RICHMOND, Va. — Dozens of new Americans will take the Oath of Allegiance in Richmond on Presidents Day.
The Virginia Museum of History and Culture will host a naturalization ceremony in partnership with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).
The free and open-to-the-public ceremony is scheduled for 11 a.m. on Monday in the Robins Family Forum and will be officiated by Judge David J. Novak.
CBS 6 spoke to Joni Albrecht, director of the John Marshall Center for Constitutional History & Civics, at the museum.
“For one, it's been years and years of hard work and dedication on the part of these new Americans. When they become naturalized citizens, they come for all sorts of reasons, and those reasons are something to celebrate, something to honor,” Albrecht explained.
Albrecht’s center also organizes Becoming Citizens classes at the museum. The seven-week course, limited to 20 students, prepares students to successfully complete the U.S. citizenship test.
“It's a chance for folks already in the naturalization process to come in and really study at a deep level each of those 100 questions,” she stated. “When you take the test, you don't know what questions you're going to get. You'll get 10, and you have to answer 60% of them correctly to pass.”
The museum offers a sample citizenship test on its website. They said only one in three Americans can actually pass the test.
Virginia ranks among the top 10 states with the most individuals applying to become a U.S. citizen, behind Illinois, New Jersey, Texas, New York, Florida, and California, according to USCIS.
USCIS stats show most individuals who apply to become a U.S. citizen are originally from Mexico, India, the Philippines, the Dominican Republic, and Vietnam.
The most common path to becoming a U.S. citizen through naturalization takes at least five years, with some individuals averaging more than a decade to complete the process.
The ceremony is part of the museum’s multi-year initiative leading to America’s 250th anniversary, ever since the John Marshall Center was moved under the museum's umbrella.
“That expansion of what we can offer our civics education program has grown dramatically with that move, and we're offering to all of Virginia. Civics Connects, which is a civics education program designed for all of Virginia's middle school students, goes deep on every standard of learning for civics and economics,” Albrecht said.
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