New Citizens’ Fourth Is a First: They Belong

A woman from Iran will serve champagne with her spareribs. Another, originally from Mexico, plans a family trek to the Queen Mary for fireworks. A man from Vietnam will revel in what he considers the ultimate American pleasure: watching the hoopla on television.

Throughout Los Angeles, tens of thousands of people will mark this most symbolic of American days as new U.S. citizens, experiencing an extra twinge of pride.

They were lured from all over the world by job prospects, family ties, the need to flee repressive regimes in their homelands or the simple promise of opportunity. Most have long practiced the time-honored Fourth of July rituals: hot dogs, barbecues, fireworks displays. But today will be different. Today, at last, they belong.

Gloria Marleni Almingor, 43, remembers her first Fourth of July in 1981, watching the fireworks on Santa Monica beach, puzzling over a country that could celebrate its independence with such zest and overindulgence. She had reluctantly followed her husband from their native Guatemala and felt detached and alone. Today, in her fifth week of citizenship, she better understands the impulse to celebrate.

Almingor lives in South Gate with her husband, Mario, and two young sons, Boris, 5, and Santiago, 11 months. Three older children live away from home. Once a cashier in her hometown of San Marcos, she now works as a housekeeper.

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I never understood the dream of America until I came here. My husband was the one that dreamed. It’s funny because he had to leave the country for a while and hasn’t finished the [citizenship] process yet and I’m the one that got there first.

The kids were really happy about it. They said, “OK, mom, no more tortillas, no more beans, just hot dogs and hamburgers from now on.”

We’re planning to go to Griffith Park and make a barbecue with the family and then to South Gate Park for the fireworks.

Right now I feel like I have to celebrate more than that first year on Santa Monica Beach. It’s so exciting realizing that I’m really a part of it all now. That’s the main thing with America, feeling like you’re a part of the whole thing.

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B. Naqvie was 3 when his father, a painter and art teacher, ran afoul of conservative religious conventions in his native Pakistan and decided to start a new life with his family in England.

Naqvie prospered there, earning a degree in psychiatry. But just as his father had chafed at the cultural restrictions in his homeland, Naqvie felt constrained by Great Britain’s class structure.

He came to the United States in 1984 to experience an “unbiased lifestyle” and further his education. Thirty-six and single, he works part-time at Catholic Charities while pursuing the credentials he needs to practice psychiatry. He lives in Hancock Park.

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When I was back in England, everyone said if you want to learn more in your field, go to the top educational institution, and that was in America--and likewise, if you want to learn about human equality you go to the country that most reflects it, and I judged that to be America too.

When I first came I thought I would just learn and go back, but day by day I began to think about it and when I put up the Pakistani flag and the U.S. flag side by side, I realized you can only have one, just as you can’t have 20 wives or 20 fathers. This is a flag that is telling me that life is like a rainbow, so why should I not carry that flag?

I would like to work for the United Nations and go back to a less developed country, perhaps to work with women and children and to tell them that life is based on humanity and equality. That is what I learned here.

And that is what I try to do here. I spend about 10 to 12 hours a week volunteering, and today I’m going to deliver flowers and flags to hospitals and to elderly people, then take them out for a colorful evening.

It’s something I do all the time, but today will be special. I won’t observe the Fourth of July as an event but will really feel it.

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Moheb Hanna, 33, came to the United States from Alexandria, Egypt, nine years ago. A civil engineer in his hometown, he too felt hemmed in by religious strictures in his country.

Now a maintenance engineer who lives in La Habra, Hanna says it was initially harder to get work here--it helps if you know someone--but that he has found more opportunity, more choice. And there are other differences.

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The thing I like most about this country is the women. Things are more open here, and it is easier to know women than back home.

Everyone is scared to do something wrong, which is not necessarily bad. Because here, sometimes I get confused as to which is the right way and which is the wrong way. But in my homeland, relations between men and women are more of a family match than a match between two people.

On the Fourth of July, I do what everyone else does here. In the past, I’ve gone to see fireworks or gone on camping weekends. But this time I have a lot of things to get done at home. It’s different because I’m a citizen and America feels like home to me, so in a way it’s going to be a very normal day.

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Paul Tran, 58, lived an adventurous, often perilous life in Southeast Asia before coming to the United States. Early on, he fled a repressive regime in his native Cambodia, going to Vietnam and working for the U.S. government translating sensitive documents. He soon settled into relative prosperity working for the U.S. Embassy as an education officer.

When the Communists took over, he fled south, acquired farmland and eventually established a successful recycling business. But he was always fearful of the repercussions of his earlier government work. In 1990, when his daughter, who had come to the United States years before, petitioned for her family’s entry, Tran departed with no regrets. He and his wife, Men Nguyen, live in Monterey Park. Six years later, he remains impressed by the grandeur of his adopted homeland.

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Every Christmas we take two or three weeks to go visit our children in Georgia and we travel all around the South. There is a bridge that I’ve been over that crosses from Florida to Alabama that must be 12 miles long. We see so much beautiful landscape.

We celebrate [Independence Day] every year, but this time we’re planning a big party. I want to watch the fireworks also, but maybe on TV. That’s what we do over here, isn’t it?

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Olga Manoukian came to the United States five years ago, driven by the increasingly restrictive economic and social conditions of her native Iran. She came alone, leaving her mother and brothers back home. It took her nearly 10 months to find her first job, working as a mail room clerk. But the Glendale resident, 33, knew there was no turning back.

Manoukian, an ethnic Armenian, followed her dream and became a U.S. citizen two weeks ago. She works as an administrative assistant at a Sun Valley firm.

The rest of her family is facing the dilemma of whether to join her and start their lives over again. When they ask her, she is noncommittal. It must be their decision.

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I hadn’t really celebrated July 4th before--maybe watched TV--but not the way the Americans do going out and everything. But I decided to take a U.S. history course a while back to find out what made this country what it is, and now I think it will be a very big day.

I wanted to find out what went on in the past, what the people here went through during the world wars when the United States became a very powerful country. What I found out is that Americans were already very good politicians and the foreign policy was very good. That was important for me.

People ask me what the U.S. has to offer me, but I think it’s good to ask what I can offer the U.S. I came here as a refugee and they accepted me, and it’s my turn now to do whatever I can for the community.

I’m planning on going to the Queen Mary to watch the fireworks--maybe barbecue. Actually, we already started celebrating last week because my next-door neighbor got his citizenship on the 27th. We were drinking champagne, but there’s enough left over.