The author, Mala Erickson, poses with her husband, Mike, and son, Mark, after being sworn in as a U.S. Citizen in Des Moines, recently. (submitted photo)
My path to American citizenship
Mala Erickson
Contributing Writer
If you read a newspaper, go online, or turn on the television news lately, there is a lot of discussion about immigration policies in the United States. Without entering the political debate, I wanted to share my story as an immigrant to the United States.
I was born in Saskatchewan, which is in the Canadian Prairies, north of Montana. Through my grade school years, we lived in Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Yes, it was cold – 40 below was not uncommon and that was before factoring in windchill. Just because I grew up with that doesn’t mean I like cold weather! At least summers were mild with temperatures up to the mid-80s, although they were much too short.
Our family travelled fairly extensively throughout the U.S. I had been to 11 states by the time I went to university in Manitoba and then on to veterinary school in Saskatchewan. After working in Alberta for two years, I wanted to pursue more training and started to explore opportunities in the U.S. through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), I applied for a TN (non-immigrant) Visa to live and work in the U.S.
