Celebration: Naturalization ceremony
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It didn't matter that the terrible weather had closed local schools. Marie-Christine Wolfe Parent and the others had one
last hurdle to clear - and no amount of inclement weather was going to block their journey to U.S. citizenship.
They packed themselves into Courtroom 2 at the Orange County Government Center in Goshen on Friday. They had arrived from all over the world to complete the bureaucratic gauntlet necessary to become Americans. The hurdles include quotas for entry into the country, two years of waiting for a green card, five years of green card status before applying for citizenship, and then usually six months until the naturalization ceremony. For Warwick resident Marie-Christine, originally from Belgium, this last six-month period stretched to almost 16 months. So days before her scheduled swearing-in date of Sept. 20, 1996, when she had planned a grand party to mark the occasion, the Immigration and Naturaliztion Service turned down her application. Because her fingerprints were smudged. So this time, when the notice came, she held of getting |
her hopes up. She went to the Government Center with her husband, Frank, their son Pierre-François, 3, and their longtime friend
Virginia Martin. When the sheriff's deputy called everyone to the courtroom, the family quickly took front-row seats (above).
She joined soon-to-be U.S. citizens with the names Patel, Chan, Carluccio and Francisco. She and the others stood to repeat the Oath of Allegiance administered by County Clerk Hon. Joan Macchi. After the oath, Judge Elaine Slobod, whose grandparents also braved leaving their homelands to come to the United States, praised the new American citizens for taking that leap of faith. On the way home through the sleet and slush, Marie-Christine held tightly onto the certificate of naturalization, while Frank presented a special book to their son, written by Maggie Rugg Herold, about an immigrant becoming a U.S. citizen who also had to persevere through snowy weather. It was appropriately titled "A Very Important Day." - Story and photograph by J. Talbott |