DES MOINES, Iowa (Gray Media Iowa Capitol Bureau) – 40 United States citizens were welcomed at the Iowa State Capitol Friday during a naturalization ceremony representing more than a dozen countries.<\/p>\n
The event is part of the country\u2019s year-long 250th birthday celebration.<\/p>\n
Participants raised their right hand and took the oath of allegiance to officially become U.S. citizens.<\/p>\n
Secretary of State Paul Pate said becoming a citizen also means taking on a role in the country\u2019s democratic process.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe celebrate not only your achievement of the U.S. citizenship, but what it represents. A commitment to investing in our future to engage, participate, and strengthen our democracy,\u201d Pate said.<\/p>\n
Pate also urged the new citizens to use their new right to vote and participate in this year\u2019s midterm elections.<\/p>\n
Simon Brown was part of that ceremony, \u201cI initially came over in 2010 on a soccer scholarship. So yeah, about 16 years now and some opportunities now. I work in soccer and education,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Brown is one of 40 people naturalized at Friday\u2019s ceremony. Countries of origin include Vietnam, Mexico, and Bosnia.<\/p>\n
Originally from Ireland, Brown first came to the U.S. to play soccer. Since then, he\u2019s coached high school and college teams in Iowa and now serves as an assistant coach in Wisconsin.<\/p>\n
Brown said living in the U.S. opened doors he wouldn\u2019t have had otherwise.<\/p>\n
\u201cI could have done anything that I wanted here to get an education. I didn\u2019t have the opportunity to go back home. I have a master\u2019s degree now. So all those things are really important to me. And being able to continue my career and make a life for myself here,\u201d Brown said.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 KCRG. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DES MOINES, Iowa (Gray Media Iowa Capitol Bureau) – 40 United States citizens were welcomed at the Iowa…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":453531,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,451,3,452,453],"class_list":{"0":"post-453532","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-top-stories","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=453532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453532\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/453531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=453532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=453532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=453532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}