7 Become U.S. Citizens in San Angelo Naturalization Ceremony

SAN ANGELO, TX — Seven people from India, Nigeria, Peru and Mexico became U.S. citizens Wednesday during a naturalization ceremony at the O.C. Fisher Federal Building. 

U.S. Magistrate Judge John R. Parker of the Northern District of Texas presided over the 11 a.m. proceeding in the San Angelo Division courtroom. 

Parker told the applicants their accomplishment gives native-born citizens a chance to remember what citizenship means.

“Your ceremony here today, your accomplishments of becoming a United States citizen, gives the rest of us the opportunity to stop and say thank you,” Parker said. “Thank you for reminding us, those of us who were born here, who often take for granted the precious rights of citizenship.”

He congratulated the applicants on the “courage and commitment and perseverance” required to complete the process and thanked their families and friends for their support. Parker called the courtroom a fitting place for celebration rather than the conflict it more often witnesses. 

Parker said the history of the United States is a history of immigration. He cited his own Scotch-Irish ancestors, his wife’s grandparents who came from Sicily through Ellis Island, and French Acadian relatives. He listed well-known immigrant Americans including Alexander Hamilton, Albert Einstein, Alexander Graham Bell, Andrew Carnegie, Irving Berlin, Joseph Pulitzer and Charles Pfizer. 

Immigrants founded more than half of Fortune 500 companies and more than half of U.S. tech startups and account for a growing share of the nation’s doctors, Parker said. Legal immigration, he added, creates millions of jobs and contributes nearly $6 trillion to the economy.

“Nowhere in the oath you take today does it say that you must renounce your ancestors or your culture,” Parker said. “All we ask today, as a community, as a country, is to allow us to share your pride in who you are and where you’re from.”

He quoted President Lyndon B. Johnson’s description of America as “the land that flourished because it was fed from so many sources, because it was nourished by so many cultures and traditions and people.” 

Parker said the country was founded on shared ideals of liberty, equality and justice rather than ethnicity or ancestry, and that those ideals grow stronger when tested by different viewpoints. 

The First Amendment’s protections for speech, worship, assembly and the right to criticize government exist because the founders knew people would disagree, Parker said. What makes someone American, he added, is dedication to the nation’s founding principles, not appearance, language, food, faith or politics.

“Regardless of where you started, you leave here today sharing with me the title of citizen, equal to me in fundamental rights and privileges, and equal to me before the law,” Parker said. He noted that a Supreme Court justice once said the only title in a democracy superior to president is citizen, and that freedom requires continuous action by each generation. 

Parker said the new citizens now stand in the shoes of earlier immigrants and share one flag.

A photo gallery from the ceremony can be found by clicking HERE.