Citizenship Test

The US Citizenship test, commonly referred to as the Naturalization Test, comprises two components: an English test and a Civics test. The English test evaluates an applicant's ability to communicate in the English language in the areas of reading, writing and speaking.  The Civics test, on the other hand, examines the applicant's knowledge of US History and the Government.

However, the citizenship test, if one may call it that, for applicants for Dominica's Economic Citizenship Programme comprises of one section: an Interview. The role of the interview is fivefold:

• It probes into the applicant's personal background honing on any area which may need clarification or additional information.
• It evaluates the applicant's knowledge of the social, political and economic activities in Dominica.
• It examines the applicant's rational for acquiring Dominica's Citizenship
• It also analyzes the applicant's potential to assist the island with its Socio-Economic Development Strategies.
• It also assesses the applicant's potential loyalty to the Commonwealth of Dominica.

The interviewing team consists of three (3) or four (4) members who hail from the senior staff of the Ministries of Finance, Legal Affairs and National Security, Immigration and Labour. They are armed with the applicants' files containing their due diligence report and other personal information. The team searches for gaps and inconsistencies in the information provided to them and seeks to get a "feel" of the applicant and ascertain eligibility.

The importance of the interview should not be understated. Applicants have gone through the application process successfully only to fail the interview! The faux pas at the interview is attributed primarily to the following:

• inadequate preparation on the part of the applicant
• underestimation of the thoroughness of the interviewing team
• premeditative misleading of the interview team

In planning for citizenship under the Dominica Economic Citizenship Programme, it is imperative to afford the interview section the same level of importance as, if not more than, the other steps of the process. Even better, supported by the due diligence investigation, it must be viewed as the citizenship test.