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I sat with 500 other people; people I had never met; people who I would not meet again; people who came from many various walks of life and cultures. So many different perspectives and experiences were represented.
There was a 90-year-old lady from Ukraine who had been ushered in by her granddaughter, sitting to my right. Scarf on her head, she needed assistance standing in order to raise her right hand and take the oath of citizenship. To my left, a slightly younger 60-year-old lady from Vietnam also took the oath. There was a Canadian man similar in age to myself who, like me, had fallen in love with an American citizen, and so he, too, stood and took the oath of citizenship.
Some shared their joy of now being able to travel with an American passport. Many articulated the ability to now vote. Others spoke of the opportunity that citizenship gave them — an ability to do more things in life. For others, it was the chance to live itself that they now had.
Citizenship — you don’t tend to think much about it until it’s something you don’t have, at least in my experience. As an Australian, it had never crossed my mind. And then I had a reason, a need, to live in a country that was not my own.
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