Merrick B. Garland Administers the Oath of Allegiance and Delivers Congratulatory Remarks at Ellis Island Ceremony in Celebration of Constitution Week and Citizenship Day

Remarks as Delivered

It is my great honor to welcome you as the newest citizens of the United States of America. Congratulations!  Please be seated.

Just now, each of you took an oath of allegiance to the United States. In so doing, you took your place alongside generations who came before you, many through this very building, seeking protection, freedom, and opportunity.

This country – your country – wholeheartedly welcomes you.

I know that you have made sacrifices in order to be here today. You should be proud of all you have accomplished. I am proud of you.

You have made the decision to become Americans not only at an important time in our country’s history, but on an important day.

It was 235 years ago on this day, September 17, 1787, that 39 delegates to the Constitutional Convention representing 12 states signed their names to the Constitution of the United States.

Like you, those who signed the Constitution were relatively new Americans. In fact, America had only existed for 11 years at that point.  

Like you, those Americans had great hopes for their own future – and for the future of their new country.

In the preamble of the Constitution, those Americans enumerated those hopes: to form a more perfect union; establish justice; ensure domestic tranquility; provide for the common defense; promote the general welfare …

And importantly – in their words – “to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”

Like them, each of you has now made a commitment not only to this nation and your fellow Americans, but to the generations of Americans who will come after you. 

In that commitment, you have given your posterity – and the posterity of all of us – a precious gift.

I know how valuable that gift is because it is the same one my grandparents gave my family and me.

I come from a family of immigrants who fled religious persecution early in the 20th Century and sought refuge here in the United States. Some of my family entered right here, at Ellis Island.

My grandmother was one of five children born in what is now Belarus. Three made it to the United States, including my grandmother who came through the Port of Baltimore.

Two did not make it. Those two were killed in the Holocaust.

If not for America, there is little doubt that the same would have happened to my grandmother.