When Evaristo Gallegos moved to Cicero from Mexico in 1982, he was a 17-year-old student who knew very little about the United States and even less about what he would do with his life here.
Now Gallegos is a college-educated business owner and proud father of two. The only thing missing, he says, is his citizenship.
“I want to be active in my community here,” said Gallegos, 29, during a break from filling out citizenship papers at Cicero’s first major naturalization drive Saturday at the Pinnacle Bank. “It’s formalizing my status here.”
According to Juan Rangel, a drive coordinator with the Chicago-based United Neighborhood Organization, which was one of the sponsors of the event, many legal residents like Gallegos are likely to get more involved in their communities if they take the steps necessary to become a U.S. citizen. But Rangel said these people often shy away from the process because of language barriers, high attorney fees and fears about the testing process.
“They often have lots of fears,” said Rangel, whose organization was joined by the town of Cicero, the largely-Hispanic American G.I. Forum and the Town Republican Organization of Cicero in sponsoring the event. “But, actually, the process is very easy.”
About 200 Cicero residents-the majority of whom were Mexican-American but many of whom were Italian, Lithuanian, Yugoslavian and Polish-went through that process in the bank atrium Saturday.
They began by presenting green cards and picking up a folder of information sheets. Then they continued on to rows of brown folding chairs, where they filled out the papers, and finally to an interview and identification center, where volunteers took fingerprints, photographs and studied Social Security numbers, driver’s licenses and state identification cards.
Moments after a volunteer pressed Miroslav Stojakovic’s inky fingers onto a blue-and-white card, the 38-year-old native of Yugoslavia talked with his wife, Anica, and a neighbor about what U.S. citizenship would mean to him.
“I came here and I wanted to stay,” said Stojakovic, who in 1989 began counting down the five years required before applying for the status. “I think I’ll feel more free.”
Like the other applicants at the drive, the Stojakovics paid a $95 processing fee to the Immigration and Naturalization Service. They also paid the United Neighborhood Organization $20 for the documentation work-a far cry from the lawyer fees that can run $150 and up.
According to Cicero spokesman Ray Hanania, the applications received Saturday will be reviewed by the Immigration and Naturalization Service and, if the potential citizen has the proper residency, they will be scheduled in two to three months for an interview and 10-question citizenship exam.
Though the citizenship is viewed as a personal goal for many immigrants, Hanania said Cicero, which is about half Hispanic, also can benefit by their change in status. He said the town is trying to help immigrant residents feel more a part of the community. With formal citizenship, he said, they are more likely to do that.
For Auguste Milkovaitis, 95, feeling a part of her community and country of 43 years has been a long dream.
Milkovaitis moved from Lithuania to Kansas and, a year later, to Cicero with her husband and three daughters in 1951. Twice she tried to become a citizen-in the 1960s and in 1980-but she ran into problems.
On Saturday, while working on her identification papers at a table with her daughter, Erna Rudek, 62, Milkovaitis explained why, even at her age, she was going through the process once again.
“I always wanted to be a citizen,” Milkovaitis said. “Because I like very much America.”
