(Ellis Island) Between flags and tears, 200 New Yorkers acquired American nationality on Saturday during an exceptional naturalization ceremony organized on Ellis Island, the famous island which, every day, once welcomed thousands of immigrants.
Posted at 8:37 p.m.
Applicants for naturalization from about 60 countries gathered in the great hall of the former Newcomer Welcome Center, from where some 12 million people entered the United States over six decades in the early from 20e century.
The ceremony, the first of its kind on the island since 2016, marks the anniversary of the signing of the Constitution in 1787 and kicked off ‘Citizenship Week’ which takes place every year.
The 200 new US citizens are among 19,000 who will be sworn in across the country this week, according to the US Citizenship and Immigration Service.
As the sun’s rays break through towering arched windows, emotion is palpable across the hall as the cohort take the oath of allegiance to the United States, less than a mile from the Statue of Liberty .
Attorney General Merrick Garland, who presided over the ceremony, told new American citizens, “This country — your country — welcomes you with all its heart. »
Mr. Garland blinks back tears as he recounts his own parents’ flight from religious persecution in Eastern Europe, adding that two of his grandmother’s siblings died in the Holocaust.
“I often think about how my family members felt when entering buildings like this,” he says. “And I often reflect on what their decisions have meant for my own life. »
Before the ceremony, Lovell Brown, 31, from Jamaica, told AFP that she was looking forward to going to the island for the first time and for “such a great moment”.
“I really feel like I’m really part of the United States now,” observes the teacher who arrived in the country at 17.
“It makes me feel like I belong here. »
Quarrels over immigration
The ceremony comes as the arrival of undocumented migrants in the United States fuels an atmosphere of increasingly politicized controversy.
A few days earlier, some 50 migrants arrived unexpectedly at Martha’s Vineyard, an upscale Massachusetts resort island where Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis had sent them in a highly political maneuver.
Right-wing US governors have bussed and now flown migrants to largely Democratic cities to decry President Joe Biden’s immigration policy, which they say is responsible for the arrival of large numbers of undocumented migrants across the Mexican border.
On Thursday morning, Republican Governor of Texas Greg Abbott sent two buses carrying migrants not far from the official residence of Vice President Kamala Harris in Washington, a deliberately chosen location, Mme Harris overseeing the immigration issue at the White House.
“Overcoming the current polarization in our public life is, and will continue to be, a difficult task,” said Mr. Garland during the ceremony at Ellis Island. “But we cannot overcome it by ignoring it. »
According to the latest report from the Department of Homeland Security, 814,000 people obtained American citizenship in 2021, 30% more than in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic paralyzed most public life.
“I have found my home”
Umaru Kabir Ahmed, 63, originally from Nigeria, has lived in the United States since 1989.
This Bronx resident, who works in a retirement home, says he first applied for naturalization in 2012.
“I’m happy,” he says, explaining that his new papers reflect the American sensibility he’s cultivated over the past three decades.
“A lot of things have changed: the way I speak, the way I eat, the way I sleep, the way I dress. »
The ancestors of some 40 percent of today’s Americans passed through Ellis Island, which opened in 1892 and now houses a museum.
At its height at the beginning of the XXe century, thousands of people passed through it daily, waiting in long queues for medical and legal examinations that sometimes resulted in the separation of families or deportation.
The symbol of this place has not escaped Warren Lawson, 44, in the United States since 2016, happy to be on the island to “learn history and see it for himself”.
Acquiring nationality was necessary for her because “it’s probably the place where my children will live for the rest of their lives and I want to grow old in the same place as them. »
“I have found my home. »