{"id":119202,"date":"2023-09-21T19:59:07","date_gmt":"2023-09-21T19:59:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cottontailsonline.com\/?p=119202"},"modified":"2023-09-21T19:59:07","modified_gmt":"2023-09-21T19:59:07","slug":"im-american-heres-what-its-like-to-take-the-life-in-the-uk-test","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cottontailsonline.com\/travel\/im-american-heres-what-its-like-to-take-the-life-in-the-uk-test\/","title":{"rendered":"I&apos;m American: Here&apos;s what it&apos;s like to take the Life in the UK test"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1>I&#8217;m from Minnesota and I passed my &#8216;Life in the UK&#8217; test &#8211; because I knew answers to questions most native Brits probably couldn&#8217;t answer<\/h1>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Dr Brian Klaas reveals here how he took the Life in the UK test in a &#8216;bleak office&#8217;<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>The politics academic said he has spent around \u00a313,000 on visa appointments\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>READ MORE: 40% of Brits scrapped trips abroad due to the cost-of-living crisis<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/09\/21\/15\/75685579-12545313-Brian_Klaas_reveals_what_it_s_like_to_take_the_Life_in_the_UK_te-m-42_1695307219302.jpg\" height=\"418\" width=\"306\"><\/p>\n<p>Brian Klaas reveals what it&#8217;s like to take the &#8216;Life in the UK&#8217; test<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m a statriotic Minnesotan, but after 12 years, the time has come: I&#8217;m going to become a dual citizen.<\/p>\n<p>When I arrived at a bleak office building to take my &#8216;Life in the UK&#8217; test &#8211; a necessary rite of passage before applying for citizenship &#8211; I was greeted not with a smile, but by being told to empty my pockets, stand spread-eagled, and await my ritualised once-over with a metal detector wand.<\/p>\n<p>Once they had carefully checked both ears for hidden earpieces (I&#8217;m not kidding), I sat down to take the test.<\/p>\n<p>Citizenship tests are a strange phenomenon, not because I object to them in principle, but because they force a country to arbitrarily decide what knowledge is necessary to be formally inducted into the nation.<\/p>\n<p>But what&#8217;s most bizarre about them is that they often involve questions that native-born people couldn&#8217;t answer &#8211; a bit of a red flag.<\/p>\n<p>One of the first questions I was asked: &#8216;What did Saint Augustine do after helping to spread Christianity to Britain?&#8217; (The answer, which I got right: &#8216;Become the first Archbishop of Canterbury.&#8217;) Another question asked: &#8216;In Scotland, what&#8217;s the name of courts that deal with minor criminal offences?&#8217; In England, these are known as Magistrates&#8217; Courts, which I already knew, but it was only thanks to studying for the test that I got the answer right: &#8216;Justice of the Peace Courts.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>I have asked several native-born English people this question. So far, nobody has answered correctly.<\/p>\n<p>Halfway through the test, I was reminded of the ongoing official role of the Church of England when I was asked to identify the day on which Jesus died. Kudos to those of you who know it&#8217;s Good Friday, though I&#8217;m not certain why that is necessary knowledge to be British. (Here&#8217;s a question that, for reasons unknown, wasn&#8217;t on the &#8216;Life in the UK&#8217; test: Which two countries automatically give religious leaders seats in parliament? The answer: the UK and Iran).<\/p>\n<p>Then, there was another issue: one of the practice questions for the test was factually wrong. It asked, &#8216;Which king first unified England?&#8217; The answer they were looking for was Alfred the Great, but there&#8217;s a much stronger case to be made for Athelstan, Alfred&#8217;s grandson. (I decided it was unwise to bring this up at the test centre).<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/09\/21\/15\/75688211-12545313-image-a-43_1695307227956.jpg\" height=\"413\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>&#8216;Halfway through the test, I was reminded of the ongoing official role of the Church of England when I was asked to identify the day on which Jesus died,&#8217; Brian reveals<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/09\/21\/15\/75688189-12545313-image-m-46_1695307385333.jpg\" height=\"454\" width=\"306\"><\/p>\n<p>Dr Brian Klaas&#8217;s book Corruptible: Who Gets Power And How It Changes Us is out now<\/p>\n<p>When I finished the test, a grouchy lady &#8211; I&#8217;d be grouchy in her shoes too, wanding people down with metal detectors and checking for earpieces in the world&#8217;s most lifeless office space &#8211; informed me that I had passed the test.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;Did I get any wrong?&#8217; I asked.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;I don&#8217;t know,&#8217; she said. &#8216;The computer just tells me that you passed, which means you got at least 18 out of 24 right.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>This was the final ingenious flourish, to never let future citizens know the correct answers to questions about knowledge deemed essential for one&#8217;s ability to thrive in Britain.<\/p>\n<p>Now, America&#8217;s immigration system is utterly broken, so I&#8217;m not in much of a place to critique Britain&#8217;s, but the British visa system is deliberately designed to be terrible.<\/p>\n<p>Over 12 years, I&#8217;ll have spent roughly \u00a313,000 ($16,500) on visas\/visa appointments, which is crazy.<\/p>\n<p>If you change the kind of visa you have, it resets the official clock on your path toward citizenship back to zero &#8211; ridiculous. And because of the scarcity of in-person appointments, I&#8217;ve done a bleak UK Grand Tour, taking trains to sterile offices in Croydon, Solihull, Sheffield, Maidstone, and Cardiff.<\/p>\n<p>The experience of the &#8216;Life in the UK&#8217; test is completely at odds with life in the UK.<\/p>\n<p>After living abroad for 12 years, I see America&#8217;s strengths and weaknesses more clearly, just as I see Britain&#8217;s strengths and weaknesses more clearly as an outsider.<\/p>\n<p>Life here in Britain has its problems &#8211; the cost of living crisis and the general decline post-Brexit are real and serious &#8211; but here are some tremendous strengths.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Watch this space for Brian&#8217;s take on what&#8217;s great about Britain&#8230;\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span>This article was originally published on Brian&#8217;s blog site &#8211; <\/span><span>The Garden of Forking Paths<\/span><span>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Dr Brian Klaas is Associate Professor in Global Politics, University College\u00a0<\/span><span>London<\/span><span>. For more from Brian visit <\/span><span>brianpklaas.com<\/span><span>. His book <\/span><span>Corruptible: Who Gets Power And How It Changes Us<\/span><span> is out now, available from Amazon.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/travel\/article-12545313\/Im-Minnesota-passed-Life-UK-test-knew-answers-questions-native-Brits-probably-answer.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read Full Article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m from Minnesota and I passed my &#8216;Life in the UK&#8217; test &#8211; because I knew answers to questions most native Brits probably couldn&#8217;t answer Dr Brian Klaas reveals here<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>I&amp;apos;m American: Here&amp;apos;s what it&amp;apos;s like to take the Life in the UK test - cottontailsonline.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cottontailsonline.com\/travel\/im-american-heres-what-its-like-to-take-the-life-in-the-uk-test\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"I&amp;apos;m American: Here&amp;apos;s what it&amp;apos;s like to take the Life in the UK test - cottontailsonline.com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I&#8217;m from Minnesota and I passed my &#8216;Life in the UK&#8217; 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