white and older. And as they age, those older folks need someone to care for them. But across the United States, there’s a direct care worker shortage.
“The growth is going to be tremendous, I mean we’re going to need millions,” said Robyn Stone, co-director of LeadingAge — a non-profit aging research organization based in Washington, D.C. Millions is a slight exaggeration — but not by much. Data from the direct care worker advocacy organization PHI National projects that between 2018 and 2028, the direct care workforce will add 1.3 million jobs.
And in places like West Virginia, there aren’t enough people to fill them. West Virginia is one of a handful of states in which in the population is actually going down due to people migrating out of the state. Recent data also shows there are more deaths than births.
“We know that in many rural communities there just are not enough bodies,” said Stone. “In fact we have anecdotes from our own association in some rural communities that nursing homes and other types of residential environments have actually had to stop admissions because they didn’t have a workforce to care for the people who needed the beds. We hear the same stories from people who are looking to hire home aides.”
Some experts like Sean O’Leary, senior policy analyst for the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy, say immigration could help solve West Virginia’s population decline problem, which would help worker shortages like West Virginia is facing in the direct care workforce.
“[Immigrants are] 1.6 percent of our population, but since 2001 one in five new West Virginians has been an immigrant,” he said.
Immigrants play an important role in the U.S. economy — especially in lower paying jobs like direct care workers. In California, for instance, which has the highest foreign-born population in the country, almost half of direct care worker jobs are filled by recent immigrants.
“A large proportion of this workforce in general are immigrants so — about 30 percent to a third of all the home care aids in this country are first generation immigrants and about a quarter of certified nursing assistants are immigrants,” Stone said.
But in West Virginia, less than two percent of the population is foreign born.
“We have the smallest share, but I would kind of argue that we have the most important share and it’s because of that population,” O’Leary said. “You know West Virginia is losing population, our state is shrinking, we’re likely to lose a congressional seat. The population that we do have is older, the population we do have is sick, the population we do have doesn’t work as much as we’d like to see in the economy. And all those things are made less of a factor by our immigration.”
West Virginia’s Immigrant Population
Edwiin Parra-Munoz moved to the United States on a green card from Mexico when he was 12. He’s now 29 and became a U.S. citizen on January 13.
Fifty-three percent of West Virginia’s immigrant population are naturalized citizens like Parra, according to a new report from the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy. Nationwide, the number is around 44 percent. And more than half of immigrants work in health care or white collar professions. Immigrants living in West Virginia are also more likely to have a college degree than native born citizens.
Parra, for instance, will graduate with a masters in nurse anesthesia in May.
But immigration is a hot button topic in West Virginia.
In 2018 the Dominion Post polled West Virginians on immigration. About 60 percent of respondents agreed with the statement that “a growing number of newcomers from other countries threatens traditional American customs and values” and “immigrants today are a burden on our country because they take our jobs, housing and healthcare.”
At a 2018 rally in Huntington, President Donald Trump talked about immigration to a supportive audience.
“The new platform of the Democrat party is to abolish [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement], a vote for any democrat in November is a vote to eliminate immigration enforcement, throw open our borders and set loose vicious predators and violent criminals,” he said. “They will be all over our communities, they will be preying on our communities.”
West Virginia Republican Delegate Carl Martin is one of three legislators who proposed a bill last session to help fund Trump’s border wall. But he said Trump’s stance on immigration has been misconstrued.
“Every time it’s — he talks about we want legal immigrants — we want them to come in the right way, but we want them here,” Martin said. When asked if he thought his constituents would echo that perspective he said, “100 percent, yeah, of course.”
Martin can’t speak to the state’s shortage in care workers, but he agreed immigration could help stem West Virginia’s population decline.
“It could,” he said. “We have to look at a lot of different avenues on maintaining our population and trying to increase our population…we have to do something. And we’ve been working on that.”
But, he said, he’s not sure if immigrants are interested in coming here.
“I don’t know how big of an impact immigration can make on our state. We have to figure out somehow how to get them to the Mountain State.”
Parra has been living in West Virginia for 17 years, but like many young people, he isn’t staying to work here. He just got a job at a hospital in Portsmouth, Ohio he said included help repaying loans.
But he loves West Virginia and considers Charleston home and hopes to return when his contract is up. He said people want to come to the United States for jobs — any jobs — but it’s really difficult to get here legally.
“Now the whole system it’s set up to make it very difficult — especially for people from Mexico…and it’s very hard for somebody with a very low economic status to be able to afford that. It’s just really incredibly hard to come the right way,” he said.
Regardless of whether or not immigration is part of the solution, West Virginia is facing a looming shortage of people to care for the aging population, and many experts warn something has to be done.
Correction 02/07/2020:
This story has been updated with two corrections. An earlier version of this story had LeadingAge as two words. It also said LeadingAge was based in Boston. The organization is affiliated with the University of Massachusettes Boston, but is based in Washington, D.C.
Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, with support from Marshall Health and Charleston Area Medical Center.
Paying taxes is one of those things we just can’t avoid… except for the local tax measures we get to vote on. One of the best examples is school spending. When local school officials ask for additional money for new academic programs or school buildings, taxpayers must approve it. There’s one man who has worked with citizen’s groups in dozens of places to fight against more money for public schools. He’s been successful in many places and his efforts highlight the Us & Them in all of these communities.
For this episode, Trey speaks with APM Educate producer Alex Baumhardt about her time getting to know the “Bond Buster.”
The immigration crisis on the southern border of the US doesn’t affect the day-to-day lives of most residents throughout the country. But many people are increasingly concerned anyway. A group from rural West Virginia recently took a trip to Texas to aid asylum seekers. They went to learn more about the realities of this crisis, and the people who would try to help.
Moundsville Visits Brownsville
Tom Lawther has lived his whole life in Moundsville, West Virginia, but earlier this month he found himself pulling a wagon full of food across the United States-Mexico border wearing a t-shirt that reads “Land of Hope and Dreams.”
“I just thought it would be a positive message to the people that are trying to get here,” Lawther explained, “that we accept them and want to help them.”
According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, West Virginia has the lowest foreign-born population in the country, but residents like Lawther are still concerned about shifting immigration policies. He said he came to honor his mother, who was herself an immigrant.
“She was born 100 years ago next month. She came to the United States from Scotland seeking a better life,” Lawther said. “It worked out for her and her family so it’s a chance to give back and maybe help somebody else live the same dream that we did.”
Credit Glynis Board / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Tom Lawther and Jane Klug shop in Texas for supplies to cook for asylum seekers.
Lawther is part of a group from West Virginia that felt compelled to visit Texas in light of news about the crisis of migrants and refugees on the border. His Catholic parish priest, Father That Son, organized the group.
On the way to the border, Father That Son talked about how he first came to the West Virginia as a teenage refugee himself during the Vietnam War.
“If I do not leave,” That Son remembered, “we would not have no future — absolutely. Because my father would get in prison and later get killed. And we were too young to take care of ourselves. We don’t have a choice to stay.”
Father That Son said his experiences watching millions die around him, including members of his own family, ultimately led him to the priesthood in an effort to find meaning and make sense of life. But while his personal experience informs his perspective, he said, ultimately, his Christian values to help those who suffer inspired him to come to Texas. He said it might have been simpler take up a collection or send money, but for him, physically being present was more valuable.
Credit Glynis Board / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Catholic parish priest in Marshall County and formerly Pocahontas County, Father That Son first came to West Virginia as a teenage refugee during the Vietnam War. A resident in West Virginia sponsored him and one of his nine siblings in the mid 1970s.
“United States of America is not an unfriendly country. There’s a lot of good people and we have to let these people to know that,” That Son said. “That’s why [we’re] there — you have to give them some kind of hope.”
Father That Son and his group set out to make a meal for 650 asylum seekers. Armed with boxes of noodles, cans of tomato sauce, spices, salad and hundreds of fruit cups, the group made their way to the kitchen at the Good Neighbor Settlement House — a small day shelter in one of the poorest pockets of Brownsville, Texas.
A Good Neighbor vs. Dangerous Neighbor
Marianela Watson is a retired school teacher. She’s been volunteering, managing temporary emergency care for a little over a year. She’s haunted by asylum seekers’ stories about sexual crimes, and kidnappings for organs and human trafficking. Until several weeks ago, her shelter would help up to 120 asylum seekers each day.
All were vetted with and had documentation demonstrating they were legally in the U.S.
A recent immigration policy shift stemmed the flow to about a dozen or so each day.
Marianela is very worried about the folks who would have been here had the rules not changed. Volunteers report 100 new asylum seekers reach the border every day, and a new policy dictates they must all remain in the closest country of safe harbor until their cases have been heard.
Marianela pointed out that U.S. issued a travel advisory warning citizens that “violent crime, such as murder, armed robbery, carjacking, kidnapping, extortion, and sexual assault, is common,” in the neighboring Mexican state of Tamaulipas:
Gang activity, including gun battles and blockades, is widespread. Armed criminal groups target public and private passenger buses as well as private automobiles traveling through Tamaulipas, often taking passengers hostage and demanding ransom payments. Federal and state security forces have limited capability to respond to violence in many parts of the state.
U.S. government employees may only travel within a limited radius between the U.S. Consulates in Nuevo Laredo and Matamoros and their respective U.S. Ports of Entry. U.S. government employees may not travel between cities in Tamaulipas using interior Mexican highways and they must observe a curfew between midnight and 6:00 a.m. in the cities of Matamoros and Nuevo Laredo. -U.S. State Dept.
“It’s a very dangerous state right now in Mexico,” Marianela went on, “but yet we’re sending them back there to quote, unquote be safe while they’re waiting for their court date? That doesn’t make any sense.”
About 1,600 are camped right across the border in Matamoras, waiting for their day in virtual court with teleconferenced judges in makeshift courtrooms set up across the US border in big white tents.
Of course, volunteers from West Virginia didn’t come to sort out world affairs.
Credit Glynis Board / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Jane Klug was brought up in the St. Joseph Settlement in Marshall County — a community founded by German immigrants. As she cooked pasta with Libby Magnone, she described some of the disapproval she encountered from members of her community in the Northern Panhandle who didn’t understand why she would want to make a trip to the southern border of the U.S. to help people who want to enter the country there.
Wagons, Rivers, and Bridges
Back in the kitchen of the Good Neighbor Settlement House, West Virginians were preparing a meal they would have to walk across a bridge and deliver in camps on the Mexican side of the border.
One of the volunteers leading the cooking effort was Jane Klug, a retired teacher from Marshall County. Before leaving West Virginia, Jane heard from many of her own community members who strongly disapproved of her decision to help people in Mexico trying to come to the U.S.
“They have families and they’re used to ‘taking care of their own,’” Klug said without any judgment in her voice. “I am not married, I have no children of my own. Therefore, I think my whole perspective on the world is different.”
Jane and the rest of the group fill 70 large tin pans with pasta, salad, or fruit — then load the tins into wagons — the colorful canvas kind with bigger wheels you might see at a picnic. A grassroots organization called Team Brownsville provided about 25 wagons and extra hands to pull the food across the border.
Credit Glynis Board / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Each group member pulled a wagon across a walking bridge that crossed over the Rio Grande River that separates Mexico and the U.S. It costs a dollar in quarters to cross into Mexico, and thirty cents to cross into the U.S.
“We’ve never really had any problems [in the camps across the border],” said Kathy Harrington, a local retired resident, and a regular team leader from Brownsville. “The people are so thankful for whatever we can do for them. They’ve come to rely on Team Brownsville because they know we’ll be here all the time with food. And that’s the one constant, I think, in their lives now.”
Team Brownsville started up in July of 2018, and organizes humanitarian aid groups like the one from West Virginia everyday.
With wagons in tow, each individual pays a dollar in quarters to get into Mexico by way of a walking bridge that crosses over a narrow but deep river full of vegetation. Crossing the bridge, Father That Son pointed to the Rio Grande River below.
“Many lives have been lost in this little river,” he said, recalling international headlines highlighting a recent tragedy where a father and daughter drowned trying to swim across.
Credit Glynis Board / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Hundreds of tents are setup on the Mexican side of the border housing people from Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, Ecuador, and many other countries.
A City of Tents
It’s a warm evening but it was hot during the day and temperatures could drop into the fifties by morning. Hundreds of camping tents are wedged next to each other on concrete. Men are already forming a line, women and lots of children cluster in another. Soon volunteers are dishing pasta and salad. As a flock of wild parrots flies south overhead, volunteers are told not to venture too far away since no one can say for sure who is in other nearby camps.
There are no real bathrooms or showers anywhere. Clothes are hung from trees and fences in every direction, still drying out from a torrential downpour that flooded the camp last week.
Credit Glynis Board / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Different tent clusters tend to be made of of different communities of people. One group of hundreds of tents might be made up of mostly Hondurans, while another might be predominantly made up of another group. Such diversity combined with the known presence of drug cartels breeds a certain amount of distrust in the overall atmosphere. That’s in combination with a huge percentage of the population being children 12 and under who seem focused on being kids and having fun.
This camp is predominantly made up of Hondurans.
One little boy cried, “¡Fuera JOH!” as he collected juice from a regular volunteer from Team Brownsville.
“You say ‘Feura JOH’ here and half the people will say it back,” Brendan Tucker explained. “It’s a rally cry across [Honduras] which means ‘Out with JOH’ — which are the initials of the president [Juan Orlando Hernández]. People get it. It’s why they came here in the first place.”
Bus Station Dreams
Several hours later, the group makes their way back across the border, through U.S. customs. They’ll spend the rest of the week volunteering for aid agencies – painting, organizing supplies, and greeting the few who do make it across in a nearby bus station.
The volunteers from West Virginia use Google Translate on smart phones to converse with families waiting for buses, making sure they have food and clean, warm clothes for cooler northern climates they’re headed into.
Ray Young is one of the volunteers. He feels strongly that people should only enter the country legally, but worries the process is overly convoluted.
“How do these people find out?” Ray wondered.
He approached a man waiting for a bus who spoke some English. Ray came to discover the man’s name was Hassam, that he was from Bangladesh, and that he’d made his way to the U.S. border from Brazil.
Hassam explained that he’s fleeing political persecution in Bangladesh. While the majority of those seeking asylum come from Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, many others like Hassam come from all over the world. He has a brother who lives in the U.S. He’ll stay with him and seek asylum.
Statistically, though, only 10 to 15 percent of people trying will actually be granted asylum. Qualifications are very strict and narrow. Exposure to gang or domestic violence, for example, won’t qualify you to receive asylum. To stand a chance navigating the system, volunteers here explained, you really need a lawyer. Pro-bono lawyers are rare, and other immigration lawyers are expensive, charging up to $10,000 to take a case.
Credit Glynis Board
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Tom Lawther grew up in Marshall County and came to Texas and Mexico, in part, to celebrate and honor his mother who was born 100 years ago in Scotland and came to the U.S. to try to make a better life. He left feeling grateful for the opportunity.
Turning to Hope and Gratitude
Outside the bus station, Tom Lawther stood at the border wall, or border fence. It’s reinforced on the Mexican side with a lot of barbed wire — a stark reminder of harsh realities — but Tom said he feels hopeful.
“There’s sadness here but there’s a heartwarming, too, how much they’re willing to help,” he said, “and the children were the most heartwarming. They haven’t lost their spirit – they’re still happy, hard-working people to me.”
Tom said he’s inspired by the volunteers who live in this border region. He said they also have to deal with people who give them a hard time for helping out, but they help anyway.
“I’m just thankful that somebody organized this to give me a chance to actually do something,” Tom added, “even if it’s a small part, to help a little bit.”
Hope and gratitude were common takeaways for all the volunteers who flew home to West Virginia. They report that despite the harsh realities they saw and learned about, opportunities to share human interactions and see how generosity and kindness can be received left them feeling hopeful that for some people, anyway, tomorrow could be better.
On Thursday, a group of West Virginians rallied at the steps of the state Capitol, voicing concerns about what some say are human rights violations in Kashmir.
Kashmir is a mountainous patch of land between India and Pakistan, which were both combined during British rule until 1947.
For years since separating, the Muslim-majority Pakistan and the Hindu-majority India — both nuclear-armed nations — have disputed which country has a right to Kashmir.
Earlier this month, India’s prime minister Narendra Modi revoked Article 370 in the country’s constitution that gave Kashmir autonomy.
The country has been on media lockdown for three weeks now. International media have reported several human rights violations, and violations of religious freedom.
Many of the people who gathered at the West Virginia Capitol Thursday are Muslim, with a Pakistani history. A few even have Kashmiri roots — like Saghir and Samina Mir.
Saghir Mir has been in the United States for the last 53 years. He moved to Ohio after graduating from medical school in Pakistan. His grandparents lived in Kashmir when it was under British rule.
“I am … upset over it,” he said.
His wife Samina also has Kashmiri roots. At the Thursday rally, she said she’s concerned about the several reported human rights violations happening in Kashmir.
“Pellet guns are being fired into their eyes, blinding them. And all of the political and religious leaders are in jail. There’s no freedom of religion, no one is allowed to go into the mosques to pray.”
Unbar Moghal, another of about 40 participants at Thursday’s rally, said she feels West Virginians should be concerned about the situation in Kashmir because it’s a matter of freedom of speech, and democracy.
“We are blessed in America to have freedom of speech,” Moghal said. “And I think that’s kind of what we’re missing in Kashmir with the blackout going on. We don’t really know what’s going on — only the people who are on the floor.”
Nazia Ahmed, another participant, said the people gathered were not rallying in support of any particular group or religion.
“This is plainly for humanity,” Ahmed said. “Yes, we’re in West Virginia, but at least we’re not quiet spectators. At least we’re standing up. At least we’re speaking — there’s so many people who don’t even know where Kashmir is or what’s going on, so they are quiet. But once people start hearing, they will start speaking against it. And that’s how you start creating a bigger and louder voice against what they’re doing (in) Kashmir.”
Immigration lawyer Paul Saluja represents many immigrants in West Virginia who are trying to get their citizenship. But an increased need for pro-bono lawyers nationally has inspired him to spend a few months this fall volunteering out West. He’ll be representing families and children who traveled across the Mexican border.
West Virginia Public Broadcasting spoke with Saluja about immigration across the country and here in the Mountain State.
Transcript:
PAUL SALUJA: In the United States, you’re only guaranteed the right to counsel, to have one appointed for you in a criminal matter, if you could be incarcerated. However, immigrants do not have a right to a court appointed attorney. And they’re of limited means. They don’t have jobs right now. And they need representation. The way I look at it is, when I flew into Tucson airport, I looked out the window, and all I saw was barren, desert land. And for someone to travel in those conditions, they have to be fleeing from something serious, to be willing to risk their own life, the life of their children in these hot, dry, arid conditions, just to get a chance at life.
ROXY TODD: So last time we talked, you said you felt confident that West Virginians welcome immigrants. Do you still feel that today?
PAUL SALUJA: It appears that they do. The ones that I’ve encountered seem to support the immigration. Everyone wants the immigrant to be independent, financially independent. But to have them relocate to West Virginia. I don’t see anyone resisting it at this time.
ROXY TODD: And in the past couple of years, from the clients you’ve spoken to, have there been people that are facing deportation here in West Virginia? What are people who are undocumented feeling and thinking right now; people that are living in West Virginia, but looking at what’s going on, on the border out west? Are people afraid?
PAUL SALUJA: Absolutely, they’re afraid. The problem is, it appears the current administration doesn’t have a name immigration policy. They tend to bounce around and just make threats as opposed to having a policy of how they want to resolve the issue. And as a result, those that do qualify for some type of relief, a lot of times are unwilling to seek it, because they’re scared of what the administration may do. And by that, I mean, say for example, there’s an immigrant that is married to a United States citizen, has a couple of United States citizen children, could easily apply for a visa, and then the process could move forward. They’re scared to even start the process, because they’re not sure if they’re going to get picked up. Because on all the forums, you’re required to disclose your address, your phone number. And the reason is that way they can locate them. So everyone is becoming more and more reluctant to move forward. So instead of helping the issue, it’s actually causing the migrants to hide in the shadows.
