American Citizenship

Texas is home, we plan on staying here for the rest of our lives.  It is nice to finally be able to vote and have a say in how our tax dollars are spent.  It was a long road with lots of paperwork and headaches, but finally it is over.  We are home, this is where we are staying.

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; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.

We moved here in the summer of 1992 with the idea that this was a permanent move.  Immigration procedures are never easy, having a corporate sponsor had it's good points and bad points.  The nice thing is that it is all behind us.  We registered to vote before we left the oath taking and we contacted our representatives the following week.  It was fun to introduce ourselves, let them know we were brand new voters and to give them our opinons on the various piece of legislation being debated.  In Canada, neither of us had ever missed voting in an election, now we can vote here, we will be fulfilling our responsibilities as Americans.

 Saturday, February 26th, we had our friends come out to celebrate this milestone in our life.  We began the evening with the Raising of the Flags.  Of course, living in Texas, the Texas Flag was raised at the same time as the American Flag, but both went up.  It didn't exactly rain on us, but we did have 100% humidity, so it was like walking in water, almost.