So I just had lunch with my friend, Dayana. She and I worked together at Friends of the Family the first time I worked there a few years ago. She left there to work for CPS so now we see each other a lot again since I'm always at the CPS office. Dayana is from Colombia, but is married to a U.S. Citizen. She was telling me that she applied in Jan 05 to take her citizenship test and they told her it would be about a year before she would actually be scheduled for a test date. She just got a letter telling her that she is taking the test on April 21st. She has not studied and was freaking out a little. So we were talking and I told her I knew you could get info for free online and that I would ask Allison if she would be willing to help her since Allison is a high school government teacher. So just out of curiosity, I was just looking around online and found this sample test, Naturalization Self Test.

Now, I'm pretty savvy on politics/history. I mean, it's not my specialty like it is Misti and Allison; but I'm generally interested in this stuff so I remember it. So given that, I thought that I would know pretty much all of the answers...and I do know a good 90% of them...but still! Shouldn't we as "natural born citizens" be required to know the same information? Here are a few questions that I did NOT know and their answers, just in case you guys are bad citizens like me.

*How many representatives are there in Congress? (435)

*How many changes or amendments are there to the Constitution? (27)

*Who said, "Give me liberty or give me death"? (Patrick Henry)

So now, my question is this: Who in the heck is Patrick Henry? And if I don't know, then is it really fair to deny Dayana citizenship because she doesn't know trivial information like that? I know, I know. Immigrants are a sensitive subject, but she is just such a smart, wonderful person that it makes me look at my thoughts on immigration differently when I have a face to put on the term. Anyway, I'm off to look up ol' Patty H. and see exactly WHO and WHY he was.