ROME, GA – While border security and immigration debates rage in the United States, Rome, Georgia keeps on doing what the Constitution allows.
In a courtroom in the United States Courthouse in Rome, 47 individuals from 22 countries and five continents took the Oath of Allegiance to your-country-tis-of-thee, raising their hands and becoming card-carrying citizens.
“It’s done, it’s over,” Kenya Lewis-Lozin told Northwest Georgia News, which reported that Lewis-Lozin spent nearly two years going through the rigors to become a citizen.
Senior U.S. District Judge Harold L. Murphy presided over the ceremony, who gave the new citizens a short lesson on their new rights as American citizens.
“You now live in a land of equal opportunity,” Northwest Georgia News reported. “Take advantage of these new opportunities.”
Murphy explained their new legal rights and how they now had the right to due process under the American legal system, and were protected from cruel and unusual punishment by the government as well as unfair search and seizure by police.
“These rights protect you and all of us as individuals against the tyranny of oppressive individuals and dictative governments,” the judge said. “Don’t let your freedom be taken from you, fight for your rights and enjoy your new lives in a free country.”
The judge, whose wife is a naturalized citizen, sympathized with the new citizens, saying, “I know the sorrow that comes to swearing to another sovereign. I understand how difficult it is to get here.”
Representatives from Congressman Tom Graves’ office, as well as members of the Daughters of the American Revolution and the League of Women Voters lined up to shake hands and hug Rome’s new citizens following the ceremony. They were invited to enjoy refreshments courtesy of the DAR, and all new citizens were encouraged to register to vote with the assistance of the LWV.
