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‘Today is the Big Day’ — Portland Ceremony Celebrates 54 New US Citizens

Susan Sharon
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Maine Public
Ghazal Kayal, wearing an American flag scarf, was among the Maine residents at a naturalization ceremony in Portland on Friday.

Friday morning at the University of Southern Maine, 54 Maine residents representing 26 countries became U.S. citizens.

Every year in Maine, about 1,200 immigrants from all over the world are naturalized as U.S. citizens. It’s a complicated process that takes years: to meet residency and language requirements, undergo an official interview, study U.S. government and history and pass a citizenship exam.

The criteria for applicants and the oath of allegiance they declare are often left out of political discussions about immigration.

Just like every American family, each one of the new citizens has a story about the journey to this country. For 27-year-old Ajkuna Vishe of Albania, it was a matter of winning the lottery. Not for money or prizes, but a lottery offered by the State Department for citizenship in the U.S.

“So, I moved here like six years ago and finally today is the big day, after so much waiting,” she says.

So much waiting because Vishe says ever since she can remember she has wanted to get to America.

“I love my birth country, I love it. But it’s such a small country and we don’t have a lot of opportunities, and we see America as a place where our dreams can … be true,” she says.

Vishe works in her cousin’s restaurant in Lewiston and has a 10-month-old daughter and a fiance who is working on his master’s degree abroad. They hope to be reunited later this year.

In the meantime, Vishe considers herself and her daughter extremely fortunate.

“I have, like, no words to describe how lucky and how powerful all this feels, to me at least,” she says.

Credit Susan Sharon / Maine Public
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Maine Public
Maine residents at a naturalization ceremony in Portland on Friday.

In a packed auditorium at the University of Southern Maine, Sally Blauvelt, the field office director for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, administered the oath of allegiance to Vishe and 53 other immigrants from countries as diverse as Jamaica, Thailand, Chile, Ethiopia and Sudan as students, family and friends looked on.

Among other things, candidates for citizenship must pledge to defend the Constitution and laws of the U.S. and to bear arms on behalf of the nation when required by the law.

USM President Glenn Cummings was the first to officially welcome the new citizens to what he says remains the greatest country on Earth.

“And I want to tell you that we’re not great because we have a big military. We’re not great because we have great corporations, lots of business. And we’re not great because the new executive officer in the White House says we’re gonna be great. We’re already great because of our ideals,” he says.

Credit Susan Sharon
Ajkuna Vishe (right) was among the Maine residents at a naturalization ceremony in Portland on Friday.

Among those ideals, says Ghazal Kayal, is the right to speak freely, to practice religion freely and to choose who governs you. Kayal came to the U.S. with her family from Syria at 7 years old. She’s now 25 and works as a civil engineer in Portland.

Despite the recent anti-Muslim and anti-immigration rhetoric that critics say is coming from the White House, Kayal says she has come to believe that her fellow Americans have her back.

“I’ve been getting messages from my friends, people I don’t know that just say, ‘We’re here for you. We’re here to be with you. We’ll protest with you,’” she says. “There’s people that have donated to our local mosque without a name on it and they just say, ‘We’re here for you. You’re our neighbors.’“

For Kayal, standing up to defend such ideals is democracy at work, and it’s why she says she is so proud to be a U.S. citizen.

Credit Susan Sharon / Maine Public
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Maine Public
Ibrahim Hassan (front, right) was among the Maine residents at a naturalization ceremony in Portland on Friday.

For Ibrahim Hassan, a truck driver from Somalia, it’s more than a matter of pride. He says now that he has his citizenship he can help out those who are less fortunate in his home country.

“My plan is I got to build a lot of schools over there. There’s a lot orphan children over there and I gotta help them out. They didn’t get the chance to come here or another country. So, I got the chance to come to America. I can give back something,” he says.

He’ll also be doing everything he can to support his new country, he says, a country that has made giving back possible.