A Fine Time to Become an American|5 Minute Video

Renowned Oxford-trained historian Niall Ferguson recounts his recent experience of ending up being an American citizen. His special impressions are both moving and unexpected– even to him.
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Script:

I picked a fine time to become an American.

It was a grey, overcast morning in Oakland, California. I was among 1,094 individuals of every color and creed, from 85 countries, beginning with Afghanistan and ending with Yemen. We had actually collected, anxiously clutching the requisite documents, outside the rather antique Paramount movie theater.

I wasn’t the only new resident of European origin, but we were an unique minority. Rather to my surprise, the Chinese were the most various group, accounting for close to a fifth of the brand-new Americans.

Yet it was the sheer series of nations represented that was most wonderful. The boy to my right, immaculately worn white, was from Eritrea. He had studied computer science in Wales and had actually at first concerned California to work for NASA.

I approach any encounter with US administration weighed down by fear. So I questioned, would this be like the Department of Motor Vehicles, famed for its Soviet-style antagonism to the public? Or would it be more like the implacable, mean Internal Revenue Service?

In truth, the officials of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services could barely have actually been more affable. The master of events was a genial, balding, bespectacled chap who won his audience over with a virtuoso screen of multilingualism, chatting to us in what sounded like pretty proficient Spanish, Chinese, French, Hindi and Tagalog.

This was really far from a multicultural celebration. Quite the reverse. To get us in the state of mind for our upcoming Americanization, a choir sang a patriotic medley, including a rather baroque setting of the preamble to the constitution, Yankee Doodle, and Woody Guthrie’s This Land Is Your Land.

Well, that did it! The manner in which tune summons large American landscapes (” From the redwood forest/ To the Gulf Stream waters”) always gets me by the throat since, glimpsed in films, such vistas were what first drew me to the United States.

Then came the info about our obligations and rights– specifically, our right to vote, our option to get a passport and our inextricable link to the Social Security system. (Nothing– rather disappointingly– about the right to bear arms. And not a word about the spiraling federal debt we were all now on the hook for.).

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source

Renowned Oxford-trained historian Niall Ferguson recounts his recent experience of becoming an American person. Click https://smile.amazon.com and a portion of every Amazon purchase will be donated to PragerU. Rather to my surprise, the Chinese were the most various group, accounting for close to a fifth of the brand-new Americans. I approach any encounter with United States administration weighed down by fear. To get us in the mood for our upcoming Americanization, a choir sang a patriotic collection, including a rather baroque setting of the preamble to the constitution, Yankee Doodle, and Woody Guthrie’s This Land Is Your Land.