NEWS

America's newest citizens take oath of allegiance

Steve Young

Ezedeen Mohammed insists he is the happiest man in the world today.

And why not?

Ten years ago, the John Morrell meatpacker in Sioux Falls was caught up in a tenuous act of survival in his homeland of Darfur — a place regarded at the time by human rights groups and the United Nations as one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the world.

Wave after wave of insurgencies and counter-insurgencies killed 480,000 of his countrymen. Another 2.8 million have been displaced. Only the luck of a refugee lottery enabled Mohammed to escape.

All that seemed a distant echo this week as he stood at the foot of Mount Rushmore and took his oath of allegiance as one of America's newest citizens.

"I am so happy," Mohammed, 31, repeated again and again. "And so thankful America gave me citizenship and everything for life that is good."

His joy reverberates across the country this week in naturalization ceremonies at some of America's most historic settings.

In Virginia, at George Washington's Mount Vernon estate and Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, dozens of roughly 9,000 new U.S. citizens took their oaths. They did likewise at Pearl Harbor, on the USS Midway in San Diego, and at Saratoga National Historical Park in Stillwater, N.Y.

Many had powerful stories of chaos and war and escape to tell. Others came to our shores under more serene circumstances.

Emelie Haggerty is among the latter. The 43-year-old Filipino arrived as a tourist in 2001 to visit an aunt and uncle in Ohio. While there, she met the man who would become her husband.

They married, had two daughters and, because of his job with a private company, ended up living in Germany for three years before his work brought them to their home in Brandon. Once they came back from Europe, Haggerty knew she wanted to apply for citizenship here.

"Every time I travel overseas, I have to apply for a passport because I was a foreign citizen," she said. "Now this makes that so much easier."

Like Mohammed, Haggerty took her oath of allegiance Wednesday at the Shrine of Democracy in the Black Hills with her family looking on. She had to earn that right, proving her ability with English in both the written and spoken word, and her knowledge about the U.S. government and history.

Can you name at least one writer of the Constitution, she was asked? Who was the first president? When is Independence Day?

"The booklet they gave me, I had to study the history of the government, and there were like 100 different questions to know," Haggerty said. "They were only going to ask you 10 out of the 100 questions, and if you answer the first six questions right, they're going to stop. I did pass the first six."

Mohammed said citizenship allows him to apply for jobs for which he otherwise would be ineligible, such as with the U.S. Postal Service. He'd like to do that since he once worked at a small post office in Darfur.

He's also thinking about college, maybe the University of Iowa in Iowa City, and the possibility of taking a higher education degree back to Darfur to help his homeland.

"My country is very, very bad," he said. "It's bad for refugees. There's no teachers, no water, no food. I want to get some organization that would help me make things better over there."

Such is the hope that comes with America and citizenship in this country. It is a land where a Gambian native like 62-year-old Aram Jobe could get a job, buy a house, care for a family — all of which she has done since she came from West Africa in 1998.

But Jobe would also counsel her countrymen that life can be a struggle anywhere, including here.

She has had seven surgeries, many related to wear and tear and injuries to her body incurred while working at John Morrell & Co., she said. She lives with pain every day, she said as rested on a couch in her Sioux Falls basement.

The pain "is hard for me," said Jobe, 62, who became a U.S. citizen in 2005. "I'm very sad for that. My life is a mess."

"But I love my new country," she continued. "I'm glad I'm a citizen. You come here and the government helps you. Some countries, they don't do that. You need medical help; they help you here. Some countries don't do that."

A mother with five daughters and three sons, Jobe's citizenship enabled her to bring many of her children to South Dakota. She has five grandchildren in America now, and five still back in Africa.

Mohammed, too, now aspires to bring his family members out of the refugee camps that have become their escape from the warring in Darfur.

But that is a dream for tomorrow.

Today he and Haggerty have joined Jobe as U.S. citizens, and that makes them among the most joyful Americans anywhere in the country.

"I know I was born in the Philippines," Haggerty said. "But this where I belong because my family, my children are here. I am American now. And I couldn't happier."