Remarks of Eric L. Hirschhorn

Under Secretary for Industry and Security

U.S. Department of Commerce

Naturalization Ceremony

South Puget Sound Community College

Olympia, Washington

October 6, 2016

Thanks for the gracious introduction and good afternoon to you all. I have delivered many speeches in my lifetime but none has given me as much pleasure as this one.

As you know, almost all U.S. citizens are immigrants or the descendants of immigrants. All of my grandparents came here from Central Europe around 1890. Like many immigrants, they left behind a place where they faced a lack of opportunity, discrimination, and sometimes violence.

They struggled after they arrived. They spoke little English at first and faced discrimination on occasion—though nothing like what they had seen in what they called “the old country.” But they worked hard and made their way.

None of them would have expected that their grandson would serve in a senior position in the U.S. Government. Today my paternal grandfather’s citizenship certificate hangs in my office, next to my commission—which was signed by a President of the United States whose father wasn’t a citizen at all.

This is not to suggest that it takes two generations, or even one, for immigrants to succeed in this country. In recent years, two immigrants have served as Secretary of State. Our space program was headed by an immigrant scientist for its first two decades. Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone and founded the American Telephone & Telegraph Company. More recently, an immigrant named Andrew Grove founded Intel Corporation. Today, such well-known U.S.-based companies as Microsoft, McDonald’s PepsiCo, Kraft, and U.S. Steel are led by immigrants who come from such disparate countries as India, South Africa, Australia, Argentina, Cuba, Israel, and Iran.

Each of you is taking two important actions in assuming your place as a citizen of our great country. First, you are declaring your allegiance to the United States of America. Second, you are renouncing allegiance to all other countries, no matter how close your emotional ties to them may be. This is not to suggest that you should forget where you came from or cut your ties with your past. It does mean, though, that this is now your homeland. I am thrilled to welcome you.

Citizenship carries with it not only responsibilities but also privileges. Perhaps the most important of these is the right to vote—to participate in choosing who will govern you. The people who decide how much you should be taxed, how and where your tax dollars should be spent, whether a new highway should be built, and whether our soldiers should be sent to foreign shores must answer to the voters. If the voters don’t like the job an elected official is doing, they have the power to select someone else at the next election.

As it happens, we are only a few weeks from an election that will choose a President, a Vice President, a Governor of Washington, a Senator from Washington, a Representative from this and every other congressional district in the United States, and many other state and local officials. As you’ve already heard, you can vote in this election, and you can register here and now to do so.

Let me close by reminding you that under our Constitution, when you walk out of here today, you are as much a U.S. citizen as someone whose family has been here for centuries. You have the same rights and responsibilities as each of the 325 million people who now are your countrymen. Don’t ever let anyone suggest otherwise.

Please accept my heartfelt congratulations.