The crowds filed into an amphitheater in Rocky Mountain National Park with Longs Peak visible in the background last August as the National Park Service (NPS) officially celebrated its 100th birthday. Fourty-four people from 22 countries stood and raised their right hands to take the naturalization oath to become U.S. citizens. Being here in the park only made visible why Steven Phillips had decided to join these ranks.
“There’s so much of the beauty of the country in the national parks,” he says. “We need to have more places like this, because there are so many people and so many cars. It’s sort of overrun. But it’s an American want—to see the beauty of the outdoors, and to see beautiful places. There’s not enough of them.”
After more than two decades as a legal permanent resident, Phillips decided to apply to become a citizen this past January. He sees movements afoot to privatize public lands and an imminent need to address climate change as pressing issues. And having recently moved to the swing state of Colorado, he wanted to do what he could to shape the future of the country he’s come to call home. Past years, he has not been a part of the process, but he says: “I want to vote this time.”
The “Other” Best Idea
Luck of the draw landed Phillips in one of the roughly 115 naturalization ceremonies hosted in national parks in 2016. These events have taken place in parks since 2006, but this year, to mark the NPS Centennial, Immigration Services aimed to host 100 ceremonies in parks. They hit that mark on September 16, at Teddy Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota.
“National parks are part of your American birthright, so it’s a real natural connection—what’s a thing I can do on my first day as an American?” says Jeffrey Olson, public affairs officer with the National Park Service.
New citizens were sworn in at Colorado’s Great Sand Dunes, near the base of Lassen Peak in Lassen Volcanic National Park in California and in a chapel at the Women’s Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls, New York.
The parks are among the rights and responsibilities inherited by new U.S. citizens, a manifestation of the country’s traditions—and a legacy they now have a say in how to preserve. As Rich Fedorchak, chief of interpretation and education for Rocky Mountain National Park, said during the ceremony: “These new citizens are now the public we speak of when we speak of public lands.”
Blazing the Trail
Each year, 38,000 people are sworn in as U.S. citizens. The road they must take to get there requires spending years—at least five, unless you marry a citizen or serve in the military—as a lawful permanent resident. The application includes an interview and exam, in which candidates must demonstrate a firm grasp of speaking, reading and writing English, as well as knowledge of U.S. history and the Constitution (some people use flash cards to memorize details). What’s more, they must also show that they are of “good moral character.”
The ceremony is a parade of speakers and, when indoors and equipment allows, video messages showcasing America and passing along best wishes from the president. There are rounds of the national anthem, and “America the Beautiful,” the master of ceremonies prompting new citizens when it’s “customary, though not required,” to put a hand over your heart and face the flag, and when to hold and wave the postcard-sized American flags in their welcome packet.
Then an official guides new citizens through their oath of allegiance, which begins with disavowing loyalties “to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereignty,” and promising to “defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies foreign and domestic.” They expressly declare they will bear arms on behalf of the country when required to, or perform noncombatant services as needed. This final step is over in less than two minutes, and once the oath is recited, candidates are considered citizens.
Even after 34 years with Immigration Services, Tracy L. Renaud, associate director, management directorate for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, still chokes up watching the range of emotions that fly across faces during these ceremonies. “We know how difficult it is for people, and the support system they need,” she says. “It’s a lot of studying. It’s a lot of preparation. It’s more than just paperwork.”
She draws from local details when she writes speeches for ceremonies in national parks, and, at Rocky Mountain, she mentioned the high peaks and the mountain streams as metaphors for the difficulties and the renewal citizenship candidates face.
“Just like the 359 miles of trails that are located here in the park, some of you may have journeyed long and blazed your own trail or path to citizenship,” she said.
Phillips left South Africa in the late 1980s, when it seemed that apartheid would rule until a bloody, chaotic end. Living there was unimaginable, he says. America provided opportunity—Stanford’s second-to-none computer science program was followed by a job, and that job led to a green card. He has since bent his degree toward conservation, writing software scientists use to study and manage wildlife and endangered species.
“The generation that we are a part of is the one that’s going to decide how much of life on Earth will survive, because the mass extinction that we’re currently at the beginning of is taking place over the 100 years that we’re going to be alive,” he says. “It’s kind of hard not being apocalyptic about it when you see how much is threatened and how little is being done about it, but we do what we do—which means voting.”
The Long View
Others step back and take a wider view of the landscape, both for our parks and our nation. During a ceremony at Petroglyph National Monument in New Mexico, surrounded by reddish-black mesas etched with more than 20,000 images from former inhabitants, superintendent Dennis Vasquez put his park in a larger context.
“In some parks, we tell stories of the earth’s history. We talk about rocks that are billions of years old. We preserve places that tell the stories of mountains and valleys and canyons and rivers and lakes that have been forming for so long that it’s difficult for us to grasp,” he said.
Vasquez went on to explain how parks can tell small stories as well, stories that resonate with new citizens—of the African American preacher’s son who grew up to be a pivotal figure in the civil rights movement or the Mexican American farmworker who led the campaign for better working conditions in California’s fields. These Americans made extraordinary choices in the face of difficult times.
“It is in these small stories that large truths are revealed, truths that inspire us or that make us pause and consider our own lives and our own contributions,” he said. “Today is a day of new beginning for you, and in fact, today and every day is a day of new beginning for all of us. Each of us, every day, is given another chance to live up to the principles and the values of this country: fairness, justice, equality, freedom and opportunity. Each day, we are given another chance to recommit to these values.”
