Is My Immigrant Mother a Better Citizen Than You?

My mother Jeannie is eighty-three, and was born in Britain. She became a naturalized U.S. citizen back in 1968. She is an active member of the League of Women Voters in our city where she takes tremendous pleasure in registering people to vote. Because election season is upon us, I want to share her vision for why she takes this right to vote so seriously. This is her story, edited by me.

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In 1968, I’m twenty-nine-years old and in a Washington D.C. courtroom. A robed judge with white hair calls me into his office and begins asking me questions about the United States. I’m trying to become a U.S. citizen while on a trip to the States with my American husband. I haven’t taken the citizenship test, but because my husband is a diplomat I’m being fast-tracked. I just need to persuade this judge that I know what I’m getting into. I prepared extensively for this and feel confident.

After establishing that I know about the three branches of government, their names and their roles, the judge commands, “Tell me what you know of the Executive Branch.” I’m taken aback. I’d studied so hard that I knew I could give an extensive lecture on the topic. Looking squarely into his eyes, I ask slowly and with frank honesty, “You mean everything I know?” After a small silence the judge says, “Why don’t you begin. And I’ll tell you when to stop.”

I talk non-stop for two minutes about the purpose of the Executive Branch and how it functions and interrelates with the other branches. He doesn’t ask any more questions. Instead, he leads me to a large room full of people in seats, tells me to take my spot among them, offers me his congratulations, and leaves.

A different judge sits at the front of the immense room with the court clerk and bailiff beneath him. He directs us all to stand, raise our right hands, and recite the ‘Oath of Citizenship’ in unison:

"I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God."

The decision to become a U.S. citizen was not easy for me because I owed my birth country, Britain, my literal well-being. Growing up, I’d lived in a small coal mining village called Ryhill in the northern county of Britain known as Yorkshire. I was the second oldest of five, born in 1939 right as my father headed to Europe to serve with the Allied Forces in World War II. My family considered ourselves to be ‘poor as church mice.’

Yet despite our family’s financial struggles, my siblings and I thrived because our government provided universal healthcare with no money required when the care was delivered. The British government also focused on our wellness by providing a two-course hot lunch meal for us at school, consisting of meat, potatoes, vegetables, plus dessert, and a cup of milk, a teaspoon of orange juice, and a teaspoon of cod liver oil to children like me every single day.

When I was eighteen and “Head Girl” in my final year of high school, a teacher asked where I was going to go to university. I hadn’t even considered it. No one in my family had ever done so. Taking my teacher's advice, I pursued it, and applied to Manchester University, also in the North, in Lancashire.

I was accepted. If I had needed even a shilling a week to join the university, Mam and Dad couldn’t have done it … there were still three kids at home. So, my country gave me a scholarship that covered every penny required to get me from my small village to the university. In addition to tuition, the scholarship covered my lodgings, and paid for the books, clothes, personal care items and other necessities I’d need. Three years later, after studying hard and working through personal hardship, I had a degree in Botany with honors. I didn’t have to pay the money back; the scholarship was courtesy of my country.

So it’s a big deal to be here in this courtroom ten years later, taking an oath of citizenship to another country – the United States – because I’ve married one of its citizens and together, we’ve decided to make a life in America. In becoming a citizen of his country I have to renounce all allegiance to my Queen, Prime Minister, and an entire country that had done so much for me. And yet I do. I decide that what America offers is even better than what Britain gave me, and that’s one-person one vote.

Unlike Britain, in America there is no set of super-citizens who are entitled to their seat in the government based on their privilege, such as those who sit in the British House of Lords. In America, the richest among us is charged to vote in the same way and by the same rationale as the poorest citizen. In America, every citizen has the responsibility to vote, except for felons. This puts the United States always in the hands of her citizens to watch over her well-being, to decide changes that must be made for fairness, to respond to brand new issues affecting citizens that arise from new issues or new ways of seeing old issues that arise. The people determine what we should be working on as a nation and the leaders emerge anew with each election.

When I tell this story to teenagers in local high-school classrooms while in the process of registering them to vote, I go on about the notion that I wanted to become a citizen because of something bigger than the fact that my husband was American. I tell them I was looking for the promise of America, and it had to be a big and powerful promise to be sufficient to renounce Queen, country and, in some ways, family. A government “of the people, by the people, and for the people” was for me a real and true invitation to join in shaping our nation the best way I know how, an invitation I have joyfully accepted.

In the current political climate in America, I am struck by the reality that immigrants seeking to become American citizens must first recite a set of solemn promises about how we will behave as citizens, as stated in the Oath of Citizenship. It doesn’t matter from what country we come seeking citizenship, our financial situation, native language, or our age. We all must do it. And we do.

But people born Americans aren’t required to make any kind of promise to the nation. I venture to guess that the majority of them also have no idea that new citizens take this oath or what this oath we take entails. Yet doesn’t each natural-born American owe the country their allegiance, just as naturalized citizens are sworn to do?

Suppose there was a new requirement that natural-born Americans recite an oath at the age of eighteen, swearing to strive to be what a nation needs its citizens to be? Or maybe all high school seniors could take the oath while studying the Constitution and other important laws that describe how our country works? I can’t help but think that if natural born Americans had to do the work of actively committing to a nation we just might find them more willing to stand up for this country at election time.

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I'm so proud of my mom. Her life is marked by profound accomplishment, overcoming hardship, enduring massive change, and experiencing unbridled joy. Fundamentally she likes to say that she is most herself when she is in a classroom, teaching.

I wonder what came up for you as you read her story? How can we infuse our citizenry with the kind of pride and dedication we see in immigrants? Immigrants are often far more able to see the greatness of America than a natural-born citizen can, because, by definition, they've deliberately chosen to be here, rejecting their allegiance to another country in order to belong to this one? What would it take to be a nation where every eligible citizen is registered to vote, or perhaps was automatically registered? How can we make this easier? How can we remove the impediments to voting? How can we overcome our cynicism about the system and instead commit to voting, every single time, no matter what?

📽 Watch my mom talking to high school kids about the importance of voting, here.

☑ If you're not registered to vote, check out vote.gov to find the registration deadline in your state. DO IT.

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