In the Hungarian town where Ferenc Daroczi was born, a sea of migrants walked along train tracks and the M5 highway, desperate to start new lives in Europe.
Daroczi, 38, is starting a new life, too, far from his homeland and its stern attempts to stem the tide of humanity.
He raised his right hand Thursday and pledged allegiance to his new home: America. He was among 500 people who participated in the largest naturalization ceremony this year in Georgia.
The oath was administered under a cloudless sky at Turner Field, where the Atlanta Braves would play the Toronto Blue Jays that evening and the new citizens were given four tickets each for the game.
Many of the 93 nations represented this day were the same ones making the news overseas. Countries that refugees were fleeing: Iraq, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Kenya, Afghanistan. And the states they were running to: Germany, Hungary, France and the United Kingdom.
By midafternoon, citizens of those countries had all become Americans, acutely aware that across the Atlantic a human crisis of epic proportions was unfolding.
“There are millions and millions of people around the world who would risk everything to be sitting right next to you,” said Joseph Kernan, the deputy district director for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Many nodded in agreement, acknowledging silently how lucky they were to be a part of America. They listened intently to a videotaped message from President Barack Obama, who told them: “You can help write the next great chapter of American history. No dream is impossible.”
That is why Daroczi left Hungary, seeking better opportunities in the United States. He lived first in Orlando and then in Columbus, Georgia, where he works in a firm that manufactures ATMs.
“People are much warmer in the United States,” he said, though he had to teach himself to cook so he could satisfy his hunger pangs for goulash and chicken paprikash.
He left home for a better life and understood why people from the Middle East, Africa and Asia are rushing toward the Hungarian border, hoping to make their way to Austria and Germany. But he said he’s an engineer and thinks first always about how to make things work. He just couldn’t see how it was feasible to accommodate hundreds of thousands of refugees all at once in Europe.
“I know there is no way any country can support this many immigrants,” he said. “All those people need to fit into society, they need to get work.
“Remember,” he said, just before taking his oath of citizenship, “every government is responsible for its people. Uncontrolled migration can be dangerous, especially when it’s coming from countries that have been known to support terrorist activities.”
Hungary stands to lose much if it loses control of its borders, he said. A country can lose its destiny that way.
Is that not why, Daroczi asked, Obama has vowed to take in only 10,000 Syrians and that, too, over two years so each person can be vetted property? And did the United States not put up barriers along the Mexican border to keep out people without proper documentation?
Daroczi understood that many Americans who have been critical of Hungary’s stance may perceive him as xenophobic or hypocritical. Here he was, about to become a citizen of America, and he did not support a full embrace of refugees in his homeland.
But, he said, Hungary is a not a nation of abundance and it is not right to blame it for a crisis whose roots were sown elsewhere.
“I think about the safety of my family still living in Szeged near the border with Serbia,” he said. “People are suffering on both sides.”
After the oath, after Braves bullpen coach Eddie Perez led the new citizens in the Pledge of Allegiance, the stadium filled with the voice of Bruce Springsteen belting out “Born in the USA.” It was an anthem of rebirth of sorts for those who had taken their first breaths on foreign soil.
Bianca Schill, 22, clutched an American flag and a red foam Braves tomahawk in one hand, and with the other removed her aviator sunglasses and wiped away tears. She was born in Heidelberg, Germany, and had been waiting five years for this day after a paperwork snafu stripped her of permanent residency and left her undocumented.
She knew the stress of living without proper papers, though she admitted her situation was nothing close to the harrowing tales heard from the migrants arriving in Europe.
“I am beyond blessed to have a much more easy journey than most people. I am so thankful for this day,” she said. “But I am very proud of Germany. A lot is going on there and I feel Germany will try its best to take care of people.”
At the same time, she, like Daroczi, felt her homeland was not prepared to take on such huge numbers of people. It hardly has the resources to absorb them into the population as smoothly as a country like America could, she said.
Aicha Gbane, 32, also agreed. She grew up in Paris and said France did not have the capacity to take in massive numbers of newcomers from other lands. America, she said, is still a country like no other. It’s a country where you have hope.
“It’s very different for me. I didn’t come here because I was escaping a serious situation,” she said. “But those people who are coming to Europe now — they can die if they stay where they are. It’s a human rights issue.”
She did know this much: that no matter what, it was never easy to be an immigrant. She sees the thousands of Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans interviewed on television who say they are ecstatic when they finally make it into Germany. It’s as though they have reached utopia.
“They think they have made it,” Gbane said. “Then they realize after a while that they have left behind everything. And they cannot go back.”
The migration to Europe is making headlines now because it has reached emergency levels. But every day, people from all over the world begin anew in lands far from where they were born.
That was evidenced in a small way here in Atlanta on Thursday. Federal officials acknowledged the myriad experiences of the people who stood before them. They had things in common with each other and with the migrants flooding Europe.
They all were starting over in a strange land. They learned to cope with being homesick. And most of all, they knew they could not give up in the face of hardship.