A proud, wet walk on a freeway, then citizenship

No doubt about it, Francisco Navarro-Robles says, it’ll be a cool story to tell the grandkids. How in late May 2008, he was on the way to getting his U.S. citizenship when he feared the traffic crawling into downtown Los Angeles would make him late for the ceremony at the Convention Center.

And how he told his friends he was getting out of the car and then walked the last mile or so on the shoulder of the 110 Freeway in intermittent rain that soaked the shirt, tie and shoes he’d worn just for the occasion.

Pretty good story.

But it’s a story that started 17 years ago when he crossed the U.S.-Mexico border and illegally entered the country. “People always talked about the United States, and I wanted to see if what people said was true,” he says. “I was worried. I was only 18, crossing the border with a friend. It was not a pleasant moment in my life.”

Unable to speak any English, he got successive jobs washing dishes in a restaurant and then packing boxes in a grocery store. In 1992, a Santa Ana steakhouse hired him as a busboy. He knew that many people assumed he was an illegal resident, but not speaking the language caused him problems he hadn’t expected.

“It’s a nightmare,” he says. “You feel like you’re nobody. People try to talk to you, you want to be nice to them, but you can’t answer or say anything back, you don’t understand what they’re saying. The worst part is people ask you for something, like a glass of water, or ‘Hey, can I get a napkin?,’ and I’d just walk away. It was hard for the first couple years.”

He decided to learn English and started by watching cartoons on TV -- hours and hours of them. At work, he vowed to pick up a word or phrase every day.

This is a glass. This is a napkin.

The manager liked what he saw. A few years into the job, he told Francisco he could wait tables. “I wasn’t feeling comfortable talking in English,” he says, “but I told myself that if he believed in me, I could do it. The first couple months, when I’d try to take orders from people and make conversation, the only thing I could do was take their order and ask how they wanted their steak cooked. That’s it. If they asked me something else, I’d say, ‘I’ll be right back.’ ”

His English improved by using it, just as his boss told him it would. As conversation flowed easier, tips got better. His boss told Francisco he was bumping him up to bartender, where understanding English would be even more important.

As the years passed, Francisco realized he wanted to become a citizen. Part of the motivation was practical. He got married in 1998 and went to buy his first car. “Everything was perfect, I got the car, but the guy said, ‘We had a little problem. You’re dead already.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?,’ and he said the Social Security number I was using was for a person who died many years ago.”

Using the fake ID made him feel bad, that he had failed to do things the right way. “You’re breaking the law, but you’ve got no choice. It was kind of embarrassing to tell my wife I was illegal. She never knew until I told her.”

Because his wife was U.S.-born, Francisco was able to get a resident card, although he says he waited three years to apply for the card so his wife wouldn’t think that’s why he married her.

The resident card set him on the path to citizenship that culminated last month. I ask if he feels Mexican or American. “I feel 100% Mexican, but I feel American inside of me. I’m proud to be Mexican, but I love this country. Half my life I’ve lived in this country.”

He formally applied for citizenship last year and nervously awaited the swearing-in ceremony. About a year ago, he started taking English classes at the Marketplace Education Center in Santa Ana, mainly so he could write better. He has disc problems in his back, has had two surgeries and hasn’t worked for three years, he says. He and his wife divorced in 2006.

I ask about swearing-in day. “Big-time nervous,” he says. “I got my clothes ready the night before so in the morning I could take a shower and go. I wore a tie, the first time in many years. I wanted to look good, because it was one of the most important days of my life. I wanted to look sharp. We hit the road at 9 in the morning, because I wanted to take my time.”

The ceremony was at noon, but at 11 a.m. he and his two friends were stuck in a freeway jam. “I started getting nervous at 11,” he says. “I said this is not good. Another 20 minutes go by, it’s 11:20, I looked at my girlfriend and said, ‘I don’t care if I have to walk, I’m going to make it,’ so I jumped out of the car.”

To his surprise, he wasn’t alone on the roadside -- obviously, he said, other panicky would-be citizens were heading for the same ceremony.

The rains came and drenched him. He said he looked skyward and said something like, ‘Thanks a lot, God, I buy new clothes and this is how you reward me.’ ”

But it wasn’t an angry lament. Not on that day. Plus, the walk gave him time to think.

“Since the day I walked into this country to that day,” he says, “my whole life just flashed back to me.”

He thought of the discrimination he felt when he first arrived in the U.S., the slights real or imagined and the problems in immersing into a new culture. He also thought of the country that had been kind to him and given him a future.

Did any moment stand out on swearing-in day? “During the national anthem,” he says. “You can hear it a million times, but at that moment it’s so different, it feels so different. You actually listen to the anthem. It made me cry.”

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.