Immigrants pledge allegiance as new U.S. citizens

Jaramillo, a 21-year-old Tennessee Wesleyan sophomore who lives in Athens, said citizenship entitles him to apply for increased financial aid, in addition to his soccer scholarship.

Jaramillo, a McMinn County High School graduate, said he left Venezuela 10 years ago and arrived in New York, where he lived with his mother and three brothers for a year before they relocated to Tennessee.

“It’s more peaceful,” he said before the courtroom ceremony.

Jaramillo said he speaks Spanish and English.

An immigrant from Guatemala, Jackie Avendano, 29, of Cleveland, said she has been in the United States for 12 years and is studying to become a high school Spanish teacher.

“It was special,” Avendano said of taking the oath with her mother, Thelma. “It means new opportunity and I want to vote.”

Thelma Avendano said her father was a Church of God missionary in Guatemala for 56 years.

Jaramillo and Avendano became citizens as a Census Bureau report issued Thursday in Washington said Hispanics accounted for half the 2.9 million U.S. population growth from 2003 to 2004 and now constitute one-seventh of all people in the United States.

The group sworn in as citizens before U.S. District Judge Curtis L. Collier came from a long lineup of countries, including Mexico, Colombia, Vietnam, Canada, Japan, United Kingdom, South Africa and South Korea.

“I welcome you on behalf of all American citizens to the ranks of American citizens,” Collier said.

The judge handed out the citizenship certificates and posed for photographs with the smiling recipients and in many cases their family members.

Debbie Emory, a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services examiner from Memphis, said each of the 46 citizens had background examinations and were determined to be “persons of good moral character.”

She said each one “demonstrated a satisfactory knowledge of the history and government of the United States and has further met the requirements of the law concerning the ability to read, write and speak the English language.”

Chris Bentley, a spokesman for Citizenship and Immigration Services in Washington, D.C., said records show there were “536,174 individuals naturalized” in the United States in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, compared to 463,204 in fiscal 2003. He said the most was in 1996, before a change in a law that allowed more than 1 million immigrants to become naturalized citizens.

Bentley said records show 2,011 immigrants became naturalized citizens in Tennessee in fiscal 2003, the most recent year available, and 2,444 in fiscal 2002. Countries of origin were not immediately available.

While naturalization ceremonies are held twice annually in Chattanooga, Ana Santiago, southeastern regional spokeswoman for the citizenship and immigration services agency, said they are held almost weekly in Miami, where she is based. She said about 12,000 immigrants took the oath as new citizens in a recent ceremony there.

“In Florida, it’s huge for the Hispanic numbers, especially Cubans,” Santiago said.

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On the Net:

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services: www.uscis.gov