A blind immigrant wins his five-year battle to become a citizen.
A five-year fight for citizenship ended with a closed, five-minute swearing-in ceremony Tuesday for Palestinian refugee Zuhair Mahd. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials, known for routinely conducting mass swearing-in ceremonies of new citizens in downtown Denver, excluded the media for the brief presentation of a certificate of naturalization to Mahd. Some of Mahd’s family and friends attended. “It’s over,” Mahd, 35, said on the windy steps outside the USCIS building, waving a U.S. flag. “Someone asked me, ‘Why do you even want to be a citizen after all this?’ In my mind, this is a country with good people that get up every morning to do the right thing — just to be good people. I wanted to be part of that.”
A journalist and lawyer, Bruce Finley has investigated local, national and international issues with on-site reporting in more than 40 countries. In his position as a staff writer for the Denver Post, he is focusing on environment-related news including water challenges, the oil and gas boom and wildfire.
