After seven years in the United States, Spanish teacher Javier Moreno is now a United States citizen.

Moreno was born in Colombia, and attended the District University in Bogota there. While at college, he studied English, North American literature, and North American culture. He became an English teacher before taking up an internship program in the states. The Amity Intern Program had teachers from other countries serve as teacher assistants, which gave them an opportunity to experience the U.S. and its culture. For the internship, Moreno stayed in the U.S. for a year under a tourist visa before returning back to Colombia to share what he had learned about the American culture. 

“The first year I was here, I made zero money here but I spent all my savings. I spent all my savings traveling, because I wanted to see all the sights and I wanted to go to New York, I wanted to go to Washington, every big city in the U.S.. I almost visited them all in that first year because at the beginning I thought I wasn’t going to go back. I thought, like yeah maybe I won't have the chance to see this later so I have to do it now,” said Moreno. 

Alas, the same school that had Moreno for the internship eventually offered him a full time job. He took the job and came back to the U.S. for his second year under a work visa which allowed him to stay for a longer period of time. During that time, he met his wife and after he got married, he got his work permit which acted as an upgraded version of his work visa. 

“There's all sorts of waiting times. You know that your work permit is going to come in the mail, but it could be in six months or maybe just one month, so all of these waiting times depend on a lot of things and you sometimes don't really know what that is,” said Moreno. “I initially came during the Obama administration and then, because it was the switch of who the President was, I was in the middle of the Trump administration and I just got in during the Biden administration, so all of that transition usually delays things too. Some workers just say that every paperwork-related activity takes longer while they make the decision of the government.”

After his fifth year in the states, Moreno obtained his green card, which allows immigrants to be residents for long periods of time—with some lasting up to ten years—and can later be renewed and extended. 

“At the beginning I think (going to the U.S.) was just merely curiosity. And then later, I think things start to happen in your life; you start developing friendships, and I met my wife, so some things just fall into place, and it's hard to detach yourself from that and you no longer see yourself living somewhere else or going back to your previous life,” said Moreno.

Last March, Moreno applied for citizenship after being eligible after six and a half years. Almost a year later, he became an official United States citizen. 

 “You definitely have to be patient. You have to be convinced that you want to be here, that this is the place where you want to be, that this is the place that feels like home for you. Otherwise, I feel like there is no selection process in that; like some people will probably stay for a short amount of time and they will feel like, ‘well, I don't really know if I want to be here,’ and they end up leaving and they go back to their home countries. So I would say, very much, the fact of becoming a citizen for immigrants just shows how much they want to be here. It shows how much they love being here and then how much it feels like home for them, because you really have to earn it and you really have to wait,” said Moreno.

Moreno noted one common misconception about immigrants to the United States.  

“There’s probably one same conception that people have. And I wouldn't say this is a stereotype, it's just more in terms of what people know, and they don't know any different—usually having the conception that immigrants are just looking for a better opportunity to be here or a better life for themselves. I already had a bachelor's degree in Colombia, and I already had a good job there. When you travel to another country, universities don't really communicate well with each other. And so my titles and my diplomas and all that weren't as impactful as they were in Colombia, and so my job career kind of took a hit here. It's a little different here so you have to … not necessarily restart from the beginning, but it takes a little while for your curriculum to sort of gain power and strength and all that, as it has the same weight as it used to have. So what ended up keeping me here was not too much the job opportunities, it was more the sense of family and the community that I build here,” said Moreno.

Moreno is ultimately proud of his accomplishment of becoming a U.S. citizen.

“It feels great to have this accomplished. I feel like becoming a citizen is designed in a way that you can only become a citizen if you really really want it, not everybody can become a citizen. I guess that's why people celebrate it and that's why I've had a lot of people coming to me and congratulating me and I didn't really understand that at the beginning, but then again, I'm starting to get this sense of the magnitude of how big it is. I haven't thought about it because I had been immersed in the whole process, but now that I look back and I see it was a really long time and a very lengthy process. And what that tells me is that immigrants really need to want to be here in order to become citizens, and I think that's what's beautiful about it. What that shows is that you just have new Americans that really care about this country and really want to be here,” said Moreno.