Oath Experience in Brooklyn
Finally, citizenship. I "oathed" today in Brooklyn. Here's how it went down:
I arrived at the courthouse at 8:15 (probably should have come a little earlier, as the courtroom was already almost full by the time I got up there) and went through security. I recommend leaving your cell-phone (or camera) at home or in your car, as they make you check it at security, and the last thing you want to do after a 5 hour ceremony is get into one more line to retrieve your phone. We were then immediately ushered to the courtroom on the second floor. The row you sit in when you get in to the courtroom determines your order of processing for the rest of the event, so if you have the opportunity you may want to choose carefully. At my ceremony, the first rows to be called were those in the right section of the room (as one faces forward), then the center, then the left, in all cases from front to back. So the ideal scenario is to be on the right in one of the front rows, because then if you like you can spend most of the morning upstairs in the cafeteria (where you can watch the proceedings on video).
I estimate 300 people at the ceremony. The diversity of the group was in stark contrast with the stern faces of old white men gazing down at us from their portraits on the walls. It reminded me that the real benefit of naturalization is not so much to ourselves as to the enrichment it adds to the country as a whole.
There were three IOs. If any of them mentioned their name, I missed it. One acted as master of ceremonies, a lively and entertaining Jamaican-American fellow. The other two were fairly robotic African-American ladies who barely spoke. The male officer provided some instruction on how to fill out form N-445 (ie the back of the oath letter). One thing he mentioned that I didn't realize: USCIS needs this form to close your A-file; if you neglect to return it to them at the ceremony, then even with a US Passport in hand you may be treated at the port of entry as an alien based on your status in the system.
They then called everybody row by row (in the order mentioned above) to the front of the courtroom. Two of the officers sat at one desk and reviewed the answers on the N-445, annotated and signed it, and collected green cards. The third officer sat at another desk, in front of which each row lined up again, where applicants examined their naturalization certificate for errors and signed their (full) name.
This took a few hours. In the meantime, there was no explanation of how to apply for passport or update social security status, as some have described in their oath experiences. Even the voter registration people only arrived at the very end.
There was a little bit of drama when they found out that one lady there was supposed to be at an oath ceremony in Central Islip (at the same time). I felt bad for her, but I'm not sure how you make a mistake like that. I think they worked out an arrangement for her whereby she could stay for the oath in Brooklyn and then go pick up her certificate at the other courthouse.
After all the processing was done, the judge kept us waiting another half hour. The Jamaican-American officer tried to pass the time by getting everybody to stand up and be applauded when he called the name of their country of origin. It was a little silly, but amusing to watch some of the participants protest his pronunciations of their homelands (or the way it appeared on the USCIS roll he was reading, eg. Kampuchea (former Khmer name) for Cambodia). Central Asian nations he didn't even try to pronounce, but spelled.
The judge finally appeared and made up for her lateness with the brevity of her speech, which was only about three minutes long. We repeated the oath and the pledge, but the national anthem was not played. Finally they called us by name, in the original order of rows, to pick up the certificate and hand in the oath letter.
The relief! Those of you who have been through this know the feeling; those of you who haven't soon will. (I was a little disappointed though that the A# still appears on the naturalization certificate, as though USCIS is taunting us, "you see, you'll never be free of our clutches!")
First stop as a USC: to Kinko's to make a copy of my certificate. There's no way I'm going to release my certificate, earned from one inept government agency, to other inept government agencies without at least having a copy. (USPS lost my friend's passport application, including original documents!) Second stop: Kings County Board of Elections (quite close to the courthouse). I didn't register at the ceremony because the volunteers seemed a little disorganized and didn't report directly to the Board of Elections (rather, to an advocacy group)--with only two days left to register, I wasn't taking any chances. Third stop: Social Security Administration (security line was long but very efficient inside). I held off on the passport application for the moment so that I can show off my certificate to friends and family. As for the DMV, I'm not going to bother now because my license has to be renewed in a few months anyway.
Thanks to all the helpful people on this forum. I honestly don't know what people in our situation did before forums like this one. They must have just jumped in the ocean and swum home in frustration.