Citizens-to-be from Bosnia leave strife behind

SEATTLE – More than 500 people will become American citizens in a Fourth of July ceremony at the Seattle Center.

Bosnian natives Reuf Kazic and his wife, Eveldina, will travel from their home in Battle Ground, about 160 miles south, to swear allegiance to their new land. Gov. Gary Locke, a child of immigrants himself, is serving as keynote speaker.

The Kazics and their three children have had some hard times since arriving in Iowa in 1998, but are optimistic about their future here.

“America is the land of opportunity,” Reuf Kazic, 44, told the Seattle Times for a story published Saturday. “Now, I’m going to be an American.”

The Kazics are in the second house they’ve owned in the United States. They’ve also owned three cars and for a time their two eldest sons were in college. Reuf Kazic has earned as much as $7,000 a month as a plumber.

But he was sidelined by an on-the-job back injury last fall. One son quit his pre-med courses to ease the financial pressure as the family ekes by on dwindling savings.

Citizenship represents new hope: the right to vote, access to federal jobs and passports that allow travel almost anywhere – notably to Bosnia, to visit family for the first time since they emigrated here.

“Becoming an American citizen makes me proud,” Kazic said. “I can’t say I like everything about America all the time, but I like far more than I hate.”

“It sounds better to say you’re American; we don’t want to be aliens anymore,” said Eveldina Kazic, 37.

She recently completed a bookkeeping course. When 5-year-old Eddie enters kindergarten in the fall, “then it will be my turn to go to work. Maybe I’ll try a government job, maybe medical, maybe at the post office.”

Reuf hopes to land a government job as well.

When they arrived in Waterloo, Iowa, “In my mind I wanted to start a new life, forget about the past and look to the future,” Reuf Kazic said.

His wife’s past included a civil war begun in April 1992 after Bosnians voted for independence from a disintegrating Yugoslavia. More than 260,000 people were killed in the conflict among Muslims, Orthodox Christian Serbs and Catholic Croats.

The Kazics, who are Muslim, don’t talk much about those years.

Reuf had moved to Germany with his first wife and two sons in 1989. A building engineer in Yugoslavia, he became a plumber in Germany.

Eveldina moved there in 1995, and the couple met after Reuf’s first wife died. They married a year later, in 1998, and moved to America.

“And you know what we first noticed? The wood houses,” Reuf said. “You watch the U.S.A. on TV and they show all the terrific buildings in New York. You don’t see houses made from wood.”

They didn’t much care for the Midwest: “It’s so flat,” Reuf said.

After Eddie was born, they bought a home there. But remodeling efforts ran afoul of city building inspectors: The new world was becoming frustrating.

In 2001, Iowa friends urged them to try the Northwest. Reuf had an uncle in Vancouver, Wash.

“I left Iowa with three feet of snow piled on the top of the car and I got to Vancouver, my uncle was out mowing his grass,” Reuf recalled.

Reuf injured his back in September, trying to move a water heater. Washington’s Department of Labor and Industries initially provided benefits, but those stopped in May. The case is under appeal.