It took Sergio C. Garcia longer to become a U.S. citizen than it took for his native country, Mexico, to win independence from Spain.
It took longer than it took for him to win the right to practice law, becoming the nation’s first, so-called undocumented attorney.
Garcia will be sworn in as a U.S. citizen in a ceremony today in Sacramento – the end of a journey that began in 1994 when he was brought to the country as a teen who knew even then that if he was going to live in the United States, he wanted to belong as a participating citizen.
That it took Garcia 25 years to arrive at the belonging he longed for shows how cumbersome the immigration machine can be for people like him who qualify. His story also shows how family ties – one of several ways to qualify for a green card – can be weakened or broken by distance.