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Yes, I am now a fully-fledged citizen of the USA. Friday afternoon I stood up with 34 Mexican nationals and swore the oath of citizenship. We had to absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty. I had known in advance about state and sovereignty but giving up my potentates, that’s going to hurt. Sometime over the Christmas break I will put in my passport application. Until I get a US passport I am unable to travel back into the country, should I leave.

In other news, we came back from Sedona to find a letter from the hospital saying that the culture taken from my most recent abscess contained MRSA but that I had been given the proper prescription and that they hoped I was feeling better. I certainly am feeling better than when I went in for the lancing but I feel like this is not over yet by a long way. The first wound doesn’t look too bad, but the second is still healing and it just feels to me like it’s going to form another boil. Every tiny itch or sensation on my body screams to me “here we go again”, it is not a good feeling. And I swear that if I have to have any more lancings I am going to exercise my US constitutional right to own a gun, and put it to my head.

After 10.5 years of living in the USA, today I was approved for citizenship of this fair country. It’s not a done deal until I stand up with 1000 of my closest Mexican immigrant friends and swear the Oath of Allegiance but the INS today decided they don’t mind me having one of them shiny blue passports (it will look real nice next to my shiny red UK one).

They were running behind with the interviews, or at least my officer was. The other officer was going through them real fast so my 11.45 appointment didn’t start until 1.15 and all the while people were coming in, being interviewed and leaving. Very frustrating. But the lady was super nice and when she saw I was English said that this would be the quickest one of the day and it definitely couldn’t have been more than 15 minutes.

She verified the paperwork from my application, had me sign a bunch of photos and forms in my neatest joined-up handwriting and then gave me the civics test. I’ll give you the questions in case you want to play along:

• Name the state capitol of CA
• Who nominates the Supreme Court Justices?
• Who is the governor of CA?
• What colour are the stripes on the flag?
• Where is the White House located?
• What year was the constitution written?

I then had to write the sentence “I bought a blue car today”. She said she would spare me the insult of having to read something to her.

And that was that, she shook my hand, said I had completed the final step in becoming a citizen. In 1-2 months time I’d hear about a date for the oath ceremony. It’s too bad you can’t just take it there and then, I’ve no real interest in big pomp and ceremony but it looks like I have no choice. But, unless the approval review turns up some mistake in the paperwork, my days of dealing with the INS/USCIS are finally over. Unless that is my father or sister wants to immigrate……

Finally managed to get my application sent and received by the INS/USCIS and have a receipt notice. The notice lists my priority date as April 9th, but the online case tracking system lists it as April 16th. A quick look at the current priority dates being processed shows San Diego is working on September 12 2006 so it looks like there is a 7-8 month turnaround time right now. Plenty of time to learn my US history…