89 swear allegiance
This is part of
MY America.
_________________________________________________________
89 swear allegiance
New citizens among largest groups ever
Fri, Sep 17, 2004
KRISTA J. KARCH
ROME -- In one of the largest groups in recent years to be honored in a naturalization ceremony, 89 people took an oath of citizenship Thursday morning, swearing to support and defend the United States of America.
Fort Stanwix was an unusual site for the ceremony, normally conducted at the Oneida County Office Building in Utica.
Fort officials invited the Northern District of New York to conduct one of the several annual ceremonies at the fort five or six years ago, said Valerie Morgan, a Fort Stanwix park ranger. The Fort Stanwix ceremony always takes place in mid-September.
"This is one of the places the U.S. was started," she said. "Revolutionary War soldiers fought here, so what a wonderful place to welcome new citizens."
The freedom resulting from the Revolutionary War is something immigrants have been integral in preserving, said U.S. District
Judge David N. Hurd, who presided over the ceremony.
"As a result of your taking an oath of citizenship today, you will enjoy enormous freedom," he told the new citizens.
A choir from Fort Stanwix Elementary School welcomed the citizens with renditions of the national anthem and other patriotic scores. Rome Free Academy's Air Force Junior ROTC Color Guard opened and closed the ceremony.
Naturalization ceremonies in the Mohawk Valley often are testimonies to miraculous escape from war or political persecution. Thursday's ceremony was no exception.
Ilir Aliu recounted his path as a teenager from war-torn Kosovo to the United States in an address to the new citizens.
His family applied for asylum in the United States while they were living in a refugee camp in Macedonia. He felt then that their application was a joke, he said. When his family was accepted, he said, they were given a gift.
"Everyone should cherish their opportunity to start a new life," Aliu, now a Utica College student, said. "We are gathered here today to make our dreams come true."
Aliu encouraged each new citizen to vote.
Representatives from the Republican and Democratic parties handed out voter registration forms as the citizens stepped away with their citizenship certificates.
Jackson Arturo Nova De La Cruz, 29, said he decided to become a citizen now, after living in the United States for 24 years, in order to vote in the coming presidential election.
"I know people that are citizens and don't vote, then turn around and complain," said Nova, a native of the Dominican Republic. "I'll do my part."
But Marion Czwikla, a native of Germany, had no political aspirations.
"My green card ran out," she said simply.
Czwikla has lived in Jordanville for 20 years, at a Russian Orthodox convent she co-founded. There, she is known as Mother Elizabeth.
"There were no women's monasteries in Germany," she said.
Czwikla came to the United States to form a convent in Jordanville, the site of a men's convent and a large Russian Orthodox church.
Standing at the back of the crowds during the ceremony was a large group of refugees who only recently arrived in the United States. They were students at an English-language class at the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees. Their teacher, Jennifer Hale, brought them to the ceremony on a field trip.
"I wanted to show them what their future could be," she said.
My hometown link
