Bob CollinsNews events and a touch of blogger incompetence prevented us from passing this item along this week, but we didn’t want to let the week end without officially welcoming Ali Mohamed Dahir to the family.
Dahir, of Minneapolis, was among several dozen who became new citizens during a naturalization ceremony on St. Paul’s Harriet Island. Like his fellow new family members, his story is worth telling.
He came to the United States when he was 5, his family fleeing war in Somalia. He was separated from his parents and his siblings, so he was raised in Minnesota’s foster care system.
He joined the Minnesota National Guard, saying it was a way to give back and help insure that people live in peace, “including my own children, eventually.”
He returned to Minnesota after a month in training in the Mojave Desert, the Army says, and headed for the ceremony to become a U.S. citizen.
“It feels amazing. It really does,” he said after taking the Oath of Allegiance, the Army press release said. “It can’t get any better than the feeling I have right now.”
On Wednesday he celebrated the end of Ramadan as one of us — an average American.
