Legal Immigration To US

Why would people from Mexico risk possibly going to jail or death to illegally cross into the US? This might well be part of the answer.

Clutching a small American flag as she posed for a photo, Maria Montenegro wore the fatigued but satisfied smile of someone who had just completed a marathon. In a sense, she had.

Montenegro, 59, also was holding a piece of paper: a citizenship certificate that she and 24 other newly minted Americans had just obtained in a naturalization ceremony on the National Mall. Asked how long she had been waiting for the moment, the Mexican-born housekeeper said, "Thirty years."

Maria's tale isn't that unusual. Many have to wait decades to become citizens.

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