|
Refugee: I want to be a citizen of one of
the greatest countries of the world
16.5.2006
By BILL THEOBALD
|
|
|
|
WASHINGTON —
While a raucous public debate swirls around the
estimated 12 million, mostly Hispanic, immigrants
living illegally in the United States, little
attention is paid to the nearly equal number of
foreign-born residents who are naturalized U.S.
citizens.
These new citizens come mainly from Asia. A smaller
percentage of Hispanics go through the
naturalization process.
Forty-one percent of the 537,151 new Americans in
2004 — 218,874 — were from Asian countries,
according to the federal Office of Immigration
Statistics. And while Mexico tops the list of home
countries of new U.S. citizens that year, the next
five home countries are in Asia: India, Philippines,
Vietnam, China and Korea. The same trends hold true
over the five-year period ended in 2004.
In Tennessee, slightly more than half of the 2,613
new citizens in 2004 were from Asia.
Compare that with the makeup of illegal immigrants
in the United States in 2005, according to the Pew
Hispanic Center: 56 percent were Mexican, an
additional 22 percent were from the rest of Latin
America, while 13 percent were from Asia.
"The question isn't so much why it is that Asians
naturalize at a higher rate," said Bill Ong Hing,
professor of law and Asian-American studies at
University of California, Davis. "It's why Latinos
and Mexicans don't naturalize at higher rates." |
Mohammed Ibrahim won’t need his passport from Iraq
after becoming a U.S. citizen on Friday in a
ceremony with other immigrants at the Federal
Courthouse.
Photo:LARRY MCCORMACK |
Hing and others who work with and study immigrants
give lots of reasons for more Asians and fewer
Hispanics becoming citizens:
• Cultural differences lead Asians to place more
value on U.S. citizenship.
• Hispanics have a harder time with the immigration
system because many have less education and come
into the country illegally.
• The long distance from Asia drives a stronger
desire to break ties with the home country, while
the closeness of Mexico has the opposite effect.
Like many new citizens, several intertwining reasons
put Mohammed Ibrahim, an Iraqi Kurd, on the path to
taking the oath of U.S. citizenship last Friday in a
Nashville federal courtroom.
"One of them was when I applied for citizenship,
there was no hope to go back to Iraq," Ibrahim, 57,
said of his war-ravaged country. "The second thing
is to be able to benefit (by) being (a) citizen of
one of the greatest countries of the world."
When Ibrahim left Sulaimaniyah in Kurdistan
(northern Iraq) with his wife and three children in
1996, Saddam Hussein's regime was targeting Kurds
such as Ibrahim, an engineer, who were helping to
rebuild the northern province.
Ibrahim first settled in Buffalo, N.Y., and then
moved his family to Nashville, where the large
Kurdish community includes several of his friends.
Now, with Saddam out of the picture, Ibrahim has
another reason for seeking U.S. citizenship: Only
Kurds who have become U.S. citizens are able to
return and help with the reconstruction of Iraq.
Tennessean com
Top |
Kurd Net
does not take credit for and is not responsible for the content of news
information on this page
|
® 