Flooded Basements and Naturalization

A guest post from a 2013 Impact Fellow

Thursday night my tita’s (aunt’s) basement flooded due to the neighbors kid leaving the garden hose on.  Intentional or unintentional is unclear, but that is besides the point. While helping my tita salvage items from the basement, I found a bag that had my late lolo’s (grandpa’s) naturalization certificate, which I have never seen before.  Funny how Vi found hers a week earlier also. My lolo has had LPR status since the late 70’s, but his date of naturalization was not until July of 1993.  What I’m wondering is, why it took so long?  I’m still trying to gather information my family. I will keep all of you up to date on this story if possible.

Questions to you all:

1) Have any of you ever seen a certificate of naturalization from any of your relatives if they are US Citizens?  If so, did they show it to you willingly, or did you have to stumble upon it randomly like Vi and myself?

2) Maya and I were also discussing, why, in my case, this document ended up being mixed up with a pile of papers in a box, or in Vi’s case a junk drawer?

Happy Monday!