تفسیر درس

Hi, this is Kristin. Welcome back to the commentary for the conversation Immigration.

So I thought in this commentary I would talk a little bit about our friend Wat and the process he went through to get his citizenship which was just very recently actually, not so long ago.

So as mentioned in the conversation, Wat is someone that I met in Thailand and we started dating. Then a couple of years later when I wanted to move back to the United States, I wanted him to come with me.

He wanted to come here as well but we needed to get married for that to be possible, for him to move to the United States. So we got married.

And this was, gosh, about more than 10 years ago so it’s a little difficult for me to remember but I— we got married in Thailand and I think then he got a marriage visa, if I remember correctly.

So then when we came to the United States, he actually got the green card which made him a permanent resident. And he got that for 10 years, okay?

So he had to carry this card, which is called— we call the green card. He had to keep that in his wallet as identification that he was a permanent resident here.

And during that time, we decided to no longer be together so Wat, though, instead of going back to Thailand, Wat wanted to stay here. And he’s, y’know, he’s a friend of mine. He’s become very good friends with Joe.

So it was time for his green card to be renewed. As I mentioned in the conversation, it expires every 10 years.

Well, instead of renewing it, instead of getting a new one that would allow him to live here for another 10 years, he decided he wanted to become a citizen so he started that whole process. And what was involved with the process—

Well, actually let me say, he decided to do this, for him two of the big reasons or two of the main reasons is he wanted to be able to vote. As a permanent resident he couldn’t vote.

And he wanted to be able to travel to other countries.

Y’know, it was— he knew, he realized it would be easier for him to get into certain countries, say maybe a European country, if he were an American citizen compared to if he was a Thai citizen. So he did it for travel reasons and for voting reasons. Those were the two main reasons, I think.

And by becoming a citizen, he realized that he would have to give up his Thai citizenship. So in other words, he would no longer be a Thai citizen and that is because in Thailand they do not allow dual citizenship. Dual means two.

They don’t allow, they do not allow— Thailand does not allow their citizens, their Thai citizens, to have a citizenship in another country. Some countries do allow that.

United States, for example, allows that. So Wat decided, yeah, I’m okay to not be a Thai citizen anymore. I want to become an American citizen.

So he started the process. And that process involved him getting— having his fingerprints taken and having a background check done. So what that means is the, I guess this was done through the police.

They would check to make sure he had never been arrested here in the United States and that’s why he had to have his fingerprints taken as well so they could make sure he had not committed any crimes, he’d not done anything wrong, been arrested here.

Then there was— when the day came for him to go take a test— well let me say there was going to be a day for him to go and have an interview and be tested. So he studied for many months before his test.

And the test and the interview, as well as making sure that he had not been arrested, all of that was going to make it possible, if he passed the test, if he had not been arrested, if he passed the interview, that would make it possible for him to become a citizen.

So he studied for many months before going to his appointment for the test. Joe actually helped him quite a bit. He received 100 questions. These questions were related to things about the American government.

They were questions that I didn’t even know. Maybe I had learned them in school but I didn’t remember them and I didn’t know the answers. So he received the questions and the answers and he had to study all 100 of those.

And then he received 30 sentences to practice reading out loud. And he received 30 sentences that he had to practice writing. So the actual test was from those 100 questions about the government that he had to study, they asked him 10.

When he went for, y’know, the day of his appointment, his citizenship appointment for the test date, he was asked 10 of those 100 questions and he had to get 6 of them correct.

And then of those 30 sentences that he practiced writing, he had to write, and he didn’t know which ones they were going to be, just like he didn’t know which of the 100 questions he would be asked, what 10 he would be asked, he didn’t know.

So for the 30 sentences he had to read aloud, there were— he only had to read 1, but he didn’t know because he was given 30. He didn’t know which one it was going to be.

And then for the 30 sentences he had to practice writing, they chose 1 of those sentences for him to actually write at his appointment, the day of his appointment.

So again, he didn’t know which sentence that was going to be. He had to practice writing all 30 sentences, practice reading all 30 sentences, study all 100 questions that they could possibly have asked him.

And then there was the interview, like I said, just asking him questions of how it is he came here to America, which involved me, he came with me. He had to talk about me and how we had gotten married and we had come here but we were no longer together. We had gotten divorced.

Basically, just talking about himself. And he actually had hired, as we talked about in the conversation, he had hired a lawyer to help him through this process.

And so the lawyer was there with him the day of his interview, which is really good. The lawyer couldn’t help him during the test part but during the interview he was there sitting next to Wat, which is really good because Wat was nervous.

Wat is fluent in English but some of the questions that were asked to him, he was nervous and his mind went blank as we say. He couldn’t think, even though he understood the question, he just couldn’t think. And so by his lawyer being there he was able to help Wat answer.

So this was a— that was pretty much the whole process and generally we think that it takes about four months. Now that varies, that— it just depends, person to person and how many people they are trying to process at the time.

But generally, maybe about four months. It actually took longer for Wat because there were some problems with his fingerprints. The first time he had them done they weren’t clear enough to be read so he had to have them done again.

And then there was a problem with he didn’t receive some mail that actually talked about when his appointment was going to be and so that was a confusing situation. So it—

His process ended up being longer than probably normal. I don’t remember exactly how long but longer than four months. But anyway, he passed. He passed and he’s now a citizen and it’s so wonderful because I’ve known him from when he could barely speak any English and he couldn’t read or write any English.

And now here he passed this test which, for me as I said, would have been really difficult with all of the questions about our government. He passed. And he passed the reading and the writing so it’s a wonderful thing to see.

So that’s the process of becoming a citizen and he was able to do that. As AJ said in the conversation, there’s mainly three ways to come into the United States, to marry someone, which is what Wat and I did, to— gosh I can’t even remember— oh, to come in with a work visa and there was a third one. I can’t remember.

But anyway, once you’re here and if you’re wanting to become a citizen, that’s pretty much the process that’s involved.

Alright, this concludes or this finishes our commentary for the conversation Immigration. Have a great month and I’ll see you next time.