'I belong here': New US citizens take oath on Ellis

Island 09/17/2022 AFP

Tears flowed and flags waved as 200 New Yorkers became US citizens Saturday
during a special naturalization ceremony at the city's famed Ellis Island, which once
5 welcomed thousands of immigrants daily.
Citizenship candidates hailing from about 60 different countries filed into the former
immigration station's great hall, where some 12 million people entered the United States
over the course of six decades in the early 20th century. [...]
The 200 new US citizens are among 19,000 that will be sworn in across the country this
10 week, US Citizenship and Immigration Services said.
As sunlight streamed through the enormous arched windows, the emotion in the room was
palpable as the group took an oath of allegiance to the United States, less than a mile
away from the Statue of Liberty.
US Attorney General Merrick Garland presided, telling the newest American citizens: "This
15 country -- your country -- wholeheartedly welcomes you."
He choked back tears recounting how his own relatives fled religious persecution in
Eastern Europe.
He said two of his grandmother's siblings were unable to escape, and died in the
Holocaust.
20 "I have often thought about what members of my family felt as they came through
buildings like this one," he said. "And I have often thought about what their decisions
meant for my own life."
Before the ceremony, Lovell Brown, a 31-year-old originally from Jamaica, told AFP she
was excited to be on the island for the first time for "such a big moment."
25 "I just feel like I'm actually a part of the United States now," said the teacher, who has lived
in the United States since she was 17.
"It makes me feel like I belong here." [….]
Umaru Kabir Ahmed, 63, has lived in the United States since 1989 after
leaving his native Nigeria. The Bronx resident, who works in a nursing home, said he first
30 applied to become a citizen in 2012.
"A lot has changed -- the way I talk, the way I eat, the way I sleep, the way I dress," he
said.
Some 40 percent of current US citizens can trace ancestry to Ellis Island, which opened in
1892. Today it is part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument, accessible to the public
35 by ferry and managed by the National Park Service.
The naturalization ceremony's contrast to the conditions immigrants faced then wasn't
lost on Warren Lawson, a 44-year-old from South Africa and Britain who has lived in the
United States since 2016.
He said he felt lucky to be on the island and "learn about the history and see it firsthand."
40 Lawson said he wanted citizenship because "this is probably the place that my kids are
going to live for the rest of their lives, and I want to grow old in the same place as them."