Kitty Cat now American

WEBLOG:
Elena had her naturalization ceremony this morning, where she and close to a thousand other people were sworn in as new American citizens. The ceremony was held at Paramount Theater in Oakland, and if you’ve been there you already know how beautiful it is. I think I saw a concert there many years ago there but I can’t remember which band it was. My own naturalization was back in 1992 (although I was eligible for citizenship as far back as the mid-80’s–my parents just never thought to actually deal with it until I turned 18, so I ended up handling it myself), and it wasn’t nearly as nice as the one she had. Mine was pretty dry–just raise your hand and repeat the oath and then get your certificate. Hers was a lot more of a show, where they showed videos welcoming the new citizens, had a live singer sing the national anthem, and the guy who hosted the ceremony was a bit of a comedian and spoke to the audience in several different languages (it was pretty impressive). The Mexicans and the Filipinos dominated this ceremony as their cheers were by far the loudest when their countries were called. I noticed quite a few people were wiping their eyes when the host talked to the new citizens about what it means to be an American, the values we hold dear to our hearts, and so on. I was moved to tears too since I believe firmly in those values, even if some of our past government leaders didn’t always seem to be on the same page as the rest of us. Anyway, here are some photos from the ceremony:

The guests of the new citizens were seated in the upper floor, so I could only get a photo of Elena from above:

Singing the national anthem:

Obama welcoming the new citizens in a video:

Happy American Kittycat:

All in all, the entire process of her getting her citizenship went faster and smoother than we had expected–in fact we originally planned to have everything done in about six month, and it only took three and a half (everything meaning from handing in her citizenship application to getting her naturalization certificate). The entire process from getting her immigration visa to her citizenship took almost four years total. Generally this is pretty fast as she never got rejected during any step of the process over the last few years, passed every interview and exam on first try, and never had any documents get lost in the mail or under the processing pile. Supposedly Immigration/Homeland Security has been working on improving efficiency, and apparently it’s working–or at least it is in California.

It’s interesting that for a long time I didn’t feel comfortable in any kind of official ceremony, but today I felt good. In the past whenever any government official got on stage and tossed around words like freedom, justice, liberty…etc, my inner voice just sniffed and rolled its eyes, because for a very long time I disagreed with the people running the government–it seemed all they ever did was to ruin America’s reputation. But ever since Obama took office, those negative feelings have melted away, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels this way (except the kind of idiots who voted for Bush Jr. twice).