Do you deserve citizenship?

Our nation needs a practical, sustainable immigration policy that awards citizenship to foreigners willing to earn the right to be an American.

If only the same requirements applied to American citizens.

Most Americans "earned" their citizenship through the accident of birth, and millions of them don't give a Yankee doodle about that tremendous prize, as their unwillingness to vote attests.

While it's unlikely U.S. citizens will ever be required to prove their worthiness as every aspiring immigrant must do, it's fun to imagine what would happen if they did. As the immigration debate rumbles along, see where you might fit in. Take a little quiz and see if you pass muster as a real American.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services administers a verbal civics test to aspiring citizens. To pass this naturalization exam, applicants must correctly answer six of 10 questions. There are 100 questions in all, and some of the questions have more than one correct answer.

Because you're a newspaper reader, you're already ahead of the curve. Our guess is that you'll pass this test without breaking a sweat. So share it with a friend or relative and see if they've got what it takes to be an American. If they get five or fewer of these questions right, a deportation team won't arrive at their front door shortly - but maybe it should.

1. What is the supreme law of the land?

2. What is the economic system in the United States?

3. What is the "rule of law?"

4. Who makes federal laws?

5. Who does a U.S. senator represent?

6. If both the president and the vice president can no longer serve, who becomes president of the United States?

7. How many justices are on the Supreme Court?

8. Who wrote the Declaration of Independence?

9. When was the Constitution written?

10. What did Martin Luther King, Jr. do?

To learn more about your state and country and perhaps better appreciate what applicants for U.S. citizenship go through, review all 100 civics questions on the naturalization test. Go to: http://www.uscis.gov/us-citizenship

ANSWERS

1. The Constitution

2. Capitalist economy or market economy

3. Everyone must follow the law

4. Congress

5. All people of a state

6. Speaker of the House

7. Nine

8. Thomas Jefferson

9. 1787

10. Fought for civil rights