“As the day looms closer, the worse I feel.” Dávila was one of the 10 passengers waiting on Wednesday to board a humanitarian flight on a private jet departing from Isla Grande Airport, a small airfield next to the convention center in San Juan where hurricane relief efforts are headquartered. “And this island won’t recover for much, much longer.” “At my age, how much longer do I have left?” Ms. She said had never considered leaving her patria, her motherland, until now.
She locked up her home, left her three dogs with a close friend and said she will remain stateside with her daughter indefinitely. “There’s no water, no food, and six to eight hours for gas.” Her daughter in Washington, D.C., bought her a one-way ticket to get out of her rural hometown of Salinas. Nayda Dávila, a 69-year-old retired judicial worker, said she could not stop crying as she packed her only piece of luggage by candlelight earlier this week. Look at us, making lines in the middle of the night for two bags of ice that are half water.” She added: “I have to do it for the kids. “Everyone will leave - everyone,” she said. Gomez made plans to use the last few gallons of gasoline in her car - it was just enough for the drive to the San Juan International Airport. Relatives in Miami offered to buy plane tickets for her and the children, and Ms. She has been making two-hour trips to buy groceries from a swampy supermarket. Her husband has been waiting in line for hours to buy fuel for their generator. Gomez said, her family has been surviving on canned food and boxed milk, paid for with the only cash they had on hand - her three children’s private-school fees. Gomez’s home on the eastern coast of Puerto Rico and ruined her dreams of renting rooms to tourists, Ms. In the two weeks since the storm gutted Ms. Florida alone - already home to 1 million Puerto Ricans - anticipates as many as 100,000 arrivals to the Orlando and the -Tampa Bay area. On the mainland, cities and states with large Puerto Rican populations are preparing for the influx by trying to help people find housing, work and schools. We invite you to share your experiences and photos from naturalization ceremonies on social media, using the hashtags #newUScitizen, #4thofJuly and #IndependenceDay.Puerto Rican airports have become scenes of tearful goodbyes as families send their children, spouses and parents to live with relatives in Orlando, New York, Washington - wherever.
A list of highlighted Independence Day-themed ceremonies is below.
This year, we will welcome almost 7,500 new citizens in nearly 110 naturalization ceremonies between July 1 and July 5. USCIS marks Independence Day with naturalization ceremonies across the country. On July 4, we celebrate our nation’s 243rd birthday and the day the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence in 1776.