Pottstown Mercury
Valley Forge National Historical Park and U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services welcomed 20 new citizens on Tuesday, July 5, during a special Independence Day-themed naturalization ceremony held in the park.
The ceremony took place in front of the historic building where General George Washington lived and worked during the six months of the Valley Forge encampment in 1777-78 and featured congratulatory remarks from Valley Forge National Historical Park Superintendent Rosalyn Fennell, Congresswoman Madeleine Dean, and Valley Forge Park Alliance board member and naturalized citizen Fazel Syed.
U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services Field Office Director Kathleen Bausman administered the Oath of Allegiance to the 20 citizenship candidates, who came from 16 different countries: Congo, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti, India, Israel, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Liberia, Mexico, Romania, Russia, South Korea, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and Uzbekistan.
Remarks from Fennell and Dean made connections to the thousands of civilians and soldiers who persevered together through hardships at Valley Forge during the American Revolutionary War and to the hard work of citizens more than one hundred years later to protect and preserve the area as Pennsylvania’s first state park in 1893.
Valley Forge Park Alliance board member Fazel Syed shared his own journey to becoming a United States citizen and spoke passionately about what citizen stewardship means for American democracy, urging the 20 new citizens to participate and inherit the legacy of stewardship represented by our national parks.
U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services annually commemorates the nation’s birthday and the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence with multiple naturalization ceremonies across the country the week of July Fourth. This ceremony was part of a collaboration between USCIS and the National Park Service to host more naturalization ceremonies at national park sites.
The public is encouraged to visit www.nps.gov/vafo for more information about Valley Forge National Historical Park, and uscis.gov for more information on USCIS and its programs.
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