Copyright 1999 St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Editorial

July 4, 1999, Sunday

AMERICA

OUR NEW CITIZENS

ONE by one, they stood to tell their stories. Wearing starched suits, straw hats, miniskirts, 62 of them faced the steamy, packed rotunda of the Old Courthouse Friday to announce where they were from and what they were doing here.

They spoke in halting accents and crisp English. Some bellowed their American careers – physical therapist, sales manager, pilot -- others barely whispered. One 36-year-old Chinese immigrant read his job title from a tiny scrap of paper so quietly that no one could hear.

They represented 25 countries, from China and Russia to the Philippines and Vietnam. Their faces glowed with nervous hope and perspiration as they prepared to pledge allegiance to the United States and renounce formal ties to their home countries forever.

Maybe this naturalization ceremony was special because of its timing on a holiday weekend. Maybe it was the sense of place: An historic courthouse festooned with red-white-and-blue bunting and tiny American flags tucked into the light fixtures. Maybe it was the crowd, a motley crew of wailing babies, television cameramen, gawking tourists. Or maybe it was special simply because it welcomed 62 new citizens to the land of the free, a place where our differences sometimes blind us to our unity, where national holidays sometimes remind us only to buy a six-pack or sparklers, where immigrants sometimes seem an unwelcome intrusion to territory our own ancestors staked out long ago.

Recent transplants may wait several years, even decades, for their citizenship, depending on which country they came from, whether they came as refugees and if they married an American. They need a clean record, good moral character, a clear grasp of English and correct answers to questions like "Who elects Congress?" and "Who was Martin Luther King Jr.?" When they pass all of our tests and timelines, prove their fitness to enjoy our life and liberty and agree to pursue our happiness even if it eludes them, they become one of us. They finally grasp the freedom, opportunity and responsibility that so many of our ancestors desperately craved, and so many of us take for granted.

When that moment arrives, it is pure and good, devoid of the cynicism that so often stains our civic conversations and erodes our American dreams. When that moment arrived last week at the Old Courthouse, and dozens of nationalities and personalities sang a seamless Star Spangled Banner, everything seemed right. Babies stopped crying. Cameras stopped flashing. Tourists lost themselves in the song. Discordant, foreign voices crystallized into a unified chorus that floated up the rotunda and out the doors of the courthouse, giving frazzled pedestrians outside a fleeting reminder of what -- and who -- makes America great.