ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, October 12, 1996 TAG: 9610140040
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KARL VICK THE WASHINGTON POST
SINCE SHE HIT the century mark, Henriette Bolane has made it clear she wanted her U.S. citizenship. Recently, the still-spry native of Haiti got it.
No one recalls the precise date, but it was sometime after Henriette Bolane turned 100 years old that she started bothering her son-in-law for the application that would let her become a U.S. citizen. But because it meant she'd have to make a trip to Baltimore, and because his mother-in-law was so old that the matter seemed academic, he put her off again and again.
This summer, President Clinton signed welfare legislation that cuts off benefits even to legal immigrants. And Roger Guelce finally found reason to make the trip.
``After the law, if she's not a citizen, they're not going to give her her Medicaid,'' said Guelce, explaining his understanding of the new welfare reform act. ``If she becomes a citizen, definitely they have to give that to her.''
So it was that Thursday, 30 days shy of her 106th birthday, the cheerful, alert and remarkably fit matriarch of the Bolane family became the oldest new American in known history.
``We're proud to have you be a citizen,'' said Ben Ferro, director of the Immigration and Naturalization Service's Maryland office, who traveled to Bolane's Hyattsville home to personally administer the oath. Looking warmly at brown eyes twinkling behind the thick glasses that betray the Haitian American's only apparent infirmity, the career bureaucrat said he wanted to make one point especially clear.
``Whether you're born here or whether you're a citizen like this, it's all the same,'' Ferro said. ``That's really the most important part. Everyone is equal here now.''
This year the INS has naturalized a record 1.2 million new citizens, three times the number of a year ago. The rush was prompted by an array of circumstances. But most pressing is the welfare overhaul that denies food stamps and disability benefits to all noncitizens, even resident immigrants in the country legally.
For Henriette Bolane, remarkably, the issue is not yet crucial. Bolane has no health problems except high blood pressure. With her Medicaid card, she fills her prescription for $1 at the local drugstore.
Bolane was chasing her grandchildren around the yard in her nineties. The night she turned 100, she danced until 4 in the morning. She goes to church each Sunday, hears so well she picks up whispers from the far side of the couch, and although the backs of her hands are a little papery, her satiny complexion could pass for 80.
But no one expects fabulous health to hold forever.
``Ever since she hit 104, her body started slowing down,'' said grandson Roger Guelce Jr., 31.
When Bolane was born in Haiti on Nov. 10, 1890, Benjamin Harrison was the U.S. president, American Indians were gathering at Wounded Knee, S.D., and a new immigration facility was about to open on Ellis Island.
But Henriette Bolane spent most of her life in the mountains of Haiti, raising corn, avocados, rice and other staples in a region called Petite Rivier de Nips. Although her memory has grown spotty of late, grandchildren recall her telling stories from when she was 3 years old.
``My father's friends used to come over to our house and tell stories of how someday there would be vehicles in the sky and vehicles rolling on the ground,'' Bolane said, speaking in soft Creole translated by her grandson.
``It's not a secret I have to old age,'' Bolane said. ``I've always respected my elders, and they've always spoken blessings on me: to see my children, to see my children's children.''
And her children's children's children's children. Bolane oversees five generations, all the more notable considering she began her family late in life. She had her youngest child when she was 54.
Bolane came to the United States from the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, where she lived with a daughter after her husband, Philogene, died in 1963.
The first of her children, a daughter, came to this country when the dictator Papa Doc Duvalier came to power. The daughter's husband had been an official in the previous government and fled to the United States for political asylum. Over the years, all but one of Bolane's children followed. Bolane's move to the United States was sponsored by a daughter in 1979.
As a legal immigrant over age 55 who had called the country home for 15 years, she became eligible for citizenship two years ago. When her son-in-law finally took her to Baltimore to apply last month, the INS bent over backward to make the process simple. The criminal background check was waived, as it routinely is for applicants older than 79, as was the English language requirement.
Eventually, it became clear to INS officials that Bolane was the oldest immigrant to apply for citizenship. Last year, a 105-year-old Chinese woman was naturalized in San Francisco.
LENGTH: Medium: 90 linesby CNB