By Sara Oppenheimer
For The Charleston Gazette-Mail
Eusebia Felix Capcha de Ferreyra applied for U.S. citizenship years ago, but arthritis and financial setbacks turned the process into repeated trips to immigration offices for interviews.
“She didn’t want to quit — it was one of her dreams,” said Samanda Ferreyra Felix, a native of Peru — like her mother — and U.S. citizen for 16 years, who translated for her mother. “We want to participate in all parts of citizen life. For example, to be able to vote. We like to be part of that.”
Capcha de Ferreyra, now living in Huntington with her daughter, joined more than three dozen new U.S. citizens welcomed at a naturalization ceremony Friday at the Robert C. Byrd Federal Courthouse in Charleston. The ceremony was presided over by Frank W. Volk, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia. C. Haley Bunn, chief justice of the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, gave the keynote address.
New American voices
Forty-one people from 24 countries took the naturalization oath, received citizenship certificates and heard from several speakers.
For many of Friday’s new citizens, like Capcha de Ferreyra, the ceremony marked the completion of a long journey.
“She applied for citizenship two years ago,” Ferreyra Felix said about her mother, “But there were financial issues, and she had to go up stairs to sign the papers. She can’t do that with her arthritis.”
Ebubekir Sittik Daglilar, a Turkish physician who delivered the ceremony’s new-citizen address, spent nearly two decades on his journey to become a citizen.
“We are all temporary inhabitants of the globe,” he told his new fellow citizens. “We should push our boundaries of tolerance, empathy and love and compassion to one and each other.”
Jack Jin West, 19, first came to America with his mother and little brother at age 9. He skipped his college classes for Friday’s ceremony, where he was joined by everyone he considers family, including his friends and members of his church.
“I call them my adoptive family because they’ve been here for me since I got here,” he said. “I have a lot of people who care about me.”
What’s next
Citizenship ceremonies usually occur triennially at the Federal Courthouse in Charleston. For information on the naturalization process, visit the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website. Take a sample citizenship quiz that contains some of the same questions Friday’s new citizens answered at civicsquestions.com.
Read more from The Charleston Gazette-Mail here
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