Citizenship

Giovanni Lanaro was born in Los Angeles, grew up in La Puente, attended Cal State Fullerton, and coaches and trains at Mt. San Antonio College. Yet, when the torch is lighted during opening ceremonies this summer at the Beijing Olympics, the world's sixth-ranked pole vaulter will be with Mexico, not the United States. "I will always compete for Mexico," said Lanaro, whose mother was born there. "I will never compete for any other country."

On his last Fourth of July as commander in chief, President Bush made his first visit to Monticello, home of Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence. Bush visited the estate in Charlottesville, Va., to attend the swearing-in of 72 new citizens from 30 countries, including one from Myanmar. He sounded emotional as he talked about spreading freedom to other countries, one of his rationales for going to war in Iraq.

The number of Mexican-born immigrants who became U.S. citizens swelled by nearly 50% last year amid a massive campaign by Spanish-language media and immigrant advocacy groups to help eligible residents apply for citizenship, according to a government report released Thursday. Despite Mexicans' historically low rates of naturalization, 122,000 attained citizenship in 2007, up from 84,000 the previous year, with California and Texas posting the largest gains.

Maliwan Clinton recalls her first taste of America with a shudder. In this fabled land of the free, she was enslaved behind razor wire and around-the-clock guards in an El Monte sweatshop, where she and more than 70 other Thai laborers were forced to work 18-hour days for what amounted to less than a dollar an hour.

Francisco Menjivar has spent months memorizing answers to civics questions like, "Who wrote 'The Star-Spangled Banner?' " (Francis Scott Key) and "How many voting members are in the House of Representatives?" (435). He knows answers to most of the 96 questions and isn't about to put that hard work to waste.

Federal authorities have released a Los Angeles man from immigration detention after acknowledging that he is a U.S. citizen. Guillermo Olivares Romero, 25, was held at an Otay Mesa detention center from Sept. 25 until Oct. 9, when an American Civil Liberties Union attorney presented his birth certificate, school and vaccination records to immigration authorities. He was released that day.

Almost 200 U.S. troops serving in Iraq celebrated Tuesday's elections in a special way: They were sworn in as U.S. citizens. But the 186 men and women -- who hail from 60 countries -- didn't get to cast their first ballot for Democrat Barack Obama or Republican John McCain. They became citizens too late to vote this year. Dressed in fatigues and standing under a giant U.S. flag, the troops took their citizenship oath at a ceremony in a domed marble hall at Saddam Hussein's old Al Faw Palace.

Undaunted by the Nov. 4 election results, several persistent plaintiffs have pursued lawsuits asserting that Barack Obama is constitutionally ineligible to hold the office of president because they say he is not a natural-born citizen. Their claims were rejected in lower courts, but they have filed motions and appeals to the Supreme Court. -- What do these lawsuits say? One filed by Philip J. Berg, a lawyer in Lafayette Hill, Pa.

Immigrant advocates said Thursday that long-stalled efforts to legalize millions of illegal migrants, crack down on employers who hire them and win more family visas would be revived next year and could possibly succeed in early 2010 following sizable Democratic gains powered by record turnouts of Latino voters in the November election.

California's Democratic senators introduced legislation Wednesday that would put some illegal immigrant farmworkers on a path to citizenship and revamp a little-used agricultural guest worker program. Flanked by Republican colleagues, immigrant advocates and a California pear grower, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer presented the bill as matter of survival for labor-strapped farmers across the country. "Today, many farmers are on a precipice," Feinstein said.