I’ve always wanted to attend a naturalization ceremony so I jumped at the chance to observe the one held yesterday in Greenbelt’s very own Community Center.  Mayor J Davis opened by noting that Greenbelt has been hosting the ceremonies for six years now, and went on to urge the new citizens to be sure to experience one more wonderful day in store for them – when they exercise their right to vote.

Representative of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service’s Baltimore Office explained to the citizens-to-be that when they took the oath of citizenship they would not be expected to surrender their cultural heritage of identity.

After taking the oath as a group, each of the 49 new citizens was called by name (pronunciation of which must have involved some special training), posed for photographs, and was congratulated by Mayor Davis and Greenbelt City Council members  Edward Putens, Emmett Jordan, Leta Mach and Konrad Herling.

Of course the whole event, starting with the color guard and singing the National Anthem, was very moving.  But most interesting to me was that these 49 new Americans come from 27 different countries!

They are: Cameroon, Canada, Chad, Dominican Republic, Egypt, El Salvador, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Iran, Liberia, Mali, Mexico, Morocco, Nicaragua, Nigeria, The Philippines, Poland, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Korea, Thailand, Yugoslavia, and two I didn’t catch.

The City of Greenbelt videotaped the ceremony and will be sending DVDs to all the participants.  Nice!