As Somali refugee Amina Arab was sworn in as a U.S. citizen
in Northeast Portland on Thursday, watching her from the audience were
daughters Nasteno, 13; Nimo, 9; Ayan, 15; and Anfa, 11.
(Allison Milligan/The Oregonian)
Friday, June 21, 2013
A video projection of a waving American flag towered over a crowd wearing saris, hijabs, kufi
caps, high heels, simple shirts and dress pants in the gym of the
Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization in Northeast Portland.
Interpreters in Burmese, Hindi, Arabic, Somali, Spanish, Russian and
Dzongkha, among others, worked to keep up with the upcoming speeches on
the stage and the polilingual roar that filled the room.
Seated on one side of the room were the guests of honor: a group of people who, starting today, would become U.S. citizens.
The Portland office of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service
held a naturalization ceremony on Thursday for 20 refugees who sought
better lives away from their homes overseas.
The 20 came from Ukraine, Russia, Somalia, Cuba, Liberia, Cambodia,
Togo, Turkey and Haiti. Their journeys to citizenship took five years or
more from the time they were admitted to the United States as refugees,
as an estimated 76,000 people sought to do last year.
The future citizens rose and sang the national anthem. They recited
the Oath of Allegiance and the Pledge of Allegiance. Finally, they shook
hands with four officials presiding over the ceremony and received a
certificate and a small flag.
With that, they were U.S. citizens.
A video of President Obama, projected on the wall, welcomed them.
Another video displayed Mt. Rushmore, a bald eagle, Lincoln's statue,
children running, Minnesota lakes and Tennessee hills.
By the time the video was over, Maude Marsh Dennis' eyes were full of
tears. A 71-year-old refugee from Liberia, she waited for this moment
13 years. She escaped a civil war in her country and spent eight years
in a refugee camp in Cote D'Ivoire before coming to the United States in
2000. She moved to Portland a year later to be with her daughter and
found a job as a caretaker for seniors.
Life in the United States has been "very, very, very good," she said.
She loved her work. Old people are funny and good to you if you show
them you care, she said.
"Everyone seems to be equal," she said. "You speak what you want to
speak, and do what you want to do. As long as you don't break the law,
you're super here."
Dennis wore a blue, pink and silver kante skirt from Ghana and a
pink-and-gold headscarf. She matched the outfit with a turqois necklace
and earrings that she bought from Kentucky.
Diana Gensitskaya, 23, came to the U.S. as a 1-year-old with her
family as refugees from the Ukraine. She went to public schools here,
and now works as a manager at a Camas hotel. This country is all she's
known, yet she said she's always felt like an outsider, "a guest of 22
years."
She looks forward to being able to vote, get a passport and travel
outside the country. The first destinations on her mind: Panama City,
Spain and Seychelles.
Amina Arab, 49, arrived five years ago as a refugee from Somalia.
Arab's 23-year-old son, Abdifatah Ahmed, translated that his mother
missed home and all her family members in Somalia. What she likes here,
he said: "peace and security."