District 10 photograph
By Erin McQueary
District 10 public information officer
On October 29, 2024, District 10’s Public Information Officer and Customer Service Liaison Alejandra Quezada-Beeler became a United States citizen.
Alejandra packed into the Sacramento Memorial Auditorium with 945 other soon-to-be naturalized citizens from around the world. There were a few remarks, a recorded message from President Biden, and the nation of origin for every new citizen was announced.
“They call the country and the people from there stood up and everyone applauded,” Alejandra said.
There were large groups from the Philippines, India and China, and a handful of people from Albania, Switzerland, Germany and other countries.
The loudest applause came when Mexico, Alejandra’s country of birth, was called; half of the new citizens stood up.
The ceremony lasted only 20 minutes, but Alejandra has lived and worked in this country for 20 years.
She grew up in Uruapan, Michoacán, and attended Baja California State University in Mexicali, where she majored in mass communications. After graduation, Alejandra worked as a binational reporter at Televisa in Mexicali. She regularly went to California on her media visa to cover the border region of Imperial County.
In 2004, Alejandra moved to San Diego to work for Univision.
There, she met and married her first husband, which allowed her to obtain U.S. residency and after three years made her eligible to apply for citizenship.
Alejandra continued to work as a journalist, living in Pittsburgh for a few years, then Phoenix for a few months before accepting a job at Univision Sacramento in 2010.
In 2018, she took a job with Telemundo Sacramento and in 2020, she married her husband, Joe.
At that point, the United States was Alejandra’s home, and she didn’t intend to return to Mexico. But the pandemic hit just before the expiration of her 10-year residency and the normally months-long path to citizenship was estimated to take four years. Had she applied then, traveling to Mexico to visit her family would have been out of the question because she could have been denied re-entry to the US.
Alejandra took her immigration attorney’s advice and opted to renew her residency instead.
A few years later, the election cycle was ramping up, and immigration was a central issue.
“The next president was talking about changing the rights for people who are not citizens,” she said.
District 10 photograph
She thought about the prospect of being forced to return to Mexico and leave her husband, stepchildren and grandchildren, friends, and the life she built here.
“Since we are going to have another four years of questions about immigration, I didn’t want to be worried that I had to go back to Mexico because I have not lived there for 20 years,” Alejandra said. “Even though I am 100 percent fluent in Spanish and my family lives there, I am not used to it, and I would have to start over.”
In early 2024, Alejandra started applying for citizenship, which involves a lot of paperwork, gathering official documents, and providing a detailed history of her life in the United States. She also had to pass tests for English, history and civics. The naturalization ceremony made it official.
When she arrived at the auditorium, Alejandra turned in her residency card and was given a voter registration form and a small American flag.
In addition to celebrating the new citizens' countries of birth, they recited the Pledge of Allegiance and the Oath of Allegiance, in which they promised to obey all laws, uphold the Constitution, and renounce allegiance to their former countries.
The latter came as a surprise and was bittersweet, Alejandra said.
“Wait a minute, I’m not Mexican anymore?” Alejandra recalled of her reaction. “I never thought about that; I guess I will have to apply in a different process to get dual citizenship.”
The ceremony was exactly one week before Election Day. After waiting in line for three hours, Alejandra was given her absentee ballot and voted in her first U.S. election.