6,500 Become Citizens in L.A.
About 6,500 people were sworn in as American citizens today in two massive naturalization ceremonies at the Universal Amphitheater. About 3,200 of them took the oath in the morning and the rest in the afternoon, making the day’s inductions the second largest ever staged in Los Angeles.
Manuel L. Real, Los Angeles’ chief federal judge, administered the oath to people from 94 countries, with most of them coming from Vietnam, Mexico, South Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines. About one-sixth of the 6,500 new citizens are from Vietnam, boat people who left the Southeast Asian country in the early 1980s and have just met the five-year legal residency requirement for citizenship.
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