{"id":288663,"date":"2018-11-15T06:00:13","date_gmt":"2018-11-14T20:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=288663"},"modified":"2018-11-15T06:00:13","modified_gmt":"2018-11-14T20:00:13","slug":"new-citizens-welcomed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/new-citizens-welcomed\/","title":{"rendered":"New citizens welcomed"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_288665\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-288665\" style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/New-citizens-pix-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"399\" class=\"size-full wp-image-288665\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-288665\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">U.S. citizenship applicants take the oath of allegiance during a Veterans Day naturalization ceremony at the U.S. District Court of Guam on Nov. 13. (Joint Region Marianas Public Affairs)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><strong>ASAN, Guam<\/strong>\u2014It was a moment of great joy and celebration for the 50 individuals who became U.S. citizens during a special Veterans Day naturalization ceremony at the U.S. District Court of Guam in H\u00e5gat\u00f1a last Nov. 13. <\/p>\n<p>Hailing from China, Germany, Japan, Mexico, the Philippines, South Korea and Vietnam, each new citizen made a lifelong pledge to bear faith and allegiance to the constitution and laws of America. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cEach of you chose to become an American, and each of you, as an American, has earned the right to call this country home, not just because you took an oath, but because you believe in the opportunity of freedom and the chance to be something greater,\u201d said Joint Region Marianas chief of staff Capt. Hans Sholley. <\/p>\n<p>A handful of sailors attended the ceremony and were invited forward with Sholley by Magistrate Judge Joaquin Manibusan Jr. to help lead the new citizens in reciting the pledge of allegiance. <\/p>\n<p>The sailors were there to support Naval Special Warfare Unit 1 Command master chief Matt Heinonen, whose wife Melina Heinonen was naturalized. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s very special, and I\u2019m blessed to be American now,\u201d Melina Heinonen said. \u201cI\u2019m happy that all the military guys came, too. Just to be here was very emotional.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Heinonen himself expressed how honored he feels to be an American and to serve the country. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a privilege to serve in the armed forces. It\u2019s also a privilege to be American,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ASAN, Guam\u2014It was a moment of great joy and celebration for the 50 individuals who&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":288665,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[46,23269,23270,1241],"class_list":["post-288663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","tag-ceremony","tag-guam-it","tag-melina-heinonen","tag-south-korea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}