Arkansans celebrate citizenship
Speakers, ‘new’ Americans share thoughts on the journey
For Mireya Reith, the founding executive director of Arkansas United and the daughter of naturalized Americans, becoming a U.S. citizen is worth celebrating all by itself.
But given the barriers that immigrants face in the naturalization process, she said the Citizenship Day festivities at the Clinton Presidential Center on Saturday were about more than recognizing those who have already completed the journey.
“When the pandemic happened, so many in our community were in survival mode. They didn’t have the ability to do citizenship, and they put it on the backburner,” she said. “So, today is a call to action. It’s a call to action for our partners to come back together and invite some new ones and a call to action for our community to do their part [to become citizens].”
Reith leads Arkansas United, a nonprofit that aims to help immigrants from all over the world, including with becoming American citizens.
“We’ve been around for over a decade and we exist as a bridge between the immigrant community and our policymakers — local, state and federal. But also, we’re a bridge with service providers,” Reith said.
“We connect our community to services so that they can be better integrated. Citizenship is one piece of that, but we work more broadly on civic participation within our community and services like health, education, safety,” she said.
Reith was among dozens of people who gathered at the presidential center for Citizenship Day festivities that included addresses from several high-profile Arkansans and a speech by Eva Millona, chief of the Office of Citizenship, Partnership and Engagement at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Constitution Day and Citizenship Day, which are officially observed today, commemorate the signing of the Constitution and recognize those who have become citizens “by coming of age or by naturalization,” according to federal law.
Millona, an Albanian immigrant, has had a long career in public service before she began serving in her current role, but she said her title within the federal government isn’t the one she’s most proud of.
“I think my best title of all is a naturalized citizen of the greatest nation on Earth, the United States of America,” Millona said.
“I wanted to live in a place where freedom was real and change was possible. I believe that there is no country in the world where I found greater freedom and greater opportunity than the United States,” said Millona, who lived in Albania while it was still under communist rule.
Now, Millona said she dedicates her life to the service of those facing similar situations. “In my current role … my goal is to elevate issues of immigrant integration and immigrant inclusion so that they are part of the national conversation and inform the policy formulation process,” she said.
Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott Jr. addressed the crowd as well, discussing the sacrifices that immigrants make in order to be a part of the United States.
“There clearly was a choice, and you chose America,” he said. “Many of us were born into America, but you chose America.”
“Many times we often forget that we all are a quilt of many nations embodying one nation together,” he said.
Scott and the city of Little Rock proclaimed this week to be Welcoming Week.
“On behalf of the city of Little Rock, we declare this to be Welcoming Week, and we say thank you,” Scott said.
According to Reith, the proclamation is meant to show that “wherever you are in your citizenship journey, you are welcome here in Little Rock, Ark.”
Former state Sen. Joyce Elliott discussed the issues she said she’s been advocating for nearly her entire political career.
“To know where you stand, you need to have two or three things where you almost will not discuss compromise,” Elliott said. “For me one of those things was education.”
Elliott called state legislation allowing colleges and universities to charge in-state tuition rates to certain foreign-born students a major win for immigrants in the state.
Another issue Elliott said she stands for is voting and enfranchisement, discussing the barriers that, to her, have made it harder for some individuals to vote.
“What I want for every single one of you as citizens of this country is to be able to vote without your vote being obstructed,” she said.
Her organization, Get Loud Arkansas, is committed to helping remove the barriers to voting for all citizens, she said.
Others including Jay Barth, director of the presidential center, and Mike Rogers, chief workforce officer in Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ cabinet, also addressed the crowd, offering advice for immigrants and testimony about their experience helping aspiring citizens.
At the end of the event, several newly naturalized Americans spoke about their experiences. One of them, Anel Garza, prepared for her citizenship test by writing each of the 100 questions on the test every day.
After weeks of work, Garza scored perfectly on her test. Like many others in attendance at Saturday’s celebration, she is now able to call herself an American citizen.
“There clearly was a choice, and you chose America. Many of us were born into America, but you chose America.” — Mayor Frank Scott Jr. of Little Rock