Brittany Kelley
DRIPPING SPRINGS — After noting the increased political tension, Dripping Springs High School junior Anvika Jain felt called to create a platform to help to those hoping to gain their citizenship.
“With recent news and with the recent administration, a lot of the backlash towards the deportations has been people saying that, ‘Well, they should have just figured out how to come here legally.’ I think that the issue with that is that it gets undermined often how difficult and expensive it can be to come to the United States legally,” said Jain, adding that the prices and difficulty are only rising.
The 17-year-old knew that she wanted to aid immigrants study for the citizenship test in an effective way, but was unsure of how to do it. It wasn’t until she was thinking about the increase in social media use and the digital age that Jain realized that a website would most likely provide the most access to the opportunity she was creating.
“I actually had no experience with website design. I made this off of a whim … [but] both of my parents are in technology, so I used their help. They helped me with the coding aspect and then, with building the model, I used an online platform called Base 44 to code and create the website,” she said.
The website uses an artificial intelligence mechanism to help users study for the citizenship test by taking the nearly 120 questions that the state publishes online and creating interactive interviews and practice sessions. Similar to a voice-to-text model, these sessions include mock interviews that participants can do simultaneously in English and in their native language, since both languages are presented on the screen.
“That way they can learn the question in English, while also having an understanding of it. Since their test will be taken in English, they need to be able to translate that and understand what their interviewer is asking them. It allows them to do that and respond to that question in English and it takes in what their answer is and gives them feedback and advice from there,” Jain explained.
Not only did Jain want to bring a much-needed resource for immigrants, but she also has a personal connection to the citizenship test, as well. Her parents took the citizenship test when she was younger and shared that it was a lengthy and tumultuous process: “They both looked through my website; they even used to go through a mock citizenship test to see if it was similar to what they had gone through and they both said it was similar and [that] it would have been helpful.”
The website, titled Civics Mastery, is currently in its beta version, with an official launch date of March. In the meantime, Jain has received positive reviews after sharing the website with businesses that teach English to immigrants. She hopes to create partnerships in the future to expand her website’s reach.
“English is a very difficult language to learn and when we have these standards for those who are immigrating here and we have these tests, it’s important that we also provide resources for them to be able to study for these tests,” said Jain.
The student also stated that the limited resources that are available are often costly, which is an unrealistic expectation, as many are coming to the United States for a better life and cannot afford them.
“We have to understand that these individuals are also humans,” emphasized Jain. “At the end of the day, we’re all humans. These people deserve the same access to resources and the same access to citizenship as people that were born here and have birthright citizenship do. It should be accessible for them to be able to study for these tests and that was my biggest goal with creating this website.
To use the beta version of the website, visit bit.ly/4quUHbB.
