Our Long Journey Home

For me and my family it has been a memorable July this year, and this year's Independence Day celebrations will never be forgotten; my husband and I became citizens of the USA on Friday, July 6.

It’s been a long journey for us; it started back in 1992 not long after we got married. Kevin was a student working on his doctorate in Edinburgh Scotland when he mentioned that it would be a great experience for us if he did a two-year study program in the United States. As a supportive newlywed I thought it was a great idea…and it was only for two years before we would move back home.

In January of 1994, we moved to Austin, Texas, where my husband would continue his studies at the University of Texas. I found a teaching job and we had fun adapting to life this side of the pond. Our oldest daughter was born in June 1995 and we came to realize we loved living in the U.S. Helping us make a decision to live here longer than our original two-year plan was the recession in the UK at the time. It became clear very fast that Kevin was going to find it extremely difficult to find a job in research. There were jobs here so we would stay.

Kevin accepted a job offer in Connecticut so we moved here in June of 1996. Kevin’s new visa would not allow me to work so I threw myself into being a stay-at-home mom and we added to our family with the arrival of our youngest in 1997.

Once she was born we started the long process of applying for green cards. We had to hire an immigration attorney and go through labor certification. They had to advertise Kevin’s job and prove there were no citizens capable of doing it, hence the need to hire him. This took so long that we were worried our visas would expire so we started another application; this one was called “Outstanding Researcher” and set out to prove his research was important and could not be done by anyone else. It was nerve-wracking to say the least. 

Eventually we were given green cards and we could apply for citizenship after five years. So this June we both took our civics test and were interviewed, we passed and were invited to a naturalization ceremony on July 6 in Hartford.

Our youngest daughter was in Europe so Kevin and I set off with our oldest Amy and our dear friend Sherry. We were sworn in by the Honorable Judge Martinez. She began by telling us that she was honored to be part of our day and that she herself had a grandmother who moved here from Greece as a young woman and her husband’s family were immigrants too. Because of the proximity to Independence Day, Senator Richard Blumenthal came to our ceremony too and told us about his father’s family that had emigrated here from Germany.

We were among 61 others that got sworn in that morning with 34 countries being represented. There were families from Venezuela, Bosnia, Israel, Poland, China and many more. I was thrilled our daughter was there, one day she can tell her grandchildren about the day her parents became citizens of the country that they had been calling home for a long time.