After spending 19 years in a refugee camp, Anita Sarki has a place to call home.
The Beaverton, Ore., resident became an American citizen on Friday. As she was surrounded by friends, Sarki echoed a verse from the Bible: “This is my promised land.”
Sarki was among 33 people who took the oath of allegiance in the fifth annual citizenship ceremony at Fort Vancouver National Historic Site. The new Americans came from 19 different homelands, including the former Soviet Union.
Sarki was listed as a citizen of Bhutan — even though the kingdom in the eastern Himalayan Mountains expelled her family in the 1990s.
It was part of a long-standing ethnic dispute. Her family had moved to Bhutan generations earlier from nearby Nepal.
“I was born in Bhutan, but I don’t feel Bhutanese,” said Sarki.
Members of that community were declared to be illegal immigrants two decades ago. Along with thousands of others from the Nepali ethnic group, “We had to leave,” she said.
“I spent most of my life in a refugee camp in Nepal,” Sarki said. “I came here in 2008.”
Friends who witnessed Sarki’s accomplishment included Mark Nicklas, a pastor at Beaverton Foursquare Church. As missions pastor, Nicklas said he visited that refugee camp in Nepal back when it was a tent city.
“Then they got bamboo and straw to build huts,” Nicklas said.
Refugees started coming to the U.S. in 2008, “And a lot of them live in Beaverton,” he said.
The naturalization ceremony was part of the annual celebration of Constitution Day and Citizenship Day. Keynote speaker was Bob Knight, president of Clark College and former commander of Vancouver Barracks — the site of the ceremony.
After congratulating the 33 new citizens, he shared some personal history and noted what they all have in common.
“I am an immigrant from another country,” the retired Army officer said. “I was born in Great Britain.”
His father was an American military officer serving overseas; his mother was born in Glasgow, Scotland.
When she became an American citizen, “I remember how excited she was, and how excited I was,” Knight said.
Citizenship Day is commemorated every Sept. 17 in honor of the signing of the U.S. Constitution in 1787. In 1952, President Harry Truman signed a bill formalizing the celebration of Citizenship Day. In 2004, Congress established Sept. 17 as Constitution Day and Citizenship Day.
The National Park Service and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service have an official partnership though which they co-host naturalization ceremonies in national parks.
