A 101 Year Woman Finally Becomes a U.S. Citizen

On October 12th, 1909, Garcia Maturey, who was just a baby crossed the border with her single mother into Brownsville, Texas. Maturey and her mother lived a quiet life in Texas. In 1940, Congress passed the World War II Alien Registration Act, which  required noncitizens already in the country to register with the government. Just before the start of World War II, Maturey received a "Certificate of Lawful Entry" card from the U.S. government issued to her on April 4, 1941. She never imagined that little document would make it possible for her to become a U.S. citizen. She figured it came with an expiration date. She never really knew the status of her citizenship in the U.S. but would frequently cross the border to visit her family back in Mexico. In 2008, the U.S. started requiring everyone to show Passports for crossing the border. Worried of being deprted Maturey had her niece, Yolanda Ovalle, take her to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Brownsville, and that's where they met Sheila Lucio, a 29-year veteran of the government agency. When Lucio tried finding Eulalia Maturey's name in the computer system, she couldn't find it. "If you came to us before we entered the computer age, we didn't have your records," said Lucio. So Maturey pulled out that 69-year-old "Lawful Entry" card. Her niece says she took care of that little piece of paper for decades. With that document, government officials were able to find her Legal Permanent Resident documents in the archives in Washington. "We would never have been able to establish her registration status without that document," said Maria Elena Garcia-Upson, a public affairs officer with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. "It would have been hard to prove."  Maturey explains "I want to spend the rest of my days in this life living legally in the United States," Maturey told CNN this week. "I was raised here, and I want to die here."


This just shows that not everyone that immigrates into this country is out to do this country harm. Obviously this is an example of someone that lived a peaceful life and just wanted to get her citizenship just to finally say, after 101 years that she a citizen of the country she had lived in her whole life.  The "Certificate of Lawful Entry" reminds me of the DREAM Act that was unfortunately unable to pass last month. If we had done this type of actually before, and nothing traumatic resulted from it, why can't we just pass the DREAM Act?


http://edition.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/10/11/101woman.citizen.document/