Advanced Citizenship

It took more than 80 years for Gregorio Valverde to decide he wanted to become a U.S. citizen. It took several more years to get the paperwork done.

And by the time the 92-year-old Mexican immigrant passed his citizenship test, he was too old and too sick to travel to a swearing-in ceremony held earlier this month more than 100 miles away.

So on Friday, the federal government came to him.

As part of a growing effort to reach out to homebound immigrants only an oath away from citizenship, a federal magistrate visited Valverde in Santa Paula to conduct a one-on-one ceremony before dozens of family members and Latino advocates who helped put him on the path to naturalization.

“After all these years of trying to become a citizen, I finally made it,” said Valverde, clutching an American flag and certificate of naturalization shortly after raising his right hand and pledging allegiance to the United States.

While not unprecedented, such “home oath” visits are rare, said Sharon Gavin, a spokeswoman with the Immigration and Naturalization Service in Los Angeles. However, she said the INS is trying to perform more such ceremonies in cases where prospective citizens are incapacitated or too ill to attend larger ceremonies far away from home.

In Valverde’s case, he had been given an appointment to take part in a ceremony with thousands of others in Pomona earlier this month.

But because he is confined to a wheelchair and suffers from a host of health problems, there was no way he could attend. He turned to El Concilio del Condado de Ventura for help.

The Oxnard-based Latino advocacy group had helped Valverde file his initial citizenship application in 1997. Although he came to this country in 1915 with his parents as they fled the turmoil of the Mexican revolution, he hadn’t given the idea much thought until then.

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After all, he had become a legal resident decades ago. And he had managed to find plenty of work--everything from picking lemons to laying railroad ties--over the years, despite his noncitizen status.

But in the mid-1990s, when an anti-immigrant mood was sweeping the state--culminating in the passage of ballot measures aimed at cutting off services to illegal immigrants--Valverde’s children began encouraging him to change his immigration status.

Through El Concilio, he was able to apply for naturalization and take his citizenship exam. And when access to the swearing-in ceremony became an issue, El Concilio staff members tapped the expertise and influence of Guillermo Gonzalez, Southern California director for Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s office.

Gonzalez, a former Oxnard resident who has worked with El Concilio over the years on similar issues, urged INS officials to do everything possible to accommodate Valverde.

The agency’s response was to send a federal magistrate to Santa Paula.

“It became apparent that in this particular case we were racing against the clock because of his age and because his health was deteriorating,” Gonzalez said. “I thought if we didn’t do something quickly, he might not have the opportunity to become a U.S. citizen.”

On Friday, Valverde got the opportunity of a lifetime.

At his son’s home, against the backdrop of an American flag taped to a kitchen wall by El Concilio staff members, U.S. Magistrate Willard McEwen reminded Valverde and his family of the importance of the oath he was about to administer.

“When a person becomes a citizen, it’s a very serious thing,” McEwen told the gathering, which included Valverde’s three children and many of his eight grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren.

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“It’s probably more meaningful to someone like Mr. Valverde than it is to any of us who were born citizens and received that blessing automatically.”

With that, McEwen had Valverde raise his right hand and repeat the oath of citizenship. Family members snapped photos and preserved the moment with videotape recorders, before cutting a cake covered with red, white and blue frosting.

Wasting no time, El Concilio staffers immediately registered Valverde to vote. He registered as a Democrat, much to the delight of El Concilio board President Hank Lacayo, who doubles as chairman of Ventura County’s Democratic Party.

But Lacayo was quick to point out that Friday’s ceremony was not about partisan politics.

“You’re going to inspire others to do this much earlier,” Lacayo told him.

Valverde never thought much about being an inspiration to others.

From the time he left his family in El Paso as a teenager, hopping a freight train and coming to California, all he ever tried to do was work hard and raise his children. He has cleared tumbleweeds to make way for farmland in the Imperial Valley and poured concrete foundations for houses and office buildings in Orange County.

During the Great Depression, he found plenty of work picking crops, and during World War II, toiled alongside so-called braceros recruited from Mexico to work the fields.

He said he even tried to enlist for active duty during the war, although he was rejected because he has a clubfoot and was told he wouldn’t be able to run.

Valverde said he told the military recruiters he was signing up to fight, not to run.

It’s that spirit that Manuel Valverde says he admires most about his father. And the younger Valverde said now that he has the right to vote, he expects his father will be able to exercise his spirit in other ways.

“He’s got a sharp mind, and I think he’s got a lot of years left,” he said. “Now he can begin another episode in his life.”