In today’s dispatch, British-born Rita Byrne Tull explains why she became an American citizen…
It was politics – and the persuasive powers of President Clinton and my daughter, a formidable combination – that finally prevailed upon me to become an American citizen after 26 years of determined resistance. I was perfectly happy as an alien, sporting my little green card, and quite enjoyed the consternation of the curious when I responded to enquiries about my status with a terse “I like being British thank you very much.”
But then came 1996, an election year. Like most women in Bill Clinton’s pre-Lewinsky scandal days (and lets admit it, even after) I was completely in thrall to Clinton’s charisma. Naturally I supported him for re-election over the Republican candidate Bob Dole. It is hard to imagine now, after the noxious Bush years and the evolution (no pun intended) of the Republican Party into a bunch of know-nothing Mad Men, that the benign old duffer Dole represented any kind of threat to the Republic. By today’s standards he looks like a wild-eyed socialist. But back then I worried that he might prevail over Clinton. It was in this atmosphere that my daughter, who had just turned 18, came to me with a proposal. “Mom,” she said, “if you become a citizen we could cast our first votes together.” She pointed out that it was becoming absurd for me, so consumed with interest in politics, to remain disenfranchised. I had to concede her point.
My political education began at my father’s knee. One of his favorite declarations at the dinner table was “Jesus Christ was the first socialist.” (I recently threatened to have this saying put on a bumper sticker but a concerned friend advised me not to risk it). The first election I remember clearly was in 1964 when the Labour Party won and Harold Wilson became Prime Minister. For reasons now hard to fathom, I had a teenage crush on him collecting newspaper stories and photos in a scrapbook.
When I landed at the western edge of the New World in 1970, my socialist faith by now firmly entrenched, I was plunged into the surrealistic world of American politics. An actor, Ronald Reagan, was Governor of California. The multi-millionaire and owner of vast swathes of western ranchland paid no state income taxes that year, while I, a lowly office drone, paid several hundred dollars. My first hard lesson in “the American way of life.”
In 1972 I sent a $10 contribution to the McGovern presidential campaign. I came home from work on election day eagerly looking forward to watching the suspenseful returns. But as I came through the door the TV announcer was already declaring a Nixon victory. With the polls still open in California, everything had been decided in the eastern time zones. And so it went over the next decades: I contributed to Democratic campaigns and watched from the sidelines, becoming an armchair expert on the minutia of Presidential politics but unable to have a say in the outcome. My daughter’s words struck home. It was time.
As a librarian I frequently assisted immigrants in finding books to prepare for the citizenship test. Now I dutifully checked some out myself and studied the sample questions. When I went to the Immigration and Naturalization Center in Baltimore on the appointed day the first question on the test was “From which country did the United States gain its independence?” Well I nailed that one, and soon my Naturalization ceremony was scheduled.
May 19th 1996 was a beautiful sunny day, the lawn of the local town hall a vivid green welcome mat for the group of thirty of so aspirants. We represented a New America, still in its painful birth pangs, for I was the only white European pledging allegiance that day. Around me were Africans in colorful ceremonial robes, Asians in sober suits, Hispanics in their Sunday best. By comparison I looked as though I could have stepped from the Mayflower. Someone handed me an American flag. My husband and children beamed proudly in the audience, cameras clicking. So I finally did it, speaking the words of the oath, “I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereignty.” Sorry Your Majesty, mea culpa Your Holiness.
On election day my daughter and I went to the polls together, casting our first votes side-by-side, as pleased with ourselves as any newly enfranchised suffragettes.
“My Teenage Crush On Harold Wilson” is surely deserving of a post in itself. Or even a series.
Rita I’ve barely reached the point at which the decision must be made, but it has vexxed me. Like most ‘exiles’ ,even the self-imposed, there is nothing like distance to make the old country look positively radiant.
Yes it is a hard decision, which is why it took me so long. In the end the deciding factor was that realistically I was going to spend the rest of my life here because of my children – although now my daughter would really like to live in Belgium, my other home country!
Rita, please remind me of your Belgian connection: Byrne sounds Irish, so was it on your mother’s side?
I spent a year, 1980-1, in Brussels, and got to love the place, travelling around to other towns as well, but always rather thinking of Brussels as a poor man’s Paris, a city I have spent far too little time in, especially working for a year in Coventry for Paris-based Peugeot (my French was better than that of most of the Coventry managers but they got sent and I a lowly systems analyst didn’t).
Interesting you felt the time was right to go for citizenship: I had a Tennessee-born friend who settled in England and went for UK citizenship, but when I went to South Africa for a few years there was never any intention of staying long-term and going for citizenship.
Yes my mother was from Ghent – a much nicer city than Brussels!
PS – Happy Thanksgiving – it’s the 24th already here.
I’ll be applying for citizenship soon, not out of any great love for my new home, but so I can sever my ties with USCIS and never deal with their bureaucracy again. Dreading the thought of the citizenship ceremony as I suspect I’ll feel like a bigamist during the whole thing.