Seven of 17 new U. S. citizens in Seattle say the Pledge of Allegiance for the first time since becoming citizens at their naturalization ceremony held in Seattle’s Waterfront Park on Monday.
Jhowelyn Aquino was 9 when she arrived with her parents as immigrants to the U.S. from her native islands of the Philippines.
She was just old enough to remember helping them harvest rice on their farm. With few other opportunities to generate income, the family had to rely on the land, like many others in the southeastern Asian nation.
Fast-forward nearly 12 years, Aquino is standing with 16 others in Seattle’s Waterfront Park on a cool September morning. Her right hand is raised, palm facing forward, as she recites in unison with them 140 words that make up the Oath of Allegiance. It’s the final exercise in a long journey that culminated in inducting her as a new American citizen on Monday.
For Aquino, a 21-year-old premed student at the University of Washington who’s also the first member in her family to go to college, the event was much more about beginnings than the end of a process.
Becoming a U.S. citizen enables her to “do great things in life, like finishing school at the university to become a doctor and helping others that are in need,” she said.
The ceremony in Seattle is one of 260 that are taking place around the country this week, where some 45,000 people are expected to take their oaths, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which organizes the annual ritual to mark Constitution Week and Citizenship Day. This year, it falls against the backdrop of tightening immigration regulations by the agency, including a rule change that went into effect this month and is coming under wide criticism from rights groups.
In a memo that was released in July and took effect Sept. 11, USCIS gave its officers wider discretion to turn down applications, including for permanent residency and citizenship, if they contained mistakes or were missing documents. The change, it said, is intended to “discourage frivolous filings and skeletal applications used to game the system.” The agency had traditionally handled deficient applications by giving applicants the opportunity to provide clarification or send in additional documents.
Jorge Baron, executive director of the Seattle-based Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, said he disagreed that the policy would make the application process more efficient. The changes will instead create more barriers, especially for people who can’t afford lawyers.
Applicants sometimes file incomplete applications “because of arbitrary deadlines or other situations because the government already put barriers for people that are applying,” he said.
The number of people who become citizens every year has remained relatively stable at about 700,000 from 2009 to 2016, according to federal data which hasn’t yet been updated with 2017 figures. Applicants must have lived in the U.S. continuously for five years, be 18 years of age or older, take a civics test, speak, read and write basic English, and possess “good moral character.”
Back at Waterfront Park, Aquino finished delivering her oath with the group that included people from 12 countries: American Samoa, Canada, Ethiopia, India, Moldova, Peru, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey, Ukraine and the United Kingdom. She turned to her aunt, who had been sitting next to her, to take more pictures of her grinning next to a American flag about a foot taller than her.
She walked over to a voter-registration table and started filling out her form.
