American Magazine November 2013

“I HAVE
GROWN
INCREDIBLY
LOYAL TO
AMERICA. I
FELT I HAD
JOINED
SOMETHING
HUGE.”
In 1972, Chris Palmer
found lasting love.
Twice.
A British national
born in Hong Kong, the
then 26-year-old had
just traveled across
the pond to Cambridge,
Massachusetts, to
study at Harvard’s
Kennedy School of
Government.
“I was going there
for a year to have
the time of my life,”
he says. “That was
the plan.”
On the first day of
orientation, he spotted
a beautiful woman
with an open seat next
to her.
“I remember I wore
this bright green
suit and purple shirt and tie,” he says. “I thought
I looked good. There weren’t many seats left, so I sat
down next to her and said hi. She turned out to be
my wife.”
Palmer would have moved anywhere to be with
Gail, to whom he’s been married for 38 years. But
he didn’t want to move anywhere—he’d fallen for
her country too.
“The typical American is driven by ambition and
audacious goals, revels in a buoyant optimism and
practicality, doesn’t care about class or who your
parents are, applauds hard work and entrepreneurial
zeal, lauds the self-made person, relentlessly
pursues constant self-improvement, and is fearless
when it comes to new and noble challenges,” the
School of Communication professor says. “I love all
those notions and wanted to live in a country where
those values mean something. I wanted to stay here
for the rest of my life.”
Palmer worked on Capitol Hill and in the Carter
administration, never paying much mind to his
nationality, until he learned he was ineligible for a
high-level position in the Environmental Protection
Agency because he wasn’t a citizen.
“I thought about it for a few minutes and said to
myself, ‘I’m happy to be American,’” he recalls.
So he pursued citizenship, ultimately taking the
naturalization oath of allegiance in Baltimore in 1981.
“It was very poignant,” he says. “I’ve read a
lot about American history. I love reading about
the founding fathers and Abe Lincoln. George
Washington strikes me as one of the greatest
men that’s ever lived. All this was going through
my mind as I took that oath.”
More than three decades later, Palmer
thinks of himself as “a very proud American of
British heritage.”
“Even now it makes me emotional,” he says.
“I have grown incredibly loyal to America. I felt
I had joined something huge, and I had thrown
my lot in to a country that I think is the greatest
country in the world.”
Jazmynn walked into
the federal building
in downtown Detroit a
Canadian, and walked
out an American.
She also walked in
a Bigelow and walked
out a Croskey.
The 19-year-old
freshman’s journey to
citizenship was every
bit as much about her
familial identity as her
“I FELT LIKE nationality. The daughter
I REALLY
of a European father she
ACCOMPLISHED never met, she grew up
SOMETHING. in Brampton, a suburb of
I CAN GO
Toronto, before moving
ANYWHERE to Michigan at age
AND SAY,
seven when her mother,
‘I’M AN
Andrea, met and married
AMERICAN.’” her stepfather, David
Croskey.
“My grandparents are from Guyana, and my
brothers were born in America,” she says. “We’re a
nice big, blended family.”
Before heading off to college, Croskey, SIS ’17,
wanted to make official the country she calls home
as well as take the last name of the only father
she’s ever known. In August, just a week before she
came to AU, she became a U.S. citizen and changed
her name.
“I was the youngest person at the ceremony,
and that was something the judge and the
clerks noticed,” Croskey says. “I felt like I really
accomplished something. I can go anywhere and
say, ‘I’m an American.’”
“I felt proud for her, I felt proud for our entire
family,” says her mother, Andrea, who also became
a citizen. “It’s nice to feel that our family is
connected through citizenship.”
“Coming to America was important
because I could see a future for us here,” says
Hassan’s father, Mohammad. He doesn’t speak
English, so his son translates his emails. “I
imagined life in America as peaceful, with no
fear of danger and with job opportunities.
I never thought we would be living in America
until we got on the plane to come here.”
They were set up in a three-room
apartment in public housing in the rough
Atlanta suburb of Clarkston, Georgia. Thrown
into a fifth-grade classroom, Hassan simply
sat quietly and watched.
“For me it was pretty bad,” he says. “I didn’t
speak the language—I didn’t even know my
ABCs. I was bullied every single day. I couldn’t
go outside [our house]. I saw with my own eyes
people getting shot. Our neighbor to our left
was killed. Two bullets came into our house.”
He had made it to the world’s bastion
of democracy, only to discover that cruelty
knows no nationality.
The turning point came when Hassan
joined the Fugees Family, a soccer team
for refugee children. He was a shy, quiet,
wayward soul when Luma Mefleh spotted him
on a playground.
“One of his classmates was playing on my
team, and he was watching me,” says Mufleh,
the team’s coach. “I asked him if he wanted to
join, and he got this big grin on his face.”
Having never played organized sports
before, Hassan struggled on the field. But
his development - both on it and in the
classroom - was striking. He began making
friends and transferred to a private school
run by the Fugees, a nonprofit that includes a
variety of organized soccer programs, afterschool
tutoring, the private academy, and an
academic enrichment summer camp.
“He had a work ethic that put a lot of his
teammates to shame, and it started to pay off,”
Mufleh says. “It wasn’t just on the field, it was
academically. He was with other refugee kids
with similar backgrounds, not a lot of formal
education. But academically he was much
further ahead. In eighth grade we had him
sign up for an algebra class online through the
University of Nebraska. The other kids could
barely do their multiplication. He went from a
kid who couldn’t speak, make eye contact, or
carry on a conversation to one who was a lot
more confident, a lot more secure.”
Hassan’s father found work as a mechanic
and was able to move the family to a nicer
house in a safer suburb an hour away. In ninth
grade, he enrolled in the prestigious Atlanta
International School, relying on scholarships
to cover his tuition.
“With education, one can not only resolve
one’s own problems but work toward helping
others and resolving other’s problems,” his
father says. “With education one becomes
aware of the world.”
Hassan focused on college from the outset,
taking International Baccalaureate classes in
subjects like English and biology.
“My older brother and older sister never
got to go to college,” says Hassan, who has
younger siblings studying at universities
in Atlanta and Iran. “I always knew that I
wanted to be something on my own.”
“ I THINK CITIZENSHIP,
IN A COUNTRY OF GREAT
DIVERSITY SUCH AS
OURS, IS AN IMPORTANT
ELEMENT OF COHESIVENESS.
IT SAYS THAT LEGALLY,
WHATEVER YOUR RELIGION,
WHATEVER YOUR RACE,
WHATEVER YOUR ETHNIC
ORIGINS, YOU ARE NOW
A PERMANENT MEMBER
OF THIS SOCIETY WITH
ALL OF THE RIGHTS
THAT A PERSON WHO
WAS BORN HERE HAS.”
—ALAN KRAUT
As is the case for many immigrants,
scraping together $680 for the
citizenship application fee was an immense
hardship for Hassan. Of the estimated 13.3
million green card holders in the United
States in 2012, about 8.8 million were
eligible for citizenship. Yet the most ever
naturalizations in one year was 1.05 million
in 2008, according to the federal government.
The hefty price is perhaps one reason why.
This summer RISA helped him arrange to
cover the fee. The average lag time from filing
to oath is five months, but the dysfunction
in Washington means that Hassan’s will be
even longer. He’s not worried about the test.
Candidates must demonstrate aptitude in
English by reading one of three sentences
correctly and writing one of three correctly.
That won’t be a problem for Hassan, whose
English is impeccable. He picked it up in
the first six months he was here, in part by
watching TV and talking to friends.
Candidates also must correctly answer 6
of 10 civics questions selected from a pool
of 100. (Kraut was one of the historians
involved in revising the history portion
of the test, an experience he describes as
“fascinating and political.”) Hassan should
ace that portion without breaking a sweat.
He’s now lived in the United States for
almost as long as he’s lived outside it.
“In a society that is homogeneous, in
which everyone comes from similar ethnic
backgrounds, similar religious backgrounds,
similar racial profiles, and can trace their
roots back deep into the country’s history,
perhaps citizenship wouldn’t be so important,”
says Kraut, who’s working on his latest book,
Forget Your Past: Negotiating Identity,
Becoming American. “But I think citizenship,
in a country of great diversity such as ours, is
an important element of cohesiveness. It says
that legally, whatever your religion, whatever
your race, whatever your ethnic origins, you
are now a permanent member of this society
with all of the rights that a person who was
born here has. Naturalization then becomes
terribly important.”
As it is to Hassan. When the conversation
shifts to his impending citizenship, a smile
sweeps over his gentle face.
“I love this country,” he says. “Although
there were some bad experiences and
sometimes I didn’t feel welcome, that’s
a part of everywhere. You go to Afghanistan,
and in some parts you might feel hated. In
some parts loved. But I love [the United
States]. It’s given me a lot. I never would have
been able to go to a regular school.
“I want to become a citizen so I can
go back to my village, because the vague
memory I have of there is like a drawing.
The mountains, the river, the farm, I still
have the connection. I was born there,
my extended family is there. I’m always
going to be an Afghan, but I’m also an
American now.”
“ IN THAT
MOMENT
YOU’RE
OVERCOME
BY A SENSE OF
TREMEDOUS
PRIDE.”
Denied.
The word felt like a
punch to Fanta Aw’s
gut. While planning
a trip to visit to her
native Mali, she was
refused a transit visa
by France.
Aw, Kogod/BSBA
’90, SPA/MPA ’94, CAS/
PhD ’11, had moved
from the small African
nation to the U.S.
in the 1970s, when
her father worked
for the World Bank.
France’s decision not
to allow her into the
country might have
been minute on a
geopolitical scale,
but it came to hold
immense consequence
to Aw. It started her
on the path to American citizenship.
“I was struck that being born in a certain part
of the world created an obstacle for me,” says Aw,
assistant vice president of Campus Life and director
of International Student and Scholar Services. “The
freedom of movement is very important to me.
[American citizenship] was the only way I felt I could
regain my sense of empowerment.”
Along with securing an American passport,
earning the right to vote was critically important to
her. Soon after becoming a citizen in 2008, she cast
hers for president. Years later, Aw still remembers the
emotion of her naturalization ceremony in Baltimore.
“Each person there had a story and a journey,”
she says. “Whether it was a refugee who left
everything behind to start all over; whether it was
the person with an entrepreneurial spirit who saw
infinite potential in America; or whether it was,
in my case, the journey of someone who came to
this country as a student, gained an education,
and I thought I could give back to this society. As
we were standing there, I think each person was
playing in their own mind what their journey had
been. In that moment you’re overcome by a sense
of tremendous pride.”
Aw, who retained her Mali citizenship as well,
considers herself an American of African descent,
not an African American.
“A lot of times you kind of romanticize in
your own mind what all of this means,” she says.
“Citizenship is socially constructed. We make it up.
And in making it up we build our own stories, and
pretty grandiose narratives about what it is. I think
for anyone who makes that decision, they see the
glass as three-quarters full.
30 AMERICAN MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2013 LET’S TALK #AMERICANMAG 31