In honor of the July 4th holiday last week, we are celebrating the naturalization of several of our clients, which is when someone becomes a U.S. Citizen. Before becoming a citizen, a person must first become a Legal Permanent Resident, which is colloquially referred to as having a Green Card. Here are just three recent stories.

“My family and I were afraid that my father would come to the house to kill my mother every night,” Litzy says. “Many times, we left the house and went to the mountain to sleep to hide from him.”

When Stan was only 19-years-old, a group of guys he hung out with one night got picked up for breaking into a building. These men—who already had cases pending and who were in search of lighter sentences—claimed that Stan was with them during the break-in. Scared, but lacking the financial resources to effectively defend against the charges, Stan took the first deal that was offered to him.

By the time Barbara Turner* contacted our Housing Department for assistance, she was over $10,000 behind on her mortgage payments. For the past year, she had endured many hardships that made her unable to afford her home, including domestic violence at the hands of her spouse. A stay-at-home mom to her three children, Barbara was determined to keep her family safe. And so she divorced her abusive husband and began to seek full-time employment. Paralegal Molly Howes Jefford says of this, “The loss of income from her divorce is in part why she struggled with maintaining her mortgage payments.”

Although Cameron served faithfully in the U.S. Army for many years and was honorably discharged in the late 1980s, he had encountered many difficulties since that time. As a result, he became addicted to drugs. This addiction affected every aspect of his life, snowballing until he was homeless, without a job, and carrying a lifetime suspension on his driving privileges.

This 4th of July, we are celebrating the stories of three of our clients who recently became citizens and the unique circumstances that led them to choose to become American.