34 immigrant kids (mostly) get kick out of citizens oath

Thirty-four kids waited a long time under the bright morning sun in San Francisco to get important pieces of blue paper. As usual with important things that take a long time, their parents made them do it.

In this case, the children — all of them the sons and daughters of recently naturalized parents — were awarded citizenship certificates. They came to Crissy Field for an official ceremony full of pomp, circumstance and multiple verses of “My Country, ’Tis of Thee,” and it went on longer than math class.

“We had to clap a lot,” said Zoe Cantwell, 10, one of America’s newest citizens. “It was nice, but it was boring. Not all boring, but medium boring.”

Mostly, she said, it was the speeches. There were two immigration officials, a librarian, a park ranger and an author. All of them talked. The

kids, ages 4 to 12, were not allowed use of cell phones, which is one way to pass the time when grown-ups talk.

Instead, they had to listen to the librarian urge them to get library cards. The park ranger urged them to go to Yosemite. An immigration official told them they were the future of America, and another person told them to stand up and raise their right hands and repeat, after him, the new citizens oath.

It’s a long oath. It took nearly three minutes for the kids to renounce foreign princes and potentates, whoever they are, and to promise to bear arms if the folks in Washington make another hash of things.

Six-year-old Dyan Radman, formerly of Yemen, promised to do so without any reservation or purpose of evasion, so help him God.

“Being a citizen is good,” he said.

Each new citizen got a small U.S. flag on a stick, along with a junior ranger’s badge from the National Park Service with a picture of Petey the Plover on it. And they also received the precious citizenship certificate, which parents quickly took possession of so it didn’t get crumpled up like a homework assignment.

Dave Eggers gave each kid a copy of his new book about the Statue of Liberty’s right foot and thanked them for “choosing the United States to live in,” even if that part probably wasn’t up to the kids.

The children came from Brazil, Burma, China, Ethiopia, Guatemala, India, Iran, Italy, Malaysia, Nepal, the Philippines, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand, the United Kingdom, Vietnam and Yemen. All of them got to pet the police horse afterward.

That part, said Gregory Podolyan, 7, was fun.

Asked what it meant to be a citizen, Gregory said that it meant that “you get to hang around and go places when you want to go places, and to relax and have a good time.”

It turned out that the entire ceremony was not really necessary, because a child automatically becomes a U.S. citizen when his or her parents are naturalized, and most of the parents had been naturalized months ago. But without the ceremony, they wouldn’t have gotten to pet the horse.

Renjie Wen, 9, formerly of China, said his new certificate from the U.S. government — with an embossed seal and a picture of him, and a lot of fancy printing — appeared to be in order, especially the part that listed his marital status as “single.”

“That’s correct,” he said.

He said he was glad to have the paper in hand.

“You show it to people and then they know you’re a citizen,” he said. “That means you belong.”