#Naturalization

Naturalization is the ritual of treating a foreign passport as holy relics while entrusting one’s fate to an officer’s mood and minor paperwork errors. Upon acquiring a new nationality, one is suddenly lectured on the enigmatic virtues of "allegiance" and "culture." Applicants shed their homeland like an old skin and are forced to remold themselves with meticulously prepared oaths. Though striving for egalitarian citizenship, they discover the absurdity of human rights measured by document count. Ultimately, a single stamp can upend a family’s destiny, embodying the microcosm of state discretion.