First Called to Duty, Then Citizenship

At Mount Vernon yesterday, the three military men remained stoic as they were swarmed by photographers and TV cameras and held out by federal officials as the best that immigration has to offer.

"There's too much immigrant-bashing going on," said Dan Kane, a spokesman for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service. Featuring the three military personnel "sends a powerful message that immigrants make a meaningful contribution to the United States."

Legal permanent residents serving in the military were given the right to apply for citizenship immediately by a wartime executive order signed by President Bush in 2002. In peacetime, permanent residents in the military are required to wait three years.

Nonetheless, there has not been a rush to obtain citizenship, according to Emilio Gonzalez, USCIS director. "After the executive order, we have not seen hordes of people joining the military," he said. "These people don't join the military just to become citizens. These people joined the military because they wanted to serve."

Cherubin, who immigrated in May 1999, joined the Navy a few months later and is based at Anacostia Naval Station, was the first to be called to receive his citizenship papers yesterday.

After high school in Haiti, there was nothing for him. He just waited for the day when his father, already in the United States, would call and say his visa had come through.

"When you live in a country like Haiti, you don't think about your future," Cherubin said. "You live day by day. The biggest dream you could possibly have is coming to the United States."

Cherubin joined the military so he could go to college. It wasn't until the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that he found a sense of purpose to his life in the Navy. An aviation planner, he was deployed to an aircraft carrier and readied F-18 hornets for bombing runs over Afghanistan.

"To be part of that, to be among the first people over there fighting back, it was a beautiful feeling," he said.

During the ceremony, Glenda Joseph slipped to the front row to snap a photo of her husband. She'd been after him to get his citizenship for the 14 years they'd been married. He'd always wanted to but procrastinated. Then he was deployed for 10 months, running convoys throughout Iraq, and there was no time.

Based in Quantico, Joseph is an aviation assignments monitor and is charged with moving 10,000 Marines around the globe. He moved from St. Vincent to Brooklyn, N.Y., with his family when he was 6. He's been in the Marines for 16 years, has earned two bachelor's degrees and is working on a master's degree.

It was time to make it official.

"At least," he said, "now I'll be able to vote."