It doesn't make common sense, it makes government sense! A rant on bureaucracy and the naturalization test.

Imagine yourself at a cocktail party and a friend approaches you and asks, "Who did the U.S. fight in World War II?"

Your first instinct is probably, Germany, or Italy, or for that matter, a number of other countries (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axis_powers).

Not so, says the U.S. Government.  You have to say exactly "Japan, Germany and Italy."  If you end up including any other countries that were a part of the Axis Powers, or you leave any one of the big three out, you end up failing the Naturalization exam. 

There is a very interesting phenomenon when it comes to dealing with bureaucrats: they don't feel free to exercise independent judgment.  This is more of a problem with lower level bureaucrats than the higher ones.  It's as if on the first day of bureaucrat school, they have to take indoctrination 101: "you stick to the script."  The bigger the bureaucracy the stiffer its bureaucrats.  To be fair, I don't mean to degrade the men and women who dedicate their lives to public service, I simply mean to illustrate the nature of bureaucracies. 

To illustrate, think of a bureaucrat who has a manual that says, "the sky is yellow."  You go to the bureaucrat and say, "the sky is blue, look out the window, it's blue."  The bureaucrat will inevitably say, "regardless of what the true color of the sky may be, the sky is yellow, that's what the manual says." 

With this preface let me get to my story.  I recently attended a naturalization interview with a client.  For those of you who don't know, naturalization applicants are given a civics test as part of their application to become U.S. citizens.  There are 100 possible questions that applicants need to study.  They are found here: http://www.uscis.gov/USCIS/Office%20of%20Citizenship/Citizenship%20Resource%20Center%20Site/Publications/100q.pdf.  An applicant is given 10 out of those 100 questions and must answer 6 of them correctly to pass the test.

My client was having a hard time with the test.  She answered 5 correctly and 4 incorrectly.  It all hinged on one question. The pressure was on.  The final question was number 81 on the study guide:

81. Who did the United States fight in World War II?

The book answer is "Japan, Germany and Italy."

My client says, "Japan."

The officer starts pulling her copy of the study guide to check the answer.  I say, "you're not seriously going to check the answer to that, are you?"

Sure enough, she did and tells my client that the answer is incomplete.  She starts pushing my client to give more of the answer.  My objection: "she answered it correctly, just because she didn't give the book answer it does not mean she answered incorrectly."  The question did not ask "Who all did the U.S. fight during WWII?"  Logically, the way the question is phrased, a mention of any of the 3 countries listed in the book would be a correct answer.  Not so for a bureaucrat.  The officer kept pushing my client to answer more.  My client eventually says "Italy", the second correct country, and then gets stuck.  Officer keeps insisting and my client finally says "Africa" just to say something and end it.  Aside from the point that, technically, the U.S. did fight in Africa, I let it go and agreed that it was an incorrect answer since the question asked "who" the U.S. fought and not "where."  Nevertheless, my client should have been passed on that questions since she did answer correctly with Japan and Italy. 

After about an hour's discussion and argument, the officer decides she needs to check with a supervisor.  The supervisor's answer, "fail it is."

Anyone who knows me knows that I don't like to take an answer like that laying down.  So off I go to talk to the supervisor.  The supervisor chews it over for a few days and decides to reverse the officer's decision since the client had technically answered correctly and had only given an incorrect answer because the officer kept pushing for more.

I was happy as a clam.  Finally a bureaucrat who exercises some common sense and independent judgment. 

I was starting to change my opinion about bureaucrats until... I get another call from the supervisor a few days later (and after I had given the client the good news) who informs me that his boss had gotten wind of this issue and she had decided to overrule his decision and fail my client.

Our lawyer's association raised this issue at a liaison meeting with USCIS, but the answer was that they have to stick to the book answers regardless of whether the preface to the current naturalization test says:

"Although USCIS is aware that there may be additional correct answers to the 100 civics questions, applicants are encouraged to respond to the civics questions using the answers provided below."  (Emphasis added).

Last time I checked, "encouraged" was not a synonym for "required."

Translation: what the book says is correct regardless of the completeness or accuracy of the book answer.  This opens a whole new can of worms about the accuracy of the book answers which was superbly handled by Dafna Linzer here: http://www.propublica.org/article/how-i-passed-my-us-citizenship-test-by-keeping-the-right-answers-to-myself.

My client will be given a second chance as are all applicants who fail the civics or English test, but in case she fails it again, I would LOVE to litigate this issue.  I dream of the day when a bureaucrat explains to a federal judge how "Japan" is not the correct answer to "who did we fight in WWII?"