steeeeve

i see the new civics questions are out https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/questions-and-answers/2025-Civics-Test-128-Questions-and-Answers.pdf Also Name one example of an American innovation. • Automobile (cars, internal combustion engine) is pain wrong, Karl Benz in Germany invented the car

totally agree with that, if someone gets a question wrong it's most likely because they got the question and answer confused. my wife always confuses franklin (DOI) and john jay (constitution), so more questions is less chance of a simple mistake like that making an impact. it would be awesome if they drop the contributes to society BS, that's what we worry about

i wasn't saying miss it, its not like they will tell you the ceremony will be tomorrow.

my wife's green card interview took over a year to come through and so i filed a complaint with the immigration ombudsman and then she got an interview appointment in a couple of weeks, so try that. also on your question, i was thinking, if you've passed the interview already, what's stopping you from traveling? you still have the GC and you don't have to worry about interview questions about been out of the country any more.

we've been practicing and the problem she's having is remembering the exact sentence structure like "Canada is to the north of the United States", then she will invariably write "Canada in north of the United States" or "Canada is in the north of United States" or something like that. stuff that is trivial for a native English speaker can be quite tricky for a foreign speaker. But we have a long time to practice so I guess its good she has me, but for someone without a native English speaker available to help i bet it's very hard

is it ok to ask the officer to repeat the sentence several times, including in the middle of writing the answer? also how strict are they on spelling?, my wife often forgets to pluralize words thanks

i have no idea but May 15th is a long time ago. did you ask USCIS why it was taking so long, i thought it was typically a couple of months?

please post how it goes. things like 'social ties in the community and 'care-taking role for sick family members', how would you even get documentary evidence for that?

hi, on the IRS website there are 4 types of transcript available , account, return, wage & income, and record of account. which one is needed for N400? also, is download and print ok or should i get copies sent from IRS? thanks

the writing an essay thing is just a proposal at the moment right? anyhow if my wife had to write an essay, i'd write it for her and make her write it out every day until she memorized it perfectly, so really no different to memorizing a hundred other things no one would need to know in real life, like who was president in world war 1 and what does genocide mean. my bigger worry is if they want proof you are a "good citizen". how do you prove you help your community, do you need do some kind of documented community service or something?

unless USCIS hires investigators to go out and do this, i don't see it happening, maybe a phone call to a neighbour if the applicant provides a number, but even that could easily be bogus, there is basically no way this could work practically. my wife is actually good friends with our neighbors so we should have no problem getting them to write an affidavit, but i think a lot of people will have problems with that

i just saw this is this true? would this check be before of after in the interview? is it a good idea to get letters from the neighbors first? thanks

i'm a bit worried about this. my wife has zero crimes anywhere so that was never an issue but she doesn't work, and we travel quite a lot outside the USA although we will meet the rules for less than 18 months in 3 years out of the US. we just started volunteering for habitat for humanity but realistically i doubt we'll do many hours. we do help our elderly neighbour with house repairs for free, maybe she would be willing to write a letter to confirm that. i wonder what else we could do? we bought a fixer up house and have been restoring it over the last couple of years, we don't get paid for that but it is a kind of job and we pay more property tax as a result of the upgrades. i wonder if these things will be enough? i guess no one knows yet since the new rules haven't kicked in.

ok, thanks, so just stick to the script then and sound confident

many of the civics questions have multiple possible acceptable answers. is it ok to answer the minimum possible answer like say "freedom" or would it be better to say "religious freedom" or something that shows you understand the context and history a bit more? i wonder if showing more of an understanding in the civics part will result in easier questions on the N400 part?

i have plenty of time to teach her but i also have an English accent. hearing the questions in an American accent is not a bad idea, fortunately there are a million youtube videos on this, and i'll ask my US friend to go though the test with her too. however there's no guarantee she'll get an american interviewer (we had a chinese guy for the green card interview) so i guess she needs to be prepared for anything.

not a bad idea, i do understand Thai and she usually speaks Thai while I speak English at home. anyhow, her friend just passed the USC test in Syracuse NY a couple of weeks ago and they didn't ask for any explanation of the N400 yes/no questions. i know her friend and I'd say her English is worse than my wife's. however, we just watched another video, and part of the reason for failure was not know knowing, or at least not been able to, explain the definitions of the N400 words. at 19:43 in the above video she is asked "do you know what "cited" means. in the doc you posted it says "A naturalization applicant must only demonstrate an ability to read, write, speak, and understand words in ordinary usage." . personally i wouldn't consider "cited" to be a word in common usage.

Fr8dog, i see you are Dutch, I lived in Holland for 5 years and i speak exactly 5 words in Dutch and never had a problem. I remember sitting in a pub one time and a Dutch guy explaining English grammar to me, and i'm English! My wife is Thai and it's a uphill battle for her to understand the N400 yes/no questions the way they are asked using what i would call lawyer or contract style language. She speaks conversational English just fine but many words in the N400 yes/no questions like sabotage, terrorist, nobility, etc don't come up in normal conversation. However it's still 1 year before she can apply for USC so we have time to practice.

well these are not part of the English test. if they ask one of the yes/no questions, she knows where to say yes or no, but if asked to explain what the questions mean, i hope its ok to say she can't explain that in english. if asked how she filled out the N400, would be be ok to say using google translate? there are no published rules for answering the N400 questions (unlike the civics test) so it's a little hard to know what the passing standard is

i was just watching this with my wife he asked for a lot of explanation about the meaning of all the yes/no type questions on the N400. there's so many words in there my wife doesn't know, this has to be so hard for none English speakers! anyhow, i was wondering, is it acceptable to ask the interviewer to explain the question in simpler language? for example at one point is asks something like "have you ever entered into a relationship to obtain immigration benefit", she asked to clarify and he said have you every married someone to get a green card. is it ok to do this on several questions?

ok thanks, i didn't see assets and such were taking into account. i live mostly on 401k distributions so if they consider that i guess i will not get it

i know this is an old thread but i'm thinking about my wife taking the english and civics test and although her english is fine with me, she does tend to freeze up in stressful situations. in her green card interview she got a Chinese interviewer and I could barely understand him, i had to ask him to repeat almost every question, my wife said she had no idea what he was saying. i really hope that doesn't happen in the English test or she'll be screwed!

just to confirm, i read this https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/forms/g-1055_2.pdf N-400 Application for Naturalization (https://www.uscis.gov/ n-400) General filing, unless noted below. Fee determined based on how form is submitted. You cannot file online if you are requesting a fee waiver or a reduced fee; you must file a paper Form N-400. Paper Filing: $760 Online Filing: $710 If your documented annual household income is not more than 400 percent of the Federal Poverty Guidelines and you submit supporting documentation with your application. Paper Filing: $380 In 2025, the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) for a two-person household is $21,150 so 400% is around $85000 I'm on social security and have some rental and interest income but our total will be way less than $40000 so unless i'm missing something, i should qualify for the reduced fee of $380 right? thanks

ok, well we have a house, pay prop taxes, electric, insurance etc so hopefully that should not be a problem

i keep a spread sheet of the days and carefully manage it so we will be under the 18 month limit, assuming we do not leave the US next summer its will be exactly 293 days. we may do a canada road trip but that would be no more than 2 weeks so still way under the allowed time. i'm just wondering what are the typical interview questions about travel like?