Vivek Ramaswamy often touts his family’s immigration and naturalization story on the campaign trail while promoting two controversial policy ideas: stripping citizenship from and deporting people born in the U.S. to undocumented immigrant parents, and taking away voting rights from 18- to 24-year-olds unless they pass a civics test.
“I think there’s no reason why every high school student who graduated in this country should not have to pass the same civics test that an immigrant, like my parents, had to pass in order to become a citizen of this country,” he told Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds at the Iowa State Fair in August.
In a sit-down interview with NBC News on Tuesday, Ramaswamy noted that his father is not a U.S. citizen and never took the test. “He did not. And that’s a choice that he has made for familial reasons,” Ramaswamy said.