Published: February 28, 2009 11:07 pm         

STEPHANIE SALTER: Sometimes the best civics teachers aren’t born in the USA

TERRE HAUTE — On their drive from Indianapolis to Terre Haute, Joaquin and Cristina Dimas talked about what Joaquin would soon be doing as he took the oath of U.S. citizenship.

“He said he’d basically abandoned his country,” Cristina said.

That is no small prospect for anyone, anywhere, no matter how attractive a new nation may be. Had Joaquin, who was born and raised in Mexico, felt even a twinge of hesitancy?

Standing on the second floor of the soon-to-be-converted Federal Building here, Joaquin smiled and gently shook his head, as if the question had never occurred to him.

“No,” he said. “No hesitation.”

If you have never been to a naturalization ceremony in the United States, you should put it on your bucket list — the things you’ve just got to do before you kick off. In fact, if it were up to me, all natural-born U.S. citizens would be required by law to attend such a swearing in at least once in their life.

(I might require them to try to pass the naturalization citizenship and American history exam, too, just to show them how much they’ve forgotten — or never learned — about our own country.)

One thing of which I am certain, the kind of large oath-taking that took place Thursday at Seventh and Cherry streets is the surest cure for civic cynicism and atrophied patriotism I have ever encountered. It beats all the red-white-and-blue magnetic car decals, the parades and lofty speeches, hands down.

Federal Magistrate Craig McKee administered the oath to 55 people born in nations from Bosnia to the Philippines. He said that a former mentor, federal judge Gene Brooks, probably best summed up the process.

“One day, when I was his law clerk, he said we were going to do a naturalization ceremony,” said McKee. “I said, ‘What’s that?’ And he said, ‘It’s the second-best day of the year — just behind Christmas.’”

McKee’s enthusiasm has only grown. Sworn in as a federal judge in September 2007, he said he couldn’t wait to get into the rotation of judges who perform naturalization ceremonies. It was at his request that the 74-year-old art-deco federal courtroom here be used for Thursday’s ceremony — before Indiana State University completes conversion of the building to its business school.

“The only other thing I do in this job is arraign people and tell them how long they might go to prison,” McKee said, after the naturalization event. “Something like this today is so positive. It never gets to be old hat.”

As I learned the first time I ever witnessed a naturalization ceremony in San Francisco, the people who usually cry the most at these gatherings are U.S. citizens who were born and educated right here.

Something about all those folks of different skin color, dress, custom, language and country of origin — standing together to freely and solemnly swear their allegiance to the United States of America — just clotheslines regular citizens.

The experience invariably reminds those of us who did nothing to earn our citizenship just how much we take our privileges — and duties — for granted.

The oath of allegiance, for example, does not beat around the bush. Among other promises, the applicants for U.S. citizenship swear:

“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 …”

After that, things really get specific. To be granted citizenship, men and women swear they will “bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law … perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law” and “perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law.”

So help them God.

Wycham Lewis, who emigrated from Jamaica to Florida in 1990 with his parents, said he had looked forward to making all those public promises for many years.

“It just gives me that sense of belonging, of being integrated into a big family, which is something I have always wanted,” Lewis said, a few minutes after he became an American citizen. “I almost went to tears, but I held them.”

Lewis met his wife, Joan, also a Jamaican émigré, in a church in Fort Lauderdale in 1992. Joan’s family had moved from the Caribbean island to Great Britain, then to the United States, where Joan had become a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1995.

The Lewises now live in Avon, which they love, and have two daughters. Joan writes and publishes books for teenage girls, and Wycham is a mechanic — an increasingly typical American mechanic.

“I just got laid off after nine years,” he said.

Joaquin Dimas is in the same situation. A commercial carpenter for the past three years, he, too, has recently been laid off. Like Lewis, though, he is hopeful his new nation’s economy will be revived, and he can return to providing for his family.

The Dimases have three children: Joaquin Jr., 10; Yeilan, 7, and Catalina, 4. Joaquin Jr., who is in the fourth grade, helped his dad prepare for the arduous citizenship exams.

“He was on a mission,” Cristina said, of her husband. “Nothing was going to stop him.”

So it was for all 55 people who spent years working, studying, testing, filling out truckloads of forms and waiting … for their momentous day in Terre Haute, Ind.

After the ceremony, the new citizens were treated by the local Rotary to a cookies-and-beverages reception in the wide and handsome hallway outside the courtroom. Clutching little Old Glories from the Daughters of the American Revolution and their certificates of naturalization, most of the moments-old U.S. citizens posed for photographs with family and friends.

According to Geri Black of the League of Women Voters, 20 of the new Americans took the time out of their joyous celebrations to sit down at the League’s table and fill out yet another form: to register to vote.

Stephanie Salter can be reached at (812) 231-4229 or stephanie.salter@tribstar.com.