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| NEW CITIZENS | |
 September 28 ,1999 
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ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: The swearing-in ceremony for new American citizens is a solemn event. SPOKESPERSON: Do you hereby declare on oath that you absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereignty of which you have been a subject or citizen... ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Jacqueline La Fluer came from England in 1980. She married an American and now has two children. MAYOR WELLINGTON WEBB: We are not a perfect nation, but we always strive and work towards perfecting our nation. And now you will have a chance to be part of that process. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Daming Jin and her husband immigrated ten years ago from Beijing. They now live in Fort Collins, Colorado and have a two-year-old daughter. JAMES MEJIA, County Official: As new citizens you have the opportunity and the right to now vote. We have for your convenience a table set up to register to vote so you can take part in your very first election on November 2nd. (Cheers and applause) ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: La Flure and Jin are among more than 600 immigrants
from 79 different countries who took the oath of citizenship in Denver
on September 17, Citizenship Day. Across the country more than 20,000
immigrants were sworn-in on that day. Yesterday at the Museo de Las
CARO DeGROOT, Immigrant from Mexico: I want to hear about education. What are we going to do? We're so far behind compared to other countries. Nobody seems to care. If it was a gold medal in the Olympics, we would all be worried and mourning almost if we lost a gold medal. And we're far behind in education, and nobody worries. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: What would you like to hear a candidate say about education? CAROL DeGROOT: I would like to hear about specific measures to create a change, things... to provide the teachers with the tools and support. We give them the responsibility, but we don't give them the tools or the authority to exercise such responsibility. We tell them, here, assemble this. And we give them pieces missing, parts unfinished, no instructions, no recognition and no authority to do it. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Mr. Grant, what do you want to hear candidates talk about? ELLSWORTH GRANT, Immigrant from Bahamas: For me, it's got to be the economy. Any candidate that's talking about or has a platform to keep taxes down, keep the deficit down, keep inflation in check, those are key issues for me because being in the publishing business, that's really the first thing that goes is advertising. So it would be nice to have a flourishing economy like we currently have. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Ms. La Flure, what do you want to hear? JACQUELINE LA FLURE: I want to hear about gun control. It's a big problem. There's been a lot of recent events that have struck nerves with a lot of people. I know we have amendments in our Constitution because I have studied these. I think the amendments need to be looked at again. I don't think there's any reason why anybody, unless they're law enforcement, should be carrying automatic weapons. And this is... this has worsened, especially here in Colorado with our latest events. I have two beautiful, beautiful young children, two little girls. I am not going to wait until something happens to my children before I do something about this. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And Ms. Jin, what do you want to hear? DAMING JIN, Immigrant from China: I would like the candidates to address how shall we raise our kids and if the kids have certain behavior that is wrong, we've got to stop them in the beginning instead of nobody caring. Sometimes the parents just ignore a child's certain behavior in the beginning. There is so much violence and not enough educational programming on TV. And we need to... we need to make sure what kind of messages we send to our kids and what do we want to teach them? ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Is this a point of view that you come to because it's quite different here? DAMING JIN: Exactly. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: What you see children exposed to as compared to China? DAMING JIN: Exactly. I think in China, parents and school and the whole community discipline the kids a lot more. And it's just a really different culture. The parents and the child and the whole community should take more responsibility on our kids. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: You'd like candidates to address that issue. DAMING JIN: Yeah. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Mr. Majalik, what do you want to hear? DEAN MIJALIC, Immigrant from Croatia: Well, I would like to hear more than one issue. But if I have to focus, I would focus probably on economy as well and taxes. One of the very important things to see would be simplification of taxes. Also, some aspects on foreign policy, of course. I'm a new citizen here, so foreign policy still interests me and as well as gun controls also. -- the greenhouse effects and how that issue can be worked out with other countries, especially the third countries or non-developed countries that do not have resources. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: If you had to pick one thing that a candidate came out with in a really major way, one concern, one issue, what would it be? The thing that most worries you at this point? DEAN MIJALIC: Well, issue that probably worries me the most is how much people, when they approach, they use the religious terms in their approaches. I would like to see the separation of the church and religion to be implemented more. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And that's because of the problems religion has caused in your own country? DEAN MIJALIC: As well as historically looking back. We can go back for centuries. I think that religion as an issue is the freedom of everybody to choose whatever religion they want to exercise. On a political field, I don't think that should be an issue. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: You all come from different parts of the world. America's made up of all of us who come from different parts of the world. Should the candidate be addressing any questions that have to do with our melting-pot nature? ELLSWORTH GRANT: I certainly think it's a question that should be addressed and addressed in a serious way. We're going more towards a global economy where it is all this intermixing with people from all over the world. And America is becoming more diverse. It's going to be incumbent upon America and its government step up to the plate and make sure that everyone feels a part. Generally, we're going to be competing against economies that are pretty homogenous. And they're coming at you as one. We have to create from all these disparate parts one force that's really operating in the global economy. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Ms. DeGroot, do you feel off way to make your thoughts about education heard? Do you have groups that you work with or can you... do you write letters to the editor? Is there a way, now that you're in America, to do this? CARO DeGROOT: Oh, there certainly are. There's a lot of freedoms that we don't enjoy as much in other countries. I think there's ways whenever there's wills. That applies to the individual level, to the family level, to the community level, to the political level and overall, as a nation. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And you would like the President to talk about education or the presidential candidates to talk about education. What else? CARO DeGROOT: I would like to see some business appreciation. Every single dollar in America is generated by business owners, by entrepreneurs, by people that are willing to sign on the dotted line -- people that give us a job, people that give us education, people that give us encouragement. And the trend both in taxes and in a perception of the business, the business owner is the least liked individual. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Do you agree with that? ELLSWORTH GRANT: Well, I have a slightly different take on it. I think the businessperson in America generally, I think, is looked up to and glorified in a certain way, particularly from Hollywood. There's a certain glamour associated with success in America. That was the impetus that brought me to America certainly -- being from the Bahamas sitting in a little small fishing village dreaming about what it could be like over there and going to bed listening to the radio, things like that. You just imagine what it would be like. And the success that you see coming from America is undeniable. There's a certain attraction there, absolutely. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Ms. La Flure, you told us also what you'd like to hear about gun control. What other issue do you want the candidates to address? JAQUELINE LA FLURE: Child care. I think child care is a big issue in this country -- more so because I have two little girls. When I looked for child care, when I needed child care, it was very difficult. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And you'd like a candidate to actually specifically address issues of child care. JAQUELINE LA FLURE: Child care. I think that this should be more... it should be a government-controlled... I know in Switzerland, it is. And I think that having seen it in Switzerland and looked into it in Switzerland, I was quite envious when I came back of what they had and we did not have. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Is anybody so far in this campaign addressing the issues? CARO DeGROOT: Not specifically. I don't believe so. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: How about you? Are you hearing anything? JAQUELINE LA FLURE: No, nothing. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Any of you hearing what you want to be hearing? ELLSWORTH GRANT: Not really. I think to some degree, they all touch on the economy and talk about keeping taxes down. And so in a way, everybody is touching on it. But it all... it seems so superficial a lot of times. And you really need... I'd like a candidate to emerge that really is going to talk in a serious way. I think they're all holding their cards close to their chest because there's still a long way to go before we... before nomination. I keep that in mind. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Okay. Well, thank you all very much for being with us. And congratulations again. |