A tweet from the Spanish division of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency caused some flap after it listed the wrong year for the date of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. An immigration expert exclaimed when talking to Breitbart Texas – “The U.S. government agency in charge of citizenship cannot even get this right!?”
Mark Krikorian, Executive Director at the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) noticed the error on the Spanish Twitter account of USCIS (@USCIS_es). It asked folks to vote on the date of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence.
The dates given as possible answers – June 29, 1779, July 4, 1779, and July 4, 1778. The tweet and some of Krikorian’s replies appear below.
He first retweets the “test” and adds, “Did I learn this wrong in school?”
He then retweets the “test” and asks, “Should we really be taking 1M new immigrants a year when the agency in charge of making citizens gets *this* wrong?”
He took a screenshot almost a half hour later, noting that the original tweet was still on the Twitter feed. Krikorian wrote, “But here it is, for when they do delete it.”
He also sent other tweets “trolling” the federal agency a bit, one of them asking:
The federal agency discovered their error after almost an hour and deleted the tweet.
Breitbart Texas spoke with Krikorian, ED of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) who said, “This is not middle school ridicule of a ‘Blooper,'” and mentioned the Democrat’s linguistic scrutiny of George W. Bush. “This is really kind of disturbing.” In fact, he said, “This is almost creepy.”
He also referred to President Obama’s “Blooper” when he accidentally said that the country had “57 states.” He said the president had been speaking for hours off-the-cuff, and “this wasn’t like they were on their third chicken dinner.”
Krikorian said the error was especially unsettling given it was made by the Spanish-speaking arm of the federal agency. He noted that this division is responsible for educating and testing those who are applying for citizenship. “It portrays a deep lack of familiarity with American history.” The immigration expert added, “Maybe taking a test in a foreign language is really not a good idea.”
He said the question was as easy as asking who was the first U.S. president? “President Obama, George Washington, or Frederick Washington,” he said.
Here is a screenshot of the “answers” to the @USCIS_es query:
Forty-five percent of the responders picked July 4, 1779, 37 percent selected July 4, 1778, and 18 percent selected June 29, 1779.
The Center for Immigration Studies describes its organization as “an independent, non-partisan, non-profit, research organization.” They explain, “Since our founding in 1985, we have pursued a single mission – providing immigration policymakers, the academic community, news media, and concerned citizens with reliable information about the social, economic, environmental, security, and fiscal consequences of legal and illegal immigration into the United States.” The CIS website says the organization is “Low-immigration, Pro-immigrant.”
Lana Shadwick is a writer and legal analyst for Breitbart Texas. She has served as a prosecutor and associate judge in Texas. Follow her on Twitter @LanaShadwick2.