What happens, in detail,when an individual goes to take the US Oath of citizenship? How long does the whole process take? Can children come to the ceremony?
Thanks
I don’t know how long the whole ceremony takes, but when I’ve seen the events shown on TV news, it’s usually done in big groups and people bring their families. It’s sort of like a high school graduation.
I went to a comparable Australian ceremony last year on Australia day to see some friends become citizens. It was held at the local council chambers and there were about 25 people who were becoming new citizens. With them and all of their relatives and friends the total crowd would have been about 200 or so I suppose.
The order was something like:
- introduction from the local mayor
- address from a local dignitary
- taking of the oath
- individual presentation of citizenship certificates, shaking the mayor’s hand, photos etc.
The whole thing took about an hour and a quarter or thereabouts. It was then followed by a BBQ in the park across the road from the council chambers.
Same here in Canada. I guess it’s just easier to do big groups of people than swear in everyone individually. Also, it gives local mucky-mucks an excuse to go make speeches.
When I drove my friend to Sacramento a couple of years ago for her naturalization, we guests were admitted to the balcony of the theater and the participants being naturalized were admitted to the main floor of the theater.
The local mucky-muck, IIRC, was a federal judge. He gave a good, and short, speech. Afterwords, the participants picked up packages which included their naturalization certificates and a couple of trinkets (US flag pin, etc.).
I went to one last year in Atlanta. I think they vary, not just between cities, but based on other factors - sometimes they make a big production of it and other times they don’t.
When I went, the family spent some time waiting around (in a waiting room that reminded me of a cross between a bus station and the waiting room in Beetlejuice) while our alien waited to be interviewed, and then was interviewed, and then formed up in a big room with the other 100 or so aliens to be sworn in.
The friends and relatives sat in a section separate from the aliens while a bureaucrat made a speech and told some jokes. Then they did the oath en mass after which the called each person by name to come up and get their snazzy naturalization certificate.
The whole thing was pretty boring and took 3 or 4 hours. The most interesting thing to me as an observer was to guess which country each person was from. There were people from about 30 countries IIRC.