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Citizenship Ceremony
KIVA AUDITORIUM Good afternoon new Americans. Thank you for letting me share this special time in each of your lives with you. I am thrilled you have chosen to become a citizen of this great country. You each bring skills and experience that will enrich our community in New Mexico. In return I can offer you the most important thing I know about this country -- the promise of endless possibility as long as you work at it. You know, I spend a lot of time in courtrooms these days - as a judge, not because I’m in trouble with the law - but forty years ago I had my first courtroom experience. It was the summer of 1969 and I was a skinny 12 year old kid then. Until 1969, I was a Pakistani citizen. I was born in Karachi and lived there under military rule for most of my young life. I also lived in Hongkong and Singapore. I knew the cultures of these places intimately. These places were my home. They were all I knew. Even today, I can smell the tropical sweetness of a jasmine flower, I can taste the spicy noodles from the vendor in the market, and I can feel the salty air of the South China sea on my skin. While I lived and grew up in these countries, my future was destined for something else. We arrived for the first time in America -- in San Francisco -- in June of 1969. We spent 3 months there while my mother studied for her citizenship test -- just like the test you have studied for and passed to be here today. At the end of those 3 months, my brother and I stood beside my mother in a quiet San Francisco courtroom. It wasn’t a packed Kiva Auditiorium like it is here now. It was just us but on that day we, too, were sworn in as new American citizens. I can remember the absolute thrill about what was happening to me and to my family. So, I know exactly how you feel today. During those months America came at me from many different angles and I had many firsts. I tasted my first milk shake. I swam for the first time, not in the ocean, but in a mountain stream in a quiet forest. I traded field hockey for softball and played with American kids. I walked the streets of San Francisco where I saw happy longhaired adults in strange clothes. Peace signs were everywhere. I have to tell you, my mother was horrified at the loose behavior. But to me, as a kid, the scene in the streets was exciting -- it was new and fresh and expressive something I had never experienced before. Even more than the hippies and milkshakes, that July there was the picture of a man in space. I remember sitting in front of a small black and white television -- there was no internet then and we hadn’t watched much television -- but there I was watching Neil Armstrong become the first man on the moon. His words have become famous American words: This is one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind. What did I take away from these experiences of this new land of mine? Neil Armstrong’s words encapsulated it all for me -- in this country, all of the small steps add up to greatness. I knew at that moment that I wanted to be one of those small steps. We left San Francisco that summer and I didn’t return to live in the United States until 1973 when I came to college. College. You know, I’d had a good education in the countries I lived in but I really didn’t think that college was a real possibility in any of those places. So, while in college here I worked to assimilate myself into the American way of life. I ate pizza and listened to pop music and dressed in jeans and t-shirts. And I worked hard at my studies. I applied myself 100 percent. I learned that for the new citizen there is no easy path to success courtesy of money or family connections. After graduating from college I became a safety and health engineer for major corporations including on the east coast, and then a restaurant owner in Taos. Fifteen years after graduating from college I went to law school at the University of New Mexico School of Law. Law school opened up new doors for me -- starting with work as a civil rights lawyer, followed by serving as a trial court judge in Bernalillo County and now, this -- an appointment as a judge to the New Mexico Court of Appeals. My experience here isn’t just that I could be anything I wanted to be but also that I got to change my mind -- and pretty frequently and dramatically at that. Trust me, there are not a lot of places in the world where you can have not only one good career but that you can change it. You can go from environmental engineering in a steel mill to scrambling eggs in a small local restaurant to being an appellate judge on a New Mexico court. Today, those doors are open for you, too. You have may come here for many different reasons. You may have come for the opportunities, or to join family. Perhaps you came here to escape danger, or just out of hope for a better life. Whatever your life’s journey, your homelands have fostered the cultures that you bring with you today. You bring with you new languages, new religions, new foods, new music - the list goes on. Don’t forget them. They make you who you are. As important as what you bring from your past, is what you will contribute to the future as citizens. The American dream doesn’t come free or easy. To be successful you have to work hard. I’m sure you have these truths already instilled in you. Let me share with you another thought, another connection between you and your new land. Besides seizing its possibilities, you owe it to yourself and your fellow citizens to give something in return. America finds its strength in the immigrants who come here. New citizens prosper and benefit, and you also contribute and participate. You contribute to the community by bringing with you the values and achievements of your native cultures, even as you assimilate. You contribute by never missing a chance to vote. You contribute by volunteering, by mentoring, by joining the debates of the day, by running for office, by rallying behind and fighting for the freedoms your new citizenship has won for you. In these more difficult times, we need every American to be inspired and to create solutions. So, as each one of you takes your place among the citizens of this country, I ask you to be part of making the choices that face this nation. Don't leave those decisions to others. Make yourself heard. Make a difference. Dare to act. Be part of the community that is this land and this nation. To keep our democracy strong, we need the active participation of all our people. So, to all of you, and to your families, I offer my warm congratulations on this very special day. By choosing to become citizens of this nation, you take your place in a magnificent tradition of all immigrants who have brought so much to this country. In closing, I am reminded of the torch held high on the Statue of Liberty symbolically casting its beacon of freedom across the land. That torch is not just hers to hold aloft. It’s also yours, and mine, to hold high and to do it for our country.
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