- Jon Yildiz was sworn in as a US citizen in January 2019 — roughly seven years after he first moved to the country from Turkey to marry his American fiancée.
- Like many newcomers to America, Yildiz's immigration process was a minefield of bureaucratic hurdles and lengthy wait times that lasted years, cost thousands of dollars, and left him with anxiety and depression.
- Here's what it takes for a foreign national to become an American citizen.
Jon Yildiz will never forget the moment during his citizenship ceremony when President Donald Trump appeared on the screen at the front of the room.
In the same aggressive tone he uses to rile up supporters at his infamous rallies, Trump barked out a welcome message to the group of new citizens who had just sworn the Oath of Allegiance.
"There were a couple of laughs across the room when we were facing just Donald Trump screaming at us, telling us how proud he was, and all of this stuff we know is not really true," Yildiz told INSIDER, laughing.
For Yildiz, it was a bizarre, but emotional moment. He felt a mixture of pride in his new country and bitterness toward the immigration process that got him there.
Like so many other naturalized citizens, Yildiz's journey from immigrant to American was a years-long struggle that cost thousands of dollars, crippled him with anxiety and depression, and even contributed to the breakdown of his marriage.
In a Reddit post that he was surprised to see grow wildly popular, Yildiz described the "huge, difficult process" it took to immigrate to the US. He put up series of photos from his ceremony, which showed him smiling proudly as he held his new naturalization certificate and a tiny American flag, and watched as the comments and upvotes rolled in, congratulating him on the milestone.
I recently became a US citizen after a huge, difficult process that took years! Here are some pics from the naturalization ceremony. from r/pics
Here's the story of how it all happened:
Yildiz said he always felt drawn to the United States. As a young child growing up in Turkey, he remembers being entranced by American movies and leaping at the opportunity to learn English in school.
He remembers working incredibly hard to learn the language fluently and sound as American as possible. Today, his English is perfect, and he speaks with barely a lilt of an accent.
The pull towards America only became stronger when Yildiz grew older and became a businessman. He knew America prided itself on its entrepreneurial culture, and felt Turkey regulated its companies too forcefully.
"I always kind of felt proud of America for some reason, even though I had never been here," Yildiz told INSIDER. "I was not American; I was on the other side of the world."
So when he met an American woman, who had been teaching English in Istanbul, Yildiz was immediately drawn to her.
"When I met my girlfriend, obviously I didn't go out with her to come here," he said. "But as an American, she was very fascinating to me."
After a year of dating, Yildiz and his girlfriend decided to get engaged and move to the US. They chose what they thought would be the fastest immigration process for Yildiz — a K-1 visa — but quickly learned it would be anything but simple.
The K-1 visa, which has shot into pop culture relevance thanks to the TLC show "90 Day Fiancé," allows foreign nationals to enter the US on temporary visas and later receive green cards, so long as they marry their American fiancés within 90 days of arriving in the country.
When Yildiz received his visa, after roughly a year of processing and an interview in Turkey, he entered the US in October 2012 and married his fiancée immediately.
That's when the problems started.
Yildiz paid hundreds of dollars to file an application with the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) for a work permit, which was meant to last until the agency granted him a green card, also known as permanent residency.
But he didn't know at that point that his wait for a green card would eventually last roughly 15 months — and his work permit would never arrive.
USCIS did not respond to INSIDER's request for comment.
Yildiz was unable to work, stuck in a new country knowing no one but his wife, uncertain of how long his green card would take to approve, and living in Washington, D.C., one of the most expensive cities in the US. His mental health rapidly deteriorated — and so did his marriage.
Yildiz's wife was a graduate student at George Mason University, and also wasn't earning an income, he said. The pair lived off the money Yildiz had saved up back in Turkey, but that was intended to last them just a few months, not upwards of a year.
"This is an extremely expensive place to live. We made that choice based on the timelines we were given, which meant that I would probably be able to start working sometime in June or May of 2013, but that never happened," he said. "None of it was our fault; we did everything right."
Yildiz said the experience of moving to a new country with no way to support himself or his wife, and no friends or relatives to lean on, caused him to quickly spiral downwards.
Adding to the stress was the fear that at any time his green card would be rejected, and the dread that he might have left his whole life behind in Turkey for nothing.
"You just sit and be depressed," he said. "It did a lot of damage to our relationship, and it did a lot of damage to me. I got extremely anxious and extremely stressed about the whole situation — not only just financially; we were not doing well. But it was also not progressing. I was never sure if it was actually going to work out in our favor in the end."
See the rest of the story at Business Insider