President Joe Biden recalled attending a naturalization ceremony in Iraq for U.S. troops during a White House event celebrating a new batch of immigrant citizens before Independence Day.
“One of my most, I don’t know how to say it, fulfilling moments was, as vice president, when I went over to Saddam Hussein’s god-awful, gaudy palace and there were, I think, 167 men and women in uniform standing in that palace,” he said Friday. “I thought to myself, ‘What an incredible justification of all the things that Saddam didn’t believe in.'”
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Biden and his wife Jill visited Baghdad on a 2009 diplomatic mission, a trip that coincided with a July 4 naturalization ceremony for 237 troops at Hussein’s Al Faw Palace. On that day, 12 Iraqis became U.S. citizens.
Fast-forward 12 years and Biden repeated the oath of allegiance in the White House’s East Room Friday with 21 new citizens from various countries, including Iraq. Candidates were also from Afghanistan, Nepal, Panama, and the United Kingdom.
“Thank you for choosing the United States of America, believing that America is worthy of your aspirations,” he said. “All of you represent how immigration has always been essential to America.”
During his somewhat meandering speech, Biden also said that the country could not be defined. But he went on to say that it could be defined as a nation “founded on an idea that we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal, endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights,” quoting the Declaration of Independence.
The last White House naturalization ceremony was overseen by former President Donald Trump during the 2020 Republican National Convention. The proceedings, broadcast during prime time, were widely slammed for using immigrants as political props. House Democrats responded by calling for an investigation into then-acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf to see whether he had violated the Hatch Act by agreeing to take part.
Biden is under increasing pressure to grant visas to Afghans who worked with U.S. forces during the 20-year occupation of Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the country’s longest war.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the administration had identified a number of applicants who will be relocated outside of Afghanistan, pending visa approval.
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“There are a range of options, and that will happen before we complete our military drawdown by the end of August,” she added Friday of reports that they will be sent to Central Asia.
