What is an amendment?

Why this is the answer

USCIS accepts two answers, a change to the Constitution or an addition to it, and the pair is a good summary of what amendments have done in practice. Some added something new to the text. Others altered what was already written. The 11th Amendment, ratified in 1795, modified part of Article III on the federal courts, and the 21st, ratified in 1933, repealed the 18th outright. The procedure lives in Article V, and the Framers made it hard on purpose. USCIS explains that they expected the law to need changes as the country grew, yet they did not want the supreme law modified too easily or emptied of its meaning. A proposal can come from a two-thirds vote of both the Senate and the House, or from a convention called when the legislatures of two-thirds of the states apply for one. Proposing is only half the trip. The amendment then needs ratification by three-fourths of the states, either through their legislatures or through special conventions, whichever method Congress selects. With 50 states, that means 38. The 21st Amendment is an example of the convention method: its own text required ratification by conventions in the states. Article V also protects one rule from easy change, since no state can lose its equal vote in the Senate without its consent. The bar is high enough that six amendments approved by Congress were never ratified by enough states. Notice who is missing from the process: Article V names Congress, the state legislatures and conventions, and never mentions the President. In the interview, the common error is describing an amendment as "a new law." Congress passes laws constantly, and none of them changes the Constitution itself. Answer with the word change or the word addition and you have it.