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60 GIs become citizens at Afghanistan ceremony

KABUL, Afghanistan — Sixty U.S. service members from countries including Cuba, Ethiopia, the Philippines and Vietnam became American citizens on Monday during a ceremony in Afghanistan.

Maj. Gen. David Rodriguez, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, congratulated the soldiers on their new citizenship and thanked them for the oath they took to defend the United States.

“Today they will swear a second oath to the country they’ve already pledged to defend,” Rodriguez said at a ceremony coinciding with Veterans Day. “An oath of allegiance to the nation they are supporting as a member of her armed forces, deployed in harm’s way, defending the citizens of the world from terrorism.

“There is no better way to recognize the sacrifices they are making here than to grant them the right to call themselves U.S. citizens,” Rodriguez said at the main U.S. base, Bagram.

A day earlier, more than 150 American soldiers in Iraq were sworn in as U.S. citizens during a ceremony at the Balad Air Base in Balad, north of Baghdad.

Citizenship is not a requirement to join the U.S. military, but serving in the armed forces is a way to qualify for citizenship, said spokesman Maj. Chris Belcher.

Christopher Dell, the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, told the soldiers that their presence in Afghanistan, in uniform, is the “greatest possible testament to your readiness for citizenship.”

“As you sit here today you have already sacrificed tremendously for our country,” he said. “You have left your families behind, endured difficult training and placed yourself in great danger, all to serve America before you could truly call her your own.”

Dell recounted how Gen. John Shalikashvili, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, traveled to the U.S. from his birthplace in the Republic of Georgia at age 16, joining the military as a private and eventually earning the rank of four-star general.

“As you know better than I, by becoming a citizen you are opening up a door for yourself within the military,” Dell said. “Gen. Shalikashvili’s story is just one of many tales that inspire us to dream the American dream. It is my hope that today each one of you holds your own part of that dream within you.”

More than 20,000 service members have become U.S. citizens since 2002, Rodriguez said.