I attended a citizenship ceremony today

I attended a citizenship ceremony today here in Silicon Valley, with hundreds of participants. The new citizens came from 60--sixty--different countries, speaking dozens of different languages. The proceedings started with an invitation to the about-to-become citizens to register to vote. And in fact voter registration booths were set up outside the auditorium for the two major parties and I believe some of the others as well. The speaker pointed out that you could get ballots in a wide variety of languages in case your English was too rudimentary to understand the ballot propositions and whatnot.

Then a series of speakers got up and gave lengthy speeches in Chinese, Vietnamese, Tagalog, and Spanish. We sang the national anthem and recited the pledge of allegiance, the about-to-be-citizens on the main floor, and the rest of us up in the balcony. They provided text for both, but some of us already knew the words. The guy next to me was there for a Filipino friend who he said had wanted citizenship primarily so he could vote against Republicans. They played "Proud to be an American" --a Red America anthem I've mainly heard in conjunction with fireworks at 4th of July celebrations on Lake Tahoe.

President Bush gave a little video intro that made the guy sitting next to me squirm. The President seemed sincere, though. The denouement was the group reciting the Oath of Allegiance.

I was there for an Indian friend who as a child in Puna had seen a video of our astronauts landing on the moon and said to himself "I want to live in the country that did that!" On our way out I persuaded him to register. He wanted to register Independent but I explained to him that the major parties had gone to court and defeated the open primary initiative that California voters had passed with a large majority. So here if you aren't a registered Demo or Publican you have no voice in primaries.

This was the first citizenship ceremony I'd attended. I was surprised by the huge variety of source nations; by how moving it was; by how multilingual the proceedings were; by how political involvement was so integrated into it.

Living near the nation's #2 university, I know plenty of people who consider themselves far too advanced to relate to the unabashed patriotism of this ceremony.

They don't know what they're missing. But the new Americans emerging from that auditorium today do know. I admire them for how they persevered in their dream of becoming American citizens. I just wish every one of them had had someone in the balcony rooting for them like my formerly Indian friend did.