124: Welcome to America
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Everybody's taking the oath stand up. The BB-EZ Chicago Public Radio International is American life. And everybody speak up now so we can hear your voices. I hereby declare on oath that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state of sovereignty. But I will support and defend the Constitution. Monday, U.S. District Court in Chicago, the Honorable Abraham Lincoln merits presiding, 30 men and women, standing, taking the oath to become citizens. What would you say to somebody becoming a citizen of this country? So help me God. Now shake hands with your neighbor on each side and congratulate yourself. Let's give a nice hand, folks. Sit down for a minute now, we'll give a little bit. There's not much a judge can do that pleases everybody. But this pleases me. And I'm particularly pleased to do this because my pa-ma were immigrants. And my father's protestant was his citizenship papers. In the first few years of election time I suggest who he might vote for. He said, "Don't tell me how to vote. I'm a citizen like you." Judge Maravitz is 93 years old. He still runs the citizenship ceremony only because he loves it. He's been part of the Chicago political scene going back to the battle days of the original daily machine four decades ago. His office is lined with signed photos of politicians in that era. And luminaries, Jimmy Durante, Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope. But there is something about welcoming people into this country that somehow conjures a picture of life here. It evokes a picture of life here that is rosier and simpler than, for example, the grimy world of Chicago politics. It is as if when welcoming people into this nation we tell them not about the competitive harsh realities of life here sometimes. Not the country we see around us every single day, but the country we want to believe this is. Every once in a while I'm introduced as a self-made man. For you I've got to meet one, we're a self-made lady. I've had help all my life. There's a push in some of the big push in others, but a kind word from everybody. Reach out to help people. You are a little good deed every day. Regardless of their color, regardless of their religion. And don't judge anybody by the color of their skin or the church they go to. But reach out every day. Don't let a day go by. [Music] The citizenship ceremony is so moving that immigration officials, whose job is normally to enforce all the laws that make it hard for people to become
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