American Life
Wie einfach kann man die amerikanische – und do pp el te–Sta atsbür ger sch after halt en?Un se re Kolumnistin wirft einen Blick auf das Verfahren.
Ginger Kuenzel on what’s happening stateside
America has been called a melting pot, a place where immigrants, particularly whites from Europe, could start a new life. The Statue of Liberty bears the inscription: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
But today’s immigration policies are complex. On the one hand, countries want to attract people with needed skills, and many want to provide refuge for those fleeing danger in their own countries. On the other hand, no country can open its borders to unrestricted immigration.
As I thought about the topic of immigration, I wanted to learn more about how one becomes a US citizen. And I knew the perfect person to ask: my friend Sabine, who had moved here from Munich in 1998 as a Siemens employee. The company was able to show the US government that Sabine had a skill set they needed, and she was granted a green card, which gave her the right to live and work here indefinitely.
Although she had grown up in Munich, Sabine fell in love with New York City and felt as though it had become her home. She decided to become a US citizen. “New York is like a poster child for how diversity can work,” she told me.
Aside from gaining the right to vote, Sabine had another important reason for wanting US citizenship. She was in a relationship with an American — whom she later married — and didn’t ever want to find herself in a situation where it might become difficult to stay in the country.
There was one more step that Sabine wanted to take. She requested permission to keep her German citizenship and become a “dual national”. After all, she still had family and roots in Germany. Once that was granted, she was ready to start the process of becoming an American citizen.
Sabine filled out the forms and took the civics test. As she already had a green card, the process took only about four months.
The day of the oath-taking ceremony in April 2011 was more emotional for her than she had expected, Sabine told me. “There were 200 of us, with 49 nationalities. I realized that many of them had gone through so much to get there,” she said. “A lot of people take citizenship for granted, but I could see in their faces how very much it meant to them.” She added that as a white European, her status as an immigrant had never been questioned. But she knew that many of the Africans, Asians, Latinos, and others at the ceremony with her that day had likely had very different experiences.