105 take pride in citizenship
Mexican-born Ivan Carrillo-Moriel has served the United States on tours of duty in Kuwait, Afghanistan and Iraq.
As of Thursday, the 23-year-old U.S. Air Force senior airman can officially call his own the country he has served and always thought of as home.
“I’m very proud to be an American today. Every time I pledge allegiance, I just get chills down my back,” Carrillo-Moriel said after joining 104 other Las Vegas-area residents from around the world who became U.S. citizens during a ceremony hosted by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the city of Las Vegas.
The ceremony at City Hall was part of the city’s Celebrate America initiative to showcase the diversity of the community.
The new citizens represented 50 nations, including Tunisia, Pakistan, Lebanon, Ethiopia, Cyprus and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The event came just after the U.S. Senate killed comprehensive immigration legislation that would have offered 12 million undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship.
But many in the group of freshly minted Americans had other things on their minds.
“I haven’t been following it,” 27-year-old Jakeline Kehl said of the national immigration debate. “But I think if people come to work hard, pay taxes and follow the rules, they deserve the chance” for a path to citizenship.
Kehl, a Costco employee who came to the United States eight years ago, said she still has a brother in Bolivia who has been waiting for years to come to America.
U.S. Army Reserve Sgt. Leif Apag, who took his citizenship Oath of Allegiance as his American wife and 11-month-old son looked on, said he hadn’t been following the immigration debate, either.
“It doesn’t really have an impact on me,” said the 27-year-old Apag, who was born in the Philippines and came to the United States as a child. “I was already a permanent resident.”
He added: “I’m just excited to be a U.S. citizen. It’s a big deal.”
Carrillo-Moriel, whose family brought him to America when he was 2 years old, got choked up during the ceremony as he spoke to other new citizens about his devotion to the United States.
“I’m very proud to serve my country,” he said. “I love this place.”
Earlier, the airman said he thinks America should welcome new immigrants, even if they “got here the wrong way.”
“If they are here to work, I say, ‘Welcome,’ ” he said.
But another immigrant and new citizen, Viliamu Leuga from New Zealand, said it wouldn’t be fair to grant citizenship to “those who cross the border today.”
“It should depend on the length of time people have been here,” he said. “There are people who have been here for generations. We should allow them to be given certain rights and privileges.”
Leuga, whose mother was born in U.S. Samoa and who has been in the country just eight months, said he decided to become an American because it “is the greatest country in the world.”
“You can come here with nothing and make something of yourself,” he said. “Everyone is treated equally.”
Senior U.S. District Judge Lloyd George presided over the hourlong ceremony.
Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman spoke of his immigrant grandparents.
“My parents were born to folks who did not speak English,” he said. “My maternal grandmother learned to speak English by going to school with me.”
Later, he presented each new citizen with a “good luck mayor chip,” resembling a poker chip.
The new citizens also were able to register to vote at a table set up in the City Council chambers.
Those who want to become U.S. citizens must first be permanent residents. After applying for citizenship, they must be interviewed, take a U.S. government and history test, and prove they can read and write English.
