Not on the test – Page 3 – Immigration Test

Hooray – you’ve passed your Naturalization test, and you’ve been called for your oath ceremony. But wait!

In big underlined capital letters on the hard to read purple invitation, it says

ALL ATTENDING THE CEREMONY MUST DRESS APPROPRIATELY

Yes, it really is in all CAPS. They really want you to pay attention to what your fans wear at this solemn and meaningful event. So you have to dress in proper attire. The dignity of the event must be respected. It even clearly states, no jeans, shorts or flip flops. Even in Austin, TX, where proper attire normally means you just have your genitals either covered up or painted.

But what does it mean? In the formal wear of your home nation? Mu-mus and baskets of fruit on your head and so on may be de rigeur back home, but in America, I think it means something like khaki pants and a polo neck. Shudder. Or a little black dress if you’re a man.

Surely if it says no nut-hugging jean shorts nor flippy floppies – the only named exclusions – does that mean anything else goes – unitards, tiaras, EL-wire butterfly wings and cod-pieces.

I’ve never seen Coming to America: outfits shown here,

but I have seen this:

captain hook — Please hold up your right, and only hand

Also, checking out related posts on immigration portal about what to wear, it seems the consensus is somewhere between “your best clothes”, “a floral dress”, and “nothing too sexy.” Looking at this crowd shot of an oath ceremony, I would say “butt hugging” seems to be recommended. And if you are going to wear a hook, do it in place of your left hand.

Now the US immigration test has some questions about Modern History, and it was arguably in WW2 that the US became a superpower. This all kicked off with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, irritatingly just between Thanksgiving and Christmas in 1941. That was it, the American gloves were off and it was bare knuckle boxing from B52s from there on out. Actually B52s were first contracted in 1946, the year after things ground to a super halt. It was more B17s, but they weren’t strato-fortresses, and how often do you get to write that in a sentence?

So, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt declared war on Japan, and Hitler shortly after declared war on the United States of America. Pearl Harbor was the first attack on US soil, with 9-11 being the second, though I guess American soil was attacked quite regularly in the Colonial Period. So if you look at it that way, The United States is doing quite well in the grand scheme of modern history.

From then on, there were skirmishes, battles and theaters of war in Europe, the Pacific, North Africa and a bit in Southeast Asia. Do they call them theaters as the war is more dramatic there? More shared cigarettes between close pals as they take their last breaths with eye make-up on? Not really sure.

Things spilled over to Italy and then to Northern Europe. Overlords, Cobras, and the Battle of the Bulge were the code names of the day. There was strategic bombing – laying waste to Germany and around there. There was Operation Queen – surely one for the glamorous moustache toting soldiers of the day if ever there was going to be some drama in the war – which involved two armies (the US First and Ninth) thrusting into the forests of the fatherland. After the Western Fronts were side-swiped, things calmed down in Europe around Cinqo de Mayo 1945 – Germany surrendered to the soviets on May 2nd in Berlin after a race to the tape, and the war in Europe was over by the 8th May 1945.

That only left the stubborn Japanese to dispatch with some f. devastating hydrogen bombs, and they surrendered on 15th August 1945 with the paperwork complete on 1st September. After the world was in ruin, the US rose to supremacy as the superpower of choice.