To the Editor:
By Pedro Spivakovsky-Gonzalez
Earlier this month, some people arrived at Faneuil Hall for their naturalization ceremony after an arduous years-long process only to be turned away. They had met all the extensive requirements to gain US citizenship but now were being rejected because of a new, days-old policy pausing already approved citizenship applications –not on the basis of content, but on the basis of the applicants’ countries of origin.
In revealing a great deal about who the federal administration thinks should be American, the government’s actions that day will have negative consequences for generations to come.
I am the son and grandson of refugees who were naturalized at Faneuil Hall. My grandparents grew up in the Soviet Union under the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin, with several family members imprisoned or killed by the Communist regime. They had feared a knock on the door in the middle of the night, and for their son’s future.
America promised them something different, a free country where they could not only speak freely but also pursue the American dream. After a difficult journey with nearly nothing to their names, and leaving everything they knew behind them, they settled in Boston as political refugees, and my father was able to go to college. My mother grew up in a right-wing dictatorship, in Franco’s Spain, before getting a scholarship to study in the United States.
Thanks to their sacrifices, I was born in Boston and was able to go to law school. I decided to become a lawyer to help promote access to justice for the most vulnerable and uphold the rule of law, which separates authoritarian regimes from a free society, where we can try to live up to the aspiration that this be a country of laws and not of men, as John Adams said.
I will never forget the day I swore my oath of office as an attorney in Faneuil Hall, the same place where my Dad and grandparents had become Americans. In the years since, I have represented low-income veterans in Dorchester and the Greater Boston area, but I have also represented people seeking asylum, including people fleeing dictatorships or violence in some of the newly “banned” countries.
Like my family, my clients were searching for a better life and had a profound appreciation for this country and its freedoms. In turn, their children and grandchildren would try to pay forward that privilege and work to safeguard these freedoms.
Faneuil Hall is a symbol of what this country can be. It was here that Samuel Adams and other revolutionaries met at our country’s founding, and it was here that abolitionists gathered to work toward the end of slavery. Today, it continues to stand as a symbol of freedom, our Cradle of Liberty, where we swear in elected officials and attorneys to continue to uphold our democratic values.
When I have welcomed new attorneys at Faneuil Hall, or when I speak with law students, I have tried to emphasize the role that lawyers can play in a thriving democracy. But really this responsibility is not just for lawyers or our elected officials—it falls on everyone, and newly naturalized Americans play a key role in this effort.
From my family’s stories, I know that democracy is not a guarantee – it’s something that needs to be upheld and protected. It should not matter where we are born—what matters is what we believe. We must welcome new citizens to our Cradle, regardless of where they come from. They can teach us something about the meaning of liberty.
Pedro Spivakovsky-Gonzalez is an attorney and Boston resident.
