05.03.01 Citizen Exam
Today I had to go to San Jose for my citizen interview. The day before my lawyer had called that he
could not come himself, but that his assistant would be there.
I wore a tie for the occasion (there is
a Dutch saying that reads “one never knows how a cow catches a hare”) and arrived
on-time, my attorney was waiting for me.
First thing she asks me was whether I had my tax returns with me. Immediately, my mood changed from being relatively
calm and confident to exceedingly nervous (the experience was similar to the
one I had in JFK recently (when I arrived there early and happy after a
relaxing ride from New Jersey with a driver who was a consumate football fan
and has a library of matches that includes all worldcup matches since 1966) and
the lady at the ticket counter told me that no, I did not have an electronic
ticket, actually).
My nervousness persisted throughout the
long wait in the waiting room. When the
case officer finally came to call us it turned out that he and the lawyer knew
each other well. I relaxed somewhat when
he said that my records had all come and were clean.
He walked us to his office and there I
was really only a sidebar to their conversation about this and that. He would occasionally turn to me and direct a
question at me, such as, first, what my name was. I was not expecting that and stumbled over my
own name (my parents called me Robert Erik, because ‘Erik, by itself, was just
too short’. They never intended to use my
first name—indeed I remember it was quite a surprise to me when I learned my
first name was not Erik. So I don’t
respond to Robert (or, worse, Bob), have never introduced myself that way,
never put it on my business card or on my academic papers, but for all things
official, when my name actually matters and has legal implications I am Robert
(and to the great delight of everybody that knows my wife and I are Robert and
Roberta)) and immediately started to sweat, which was not good because he then
asked me to write my whole name in cursive, which I never do, and I forgot a
letter, which I just left as I did not want to correct it, so now I will never
be able to reproduce that again. Then he
asked me some other questions that I was able to answer without much
difficulty. Finally he pulled out a
sheet of questions. I had been preparing
for these questions the day before, but the first question was what are the
three branches of government and after rattling off the executive and the
legislative branch, I could not come up with the judicial branch, although I
said the supreme court. My lawyer
growing impatient said “can we move on to the next question?” but the officer
said “I think it is on the tip of his tongue” and so I struggled on and was
finally able to produce the answer when he helped me with the first
letter. The next question was “what is
the constitution”. This was a question I
had discussed the night before with Karen and Mark and Jordan, who is taking
American history at school. I quizzed Jordan and he
said it is the document in which the American government is drawn up. Neither Karen nor Mark had corrected him, so
I had taken the answer to be correct, and had not checked the answer
sheet. So this is what I told to the
officer. He said “Nice try.” So I said, “and it is the document that is
also the ground law of the country” (in Dutch it is called the ground law, but
as soon as I said it I knew it was unlikely to be the right term. He was encouraging, and said “That’s right
and what are those laws called?” I
answered “Supreme law” and thankfully that was correct. The next questions were simple such as who
the senators of California
are, and some other easy questions that even I could answer. He interrupted me as I went down the list of
questions and said “that’s fine.” In
part they are just testing whether you can read and speak English. So I did pass the test and I will be sworn in
as a citizen of the United
States some time later this spring. I sent out a quick message to all my American
family and most of them sent me such nice notes welcoming me to the citizenry
that it alleviated the ambivalence I feel about voluntarily joining a country
whose current administration’s foreign and domestic policy I abhor. Moreover, Peggy had made a cake with an
American flag on it.
4:25:32 PM 
|
|
