News

Immigrants become Americans in Naturalization Ceremony

By Bill Moss, Published: September 14, 2012

FLAT ROCK — Denisse Morales went on line to study for the U.S. citizenship test, hoping she'd fulfill her dream of becoming an American.

"It was tough," she said. "I missed two" out of 10. She was allowed three incorrect answers, so Morales had passed.
On Friday, the 20-year-old immigrant from Mexico joined 28 other candidates for U.S. citizenship at the amphitheater of the Carl Sandburg Home under fall-like blue skies. The candidates raised their hand and pledged the Oath of Allegiance. By 11:41 a.m. they had become Americans.
A pharmacy tech at a Wal-Mart pharmacy in Forest City, Morales is studying to become a pharmacist. Her parents, who have a green card, are hoping to become citizens too.
The Carl Sandburg Home was the perfect place for newcomers to become Americans because the great poet spent his life lifting up America. The son of immigrants from Sweden, Sandburg "through his whole life was on one main quest as a first generation American," said Connie Backlund, superintendent of the National Historic Site. "He wanted to discover as a first-generation American what it meant to live here in this country, what was so special, what was it that brought his mother and father here.
"That'll be the same quest that each of you will be on in the years ahead," she said to the new Americans and their families, "discovering this country, discovering what it makes it such a special country to people who live here. It'll be a wonderful quest for you just like it was for Carl Sandburg."
The historic site was a fitting location for the ceremony, too, because it's part of what makes America special.
As Americans "you own this land," she said. "It's your national park. It's your land. You all own the most historically significant, the most beautiful land, the prime real estate."
As candidates, the 25 immigrants, from Mexico, Moldova, Russia and many other countries sang the national anthem and listened to a keynote speech by Dan T. Carter, a retired professor at the University of South Carolina.
Hostility toward immigrants and mistrust of immigrants is not new, Carter said. Benjamin Franklin asked why Germans should be "suffered to swarm into our settlement, and by herding together establish their language and manners to the exclusion of others."
In the 1850s the "Know Nothing" Party warned about the wave of Catholics immigrants.
Instead of weakening America, he said, immigration "has strengthened and renewed it. This is not a sentimental hope but a hard reality."