Forget election-year fracas; meet brand-new citizens thrilled to be called ‘American’
We swapped our insults, scratched our heads at how folks could vote for that candidate and threatened — mostly in jest, but bluffed all the same — that we’d move north of the border if things didn’t go our way.
Then scores of immigrants, a rich palette gathered from around the globe, stood Thursday in a library lobby and swore an oath that made our politics feel a little petty.
I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereignty. …
The antiquated language came from the mouths of men and women from Mexico, Somalia, Iraq, Liberia.
I will support and defend the constitution and laws … against all enemies …
Relatives cried. They held their phones up high to capture the moment when someone from Cambodia, Tanzania, South Korea or Jordan officially became an American citizen.
I take this obligation freely …
“So help me God,” concluded Randall Henderson, the federal court administrator who led the oath inside the Central Library in Kansas City. So help me God. “Congratulations.”
With that, 110 people from 45 countries became U.S. citizens, every bit American as the next guy. Hands over hearts, they stood for the national anthem and faced their flag. They were told to update their Social Security cards and to register to vote. After all, said Claire Wyatt from the Kansas City Board of Elections, “it’s your country.”
Yeah, the same country that doesn’t get along with itself lately. About voting. And immigrants.
Ixtlaciguatl Lopez came from Mexico in 2002. He met and married a woman who came from El Salvador. Now he’s 43 years old and a maintenance worker for a cable company.
He’s always been here legally, the way President-elect Donald Trump and U.S. law say immigration should work. But Trump’s campaign message of building a wall on the Mexican border and tightening restrictions on who can get in prompted Lopez to sort out the whole citizenship thing.
“It feels good to have it taken care of,” said his wife, Maria.
That the ceremony fell on the eve of Veterans Day, U.S. District Judge Stephen Bough told the freshly minted citizens, felt right.
“There’s no greater tribute to our veterans … than to take part in naturalization,” he said. The United States, he said, “is a land of one people gathered from many countries.”
Sara Retta was bummed that the ceremony didn’t come just a little bit sooner. Would have been nice to vote. But the 21-year-old student who followed her father from Ethiopia at the age of 15 still found some reason for excitement.
“I don’t feel like an outsider anymore,” she said. “You feel like you belong here.”
Daniel Davila was about 7 years old when he came from Monterrey, Mexico, after his father got a work visa. Now, nearly 20 years after coming to Kansas City by way of Houston, the middle school pastor from Blue Springs is a citizen.
“I already felt like an American,” he said. “I paid taxes and everything else. It’s just official now.”
This story was originally published November 10, 2016 at 5:59 PM with the headline "Forget election-year fracas; meet brand-new citizens thrilled to be called ‘American’."