My daughter picked up her "Citizenship Certificate" this morning at a USCIS office. They put her through a "ceremony" to get it.
We got our (poorly worded) invitation a couple of weeks ago. It was for this morning at 6:30am at a satellite USCIS office (3010 North Stemmons, about 1.3 miles south of the main 8101 North Stemmons USCIS office (and on the other side of the freeway)).
We showed up about 10 minutes early. There were about 50 people in front of us in a line outside. The security folks were letting people through the door one family at a time. We then went through the normal security scanner (no belt, no wallet, etc).
We were in the waiting room about 20 minutes after we arrived. It had all the charm of a hospital waiting room in the Stalinist gulag.
The line had made it all through security by 6:50am.
At slightly after 7:00, a supervisor-looking person came out and said "Now we are going to do the oath, if you are 14 or older and receiving a certificate stand up, if your child is under 14, one of the parents should stand up. Raise your right hand". Then he mumbled the naturalization oath, asking folks to repeat after him.
Then we sat back down and waited some more.
They called each certificate recipient up, one by one. It took about 30-40 minutes to get to us. When we went up, they had the child sign an affidavit with the oath of naturalization on it (so, everybody effectively took the oath twice). That took a few minutes (much of which was spent trying to decipher what the lady behind the counter meant by "you need to type your name along the side of the picture" - we kept saying "do you mean 'print'?" and she'd say "type" (she meant "print")).
We left at about 7:40, about an hour and 20 minutes after we arrived.
-- My last chance to rant --
My understanding of the Child Citizenship Act and of section 320 of the Immigration and Naturalization Act seems to differ somewhat drastically from the management of the USCIS's Dallas District Office. My daughter became a US citizen over a year ago. The department of State agreed and issued a passport within a couple of weeks. Our N-600 application was simply to allow my daughter to receive a certificate that acknowledges the US citizenship that she acquired a year ago. She never "naturalized", she simply (and "automagically") became a citizen when my wife took the oath.
I find it particularly ironic that they made all the applicants (each of whom is already a US Citizen) take an oath that starts: "I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen". Did my daughter renounce her US Citizenship during that "oath taking"?
The fact that the Dallas DO took more than a year to acknowledge that is astounding - the Department of State was able to figure this out and get her a passport in about 2 weeks.
But, what is the thinking behind the Dallas DO's use of the natualization oath? Which other *citizens* of the US are required to take an "oath of allegiance" to get a government document to which they are entitled? She wasn't joining the army or becoming the US president, she was getting a piece of government ID (for which she was charged $255). And, in addition to taking the oath, she was forced to sign an affidavit swearing out the oath a second time (the worker drone said, "here sign this" as if it was a receipt - but instead, it was a document entitled "Affidavit" that began "I do solemnly swear"). She ended up swearing the naturalization oath one more time than I did during my naturalization ceremony.
I'm not exactly sure why, but this experience left as bad (or worse) a taste in my mouth as any of my other USCIS experiences.
Oh well, I'm done, finis!!!
My daughter's N-600 timeline:
Her Mother Naturalizes: June 1, 2006
Passport application: June 1, 2006 (expedited)
Passport received: June 17, 2006
N-600 Mailed: June 21, 2006
N-600 Receipt: June 28, 2006
Useless Infopass Appt: March 22, 2007
N-600 Letter: June 22, 2007
Citizenship Certificate: July 11, 2007
We got our (poorly worded) invitation a couple of weeks ago. It was for this morning at 6:30am at a satellite USCIS office (3010 North Stemmons, about 1.3 miles south of the main 8101 North Stemmons USCIS office (and on the other side of the freeway)).
We showed up about 10 minutes early. There were about 50 people in front of us in a line outside. The security folks were letting people through the door one family at a time. We then went through the normal security scanner (no belt, no wallet, etc).
We were in the waiting room about 20 minutes after we arrived. It had all the charm of a hospital waiting room in the Stalinist gulag.
The line had made it all through security by 6:50am.
At slightly after 7:00, a supervisor-looking person came out and said "Now we are going to do the oath, if you are 14 or older and receiving a certificate stand up, if your child is under 14, one of the parents should stand up. Raise your right hand". Then he mumbled the naturalization oath, asking folks to repeat after him.
Then we sat back down and waited some more.
They called each certificate recipient up, one by one. It took about 30-40 minutes to get to us. When we went up, they had the child sign an affidavit with the oath of naturalization on it (so, everybody effectively took the oath twice). That took a few minutes (much of which was spent trying to decipher what the lady behind the counter meant by "you need to type your name along the side of the picture" - we kept saying "do you mean 'print'?" and she'd say "type" (she meant "print")).
We left at about 7:40, about an hour and 20 minutes after we arrived.
-- My last chance to rant --
My understanding of the Child Citizenship Act and of section 320 of the Immigration and Naturalization Act seems to differ somewhat drastically from the management of the USCIS's Dallas District Office. My daughter became a US citizen over a year ago. The department of State agreed and issued a passport within a couple of weeks. Our N-600 application was simply to allow my daughter to receive a certificate that acknowledges the US citizenship that she acquired a year ago. She never "naturalized", she simply (and "automagically") became a citizen when my wife took the oath.
I find it particularly ironic that they made all the applicants (each of whom is already a US Citizen) take an oath that starts: "I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen". Did my daughter renounce her US Citizenship during that "oath taking"?
The fact that the Dallas DO took more than a year to acknowledge that is astounding - the Department of State was able to figure this out and get her a passport in about 2 weeks.
But, what is the thinking behind the Dallas DO's use of the natualization oath? Which other *citizens* of the US are required to take an "oath of allegiance" to get a government document to which they are entitled? She wasn't joining the army or becoming the US president, she was getting a piece of government ID (for which she was charged $255). And, in addition to taking the oath, she was forced to sign an affidavit swearing out the oath a second time (the worker drone said, "here sign this" as if it was a receipt - but instead, it was a document entitled "Affidavit" that began "I do solemnly swear"). She ended up swearing the naturalization oath one more time than I did during my naturalization ceremony.
I'm not exactly sure why, but this experience left as bad (or worse) a taste in my mouth as any of my other USCIS experiences.
Oh well, I'm done, finis!!!
My daughter's N-600 timeline:
Her Mother Naturalizes: June 1, 2006
Passport application: June 1, 2006 (expedited)
Passport received: June 17, 2006
N-600 Mailed: June 21, 2006
N-600 Receipt: June 28, 2006
Useless Infopass Appt: March 22, 2007
N-600 Letter: June 22, 2007
Citizenship Certificate: July 11, 2007
