The new head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said in an interview with The New York Times Thursday that the Trump administration will make changes to the visa system for skilled workers and look to make the test for U.S. citizenship more difficult.

“The test as it’s laid out right now, it’s not very difficult,” said Joseph Edlow, who assumed the role in mid-July. “It’s very easy to kind of memorize the answers. I don’t think we’re really comporting with the spirit of the law.”

The first Trump administration instituted a version of the test with an expanded pool of questions that was later rolled back under former President Biden. Edlow told the Times that the government planned to return to a version of the test from the first term.

Edlow also told the Times that the administration would seek to modify the H1-B visa program for skilled workers by prioritizing people who will earn higher wages.

“I really do think that the way H-1B needs to be used, and this is one of my favorite phrases, is to, along with a lot of other parts of immigration, supplement, not supplant, U.S. economy and U.S. businesses and U.S. workers,” Edlow said.

The program was a flashpoint among Trump’s allies in December, before the president took office. Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy faced backlash from the MAGA base after they defended the use of the program to hire highly skilled engineers.

Alongside an aggressive push to deport immigrants, Trump also took aim at several avenues for legal immigration at the beginning of his term. A phone app run by Customs and Border Protection used during the Biden administration to register asylum claims now allows immigrants to register their departures from the United States if they choose to self-deport.

Director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services Joseph Edlow said this week that President Donald Trump’s administration is considering changes to the test to become a US citizen.

Earlier, it was reported that the administration was planning to change the visa system for skilled foreign workers by doing away with the H1-B visa lottery system.

US citizenship test: What’s expected? Joseph Edlow, the director of USCIS, told the New York Times on Thursday that the administration wanted to change the naturalisation test required by prospective US citizens.

As of now, immigrants study 100 civics questions and then must respond correctly to six out of 10 questions to pass that portion of the test.

During the first Trump administration, the agency increased the number of questions and required applicants to respond correctly to 12 out of 20 questions.

Edlow said the agency plans to return to a version of that test soon, the NYT reported.

But why does Edlow want to change the citizenship test? In an interview with The New York Times, Joseph Edlow said the test to become a US citizen was too easy and should change.

“The test as it’s laid out right now, it’s not very difficult,” Edlow said on Thursday, adding. “It’s very easy to kind of memorise the answers. I don’t think we’re really comporting with the spirit of the law.”

Edlow’s proposed changes would have to be approved through the federal government’s rule-making process.

H-1B visa program: What changes? The Donald Trump administration is reportedly planning to revamp the H1-B visa lottery system, aiming to replace it with a more weighted and wage-linked selection process.

The proposed changes aim to give preference to certain applicants based on additional criteria—potentially including wages—thereby benefiting highly-skilled and higher-paid professionals.

Currently, the system is quite simple. Applicants who are eligible for H1-B visa submit their applications, and a computer-run lottery randomly selects the recipients.

Each year, about 85,000 H-1B visas are issued, including 20,000 reserved for individuals holding a Master’s degree or higher from a US university.

On January 8, 2021, the Department of Homeland Security published a final rule to modify its process for selecting H-1B petitions when registrations surpass the annual limit of 85,000.

So, what changes does the administration propose? As per Forbes, in the final rule in 2021, DHS described the new selection process as:

“The USCIS will rank and select the petitions received on the basis of the highest Occupational Employment Statistics wage level that the proffered wage equals or exceeds for the relevant Standard Occupational Classification code in the area of intended employment, beginning with OES wage level IV and proceeding in descending order with OES wage levels III, II, and I.”

A study by the Institute for Progress earlier this year found, as reported by the Hindustan Times, that if higher salaries were given priority instead of using a random lottery, the average salary of an H-1B visa holder could rise from around $106,000 to $172,000.

That would likely make things much harder for outsourcing firms who rely on hiring large numbers of lower-wage workers, but could be a big plus for researchers, PhD holders, and senior-level tech professionals, the report added.

Criticism Doug Rand, a former Biden administration official, said changing the H1-B process to favour higher-wage earners was misguided.

“Like it or not, the H-1B program is the main way that US companies can hire the best and brightest international graduates of US universities, and Congress never allowed DHS to put its thumb on the scale based on salary,” he said.

Regarding the plan to change the H-1B visa program for foreign workers, it has been the subject of debate within the Republican Party. Edlow said it should favour companies that plan to pay foreign workers higher wages.

the proposed changes to the system could alleviate criticism from those in the right wing of the Republican Party who say the program attracts workers willing to accept lower salaries than American workers.

This week, US Vice President JD Vance had criticised companies that lay off their own employees and then hire foreign workers.

But some of Trump’s most prominent backers in the tech industry said they rely on the H-1B visa program because they can’t find enough qualified American workers.

The Trump administration is planning to change the visa system for skilled foreign workers, a program at the center of a dispute between immigration hard-liners and tech industry leaders, said the new director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

In an interview with The New York Times, Joseph Edlow, the director of U.S.C.I.S., also said the test to become a U.S. citizen was too easy and should change.

“The test as it’s laid out right now, it’s not very difficult,” Mr. Edlow said on Thursday. “It’s very easy to kind of memorize the answers. I don’t think we’re really comporting with the spirit of the law.”

Mr. Edlow illuminated how the agency at the heart of the country’s immigration system would operate in President Trump’s second term, at a moment when the president has ordered a sweeping crackdown on immigration and a mass deportation campaign.

Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.

Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content.

The new director of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) said Friday that the U.S. citizenship test is too easy and needs to be changed.

Joseph Edlow told The New York Times that the Trump administration was also looking at making changes to the H-1B work visa, which has been at the center of the legal immigration debate for several months now.

“I really do think that the way H-1B needs to be used, and this is one of my favorite phrases, is to, along with a lot of other parts of immigration, supplement, not supplant, U.S. economy and U.S. businesses and U.S. workers,” Edlow told the Times.

Why It Matters

The Trump administration has previously given little indication of plans to update or modernize the legal immigration system, focusing on illegal immigration enforcement instead for much of its first six months. Edlow’s comments mark a change in messaging from USCIS as it seeks to further deliver on President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda.

New US citizens recite the Oath of Allegiance before receiving their naturalization certificates during a formal ceremony at Midway International Airport in Chicago, Illinois, on June 25, 2025. New US citizens recite the Oath of Allegiance before receiving their naturalization certificates during a formal ceremony at Midway International Airport in Chicago, Illinois, on June 25, 2025. KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI/AFP via Getty Images

What To Know

Edlow said that he felt the U.S. citizenship test was “not very difficult” right now, and allowed immigrants seeking to naturalize to easily memorize the questions and answers. He argued this was not really “comporting with the spirit of the law”.

The test was largely random and non-standardized before 2008, when the Bush administration introduced a standardized civics test that required applicants to correctly answer six out of 10 questions, out of a possible 100.

During the first Trump administration, that number was raised to 128, and the number of correct answers to 12 out of 20, before the Biden administration switched it back in March 2021 and a planned redesign announced in the last few years was canned after largely negative feedback in late 2024.

Edlow told the Times that USCIS plans to return to a 2020-era style test soon.

As for the H-1B visa, which has been widely criticized as being used by companies favoring foreign workers on low wages over American-born employees, Edlow said there was a place for the program, but it should favor companies paying higher wages instead.

It was recently revealed that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees USCIS, was looking at changing the current lottery-style system for H-1B selection and replacing it with a “weighted selection process” that would help with Edlow’s approach.

In January, the Institute for Progress, a nonpartisan think tank examining innovation policy, floated the idea of eliminating the H-1B lottery. It argued that the economic value of the visa program could be increased by 88 percent if applicants were evaluated based on seniority or salary.

Despite the America-first messaging from the White House and those within the MAGA movement wanting to see all immigration cut off, Edlow made it clear in his interview that immigration could benefit the U.S. if managed correctly.

What People Are Saying

David Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, told Newsweek: “Assigning H-1B visas only to the highest wage offers would favor older workers who may retire or leave the country, while eliminating the main path for college grads to stay in America.

“It’s strange to say that the test is easy when it’s a test most Americans would fail.”

Edlow, in his interview with the Times: “I think it absolutely should be a net positive, and if we’re looking at the people that are coming over, that are especially coming over to advance certain economic agendas that we have and otherwise benefit the national interest — that’s absolutely what we need to be taking care of.”

Connor O’Brien, a researcher at the Economic Innovation Group, previously told Newsweek: “The H-1B is the primary way through which we bring in skilled immigrants and we only have 85,000 visas to give away each year. Giving away these visas randomly is an enormous, missed opportunity to attract truly scarce talent that would benefit American businesses and communities.”

What’s Next

USCIS cannot technically change the way it issues visas or runs the citizenship test without getting permission from other agencies or even Congress, where lawmakers are proposing bipartisan changes to the immigration system overall.

United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Joseph Edlow revealed Thursday that he plans to update the U.S. citizenship test to make it more difficult, and also change employment visas for skilled foreign workers.

Edlow, who previously worked as the deputy director for Policy and chief counsel at USCIS, became the new citizenship chief earlier this month and has promised to “restore integrity in our legal immigration system.”

The new chief said he hopes to make citizenship tests more difficult by increasing the amount of questions that applicants are required to answer.

Currently, immigrants hoping to become naturalized citizens are required to answer six out of 10 multiple-choice U.S. civic questions correctly in order to pass, but under the first Trump administration they had to answer 12 out of 20 correctly.

“The test as it’s laid out right now, it’s not very difficult,” Edlow told the New York Times. “It’s very easy to kind of memorize the answers. I don’t think we’re really comporting with the spirit of the law.

“I think [immigration] absolutely should be a net positive,” he later said. “And if we’re looking at the people that are coming over, that are especially coming over to advance certain economic agendas that we have and otherwise benefit the national interest — that’s absolutely what we need to be taking care of.”

Edlow also highlighted potential changes to H-1B work visas, by favoring companies that plan to hire foreign workers higher wages, rather than companies that bring in foreign workers to save money by paying them less than Americans.

“I really do think that the way H-1B needs to be used, and this is one of my favorite phrases, is to, along with a lot of other parts of immigration, supplement, not supplant, U.S. economy and U.S. businesses and U.S. workers,” Edlow said.

The new director did not state when he expected the new changes to be announced.