{"id":537,"date":"2007-06-06T19:27:35","date_gmt":"2007-06-06T19:27:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/166.62.41.2\/~holaamericanews\/2007\/06\/06\/a-citizen-of-the-us-after-20-years\/"},"modified":"2022-07-17T14:24:14","modified_gmt":"2022-07-17T19:24:14","slug":"a-citizen-of-the-us-after-20-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/holaamericanews.com\/es\/a-citizen-of-the-us-after-20-years\/","title":{"rendered":"A Citizen of the U.S. After 20 Years"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"alvaro\"<\/a><\/p>\n

EDITORIAL<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was on July 4th, 1987 when I came to Moline, the city I live in, to start a new life in the United States.\u00a0 I remember my cousins lighting fireworks at my grandparent\u2019s yard and thinking that it was a really nice welcoming.\u00a0 Then I was told that it was Independence Day in the United States and that on that day people usually light fireworks.\u00a0 So, I guess I\u2019m not that special, but I still celebrated just like my cousins who were born here.\u00a0 It is also<\/p>

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special for me because it represents another year that I have lived in my new country.
\nNow almost 20 years after I came to stay, I have been officially \u201cadopted\u201d by this nation and it feels great!\u00a0 On June 1, 2007 inside a U.S. District Court in Rock Island, Ill., 30 immigrants, including myself, took part in the oath of allegiance ceremony.\u00a0 There were people from just about every continent.\u00a0 They came from Korea, England, Canada, Mexico, Bosnia and other countries that I frankly never even heard of before.\u00a0 The judge instructed those who were becoming citizens to stand up and say what countries we came from, and he then instructed us to look around at each other.
\n\u201cThis is America,\u201d he said.
\nThe different races, ethnicities, different accents, that I saw and heard that day now officially belonged to this unique country that thrives from the people that comes from around the globe for a better future.\u00a0 They bring their talent, their stories and knowledge to this nation.\u00a0 Some of the greatest U.S. citizens were naturalized citizens that were born elsewhere.\u00a0 According to The Citizen\u2019s Almanac, which was given to all 30 of us, Alexander Hamilton, Alexander Graham Bell, Albert Einstein, Bob Hope and Celia Cruz were all naturalized citizens.
\nNow, there are many reasons why it feels great to finally be recognized as a U.S. citizen.\u00a0 For starters, I can now vote.\u00a0 There have been so many elections that I wanted to take part in but I was never allowed to.\u00a0 It always felt as my opinion didn\u2019t matter or like I was not good enough.\u00a0 Basically I didn\u2019t count.\u00a0 I used to have to explain this to people when they would ask who I voted for in presidential elections.\u00a0 It\u2019s surprising how many people don\u2019t know what the difference is between a permanent resident and an undocumented immigrant, and how you don\u2019t have as many rights and sometimes even risk deportation.\u00a0 Not that I want to be a criminal, but during that time if I were ever to commit a felony, I would be subject to deportation.\u00a0 A rule that makes a lot of sense, but it\u2019s just the fact that you could be kicked out of the country for life that makes you a little uneasy.
\nThe residency limbo can be a hassle at some points.\u00a0 The last renewal of a permanent resident card cost me close to $300.\u00a0 The application for citizenship cost about $200 back then (now it\u2019s a lot higher and goes up every year).\u00a0 Not to mention the interviews, taking pictures, driving hours for fingerprints, the English and history test.\u00a0 But the thing that is most bothersome is how long the process takes.\u00a0 It took about 8 years from the beginning of the application to get to this point. Now, after all of that, there will be no more checking the mail for letters from Homeland Security.\u00a0\u00a0 No more calls to the office of my district representative.\u00a0 While I will never forget my Mexican heritage, after all of that I am very appreciative of the opportunities and advantages that have been given to me in this country.\u00a0 And all the applications, interviews, fees, and hassles along the way make the experience of becoming a naturalized citizen a lot more valuable to me.<\/p>\n

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EDITORIAL It was on July 4th, 1987 when I came to Moline, the city I live in, to start a new life in the United States.\u00a0 I remember my cousins […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"es","enabled_languages":["en","es"],"languages":{"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"es":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false}}},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/holaamericanews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/holaamericanews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/holaamericanews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/holaamericanews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/holaamericanews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/holaamericanews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/holaamericanews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/holaamericanews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/holaamericanews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}