By Sherri Williams
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
COLUMBUS, OHIO – Meaza Awoke, a native of Ethiopia who lives in Westerville, registered to vote yesterday and plans to cast a ballot for the first time in her life in November.
Awoke, 44, co-owner of the Blue Nile restaurant with her husband, Mequanent Berihun, said that in the 16 years she has lived in the United States she has seen the economy and employment decline and affect her business.
“Small businesses are dying because the economy is bad,” said Awoke, who hopes the next president will create jobs. “People aren’t eating out. Our customers have been laid off.”
Spanish teacher Carmen Ladman gleefully accepts a naturalization certificate from federal court deputy Fran Green to the cheers of her students from Columbus School for Girls. Ladman was the last of 300 new citizens to receive a certificate at yesterday’s ceremony at Veterans Memorial.
Doral Chenoweth III | dispatch
Spanish teacher Carmen Ladman gleefully accepts a naturalization certificate from federal court deputy Fran Green to the cheers of her students from Columbus School for Girls. Ladman was the last of 300 new citizens to receive a certificate at yesterday’s ceremony at Veterans Memorial.
Carmen Ladman used to plan her trips home to El Salvador around her country’s presidential elections so she could vote. After becoming a U.S. citizen yesterday, she won’t have to travel so far to cast her ballot this year. She will vote in America for the first time.
“How important this election is for this country made me apply (for citizenship) to vote,” said Ladman, 52, who has lived in the United States 12 years. “I’m a believer that we all have to do something.
“If I don’t participate in the process, I don’t have the right to say this is right or this is wrong.”
Ladman, of Worthington, was among 300 people who became citizens yesterday at a ceremony at Veterans Memorial. Many of the new Americans, ranging in age from 18 to 79 and hailing from 73 countries, completed voter-registration forms afterward.
Completing the long citizenship process and living in a politically important state will drive most of these new citizens to the polls, said Paul Beck, professor of political science at Ohio State University.
“New citizens really take their rights as citizens seriously,” Beck said. “You can expect these people to show up at the polls in November.”
More than 2,900 people have been naturalized in Columbus since January. U.S. District Judge Michael H. Watson, one of three judges at the ceremony, told the new citizens: “Exercise your right to vote and engage others. Many lives have been lost fighting to preserve this precious right of citizenship.”
Ladman, a Spanish-language instructor at the Columbus School for Girls for 11 years, discusses immigration issues in her classes. Yesterday, 46 of her students witnessed a civics lesson in action when they watched her take the citizenship oath.
Brothers Manuel and Rafael Rizo, who were born in Mexico and moved to this country in 1997, sat next to each other and took the citizenship oath together.
Rafael Rizo, 21, said he’s glad he is now officially an American so he can vote to improve conditions for immigrants. “I’m looking at the candidates and who is for freedom, jobs and who is doing more stuff for immigrants,” said Rizo of Delaware.
Becoming a citizen is important to Yelena Chaykovskaya, 61, a native of Uzbekistan, because she feels at home here. In her native country, poverty and violence made life difficult.
But now she is concerned about the challenges facing her new nation, especially war. Chaykovskaya, who lives in Alexandria in Licking County, plans to vote to address the country’s needs.
“Right now America has very big problems,” she said.