For Bosnian family, citizenship coming after years of fresh starts

By Lornet Turnbull
Seattle Times staff reporter

MIKE SIEGEL / THE SEATTLE TIMES Reuf Kazic and his wife, Eveldina, pictured with their 5-year-old son, Eddie, at their Battle Ground home, will become American citizens tomorrow at Seattle Center.

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BATTLE GROUND, Clark County — In the six years they've been in this country, Reuf Kazic and his family have come to know the best and the worst of American life.

The Bosnian refugees have amassed all the trappings of a middle-class existence: a grill on the deck of their suburban home here, the second house they've owned in America. They've bought three cars and paid for two sons to go to college. And even while struggling to learn English, Kazic at one point was earning $7,000 a month as a plumber.

But an on-the-job back injury last year sidelined the 44-year-old father of three. One of his sons quit college, where he was studying pre-med, to ease the financial pressure on the family. And with disability-benefit payments cut off, the Kazics are now living off dwindling savings.

Tomorrow Kazic and his wife, Eveldina, will stand alongside more than 500 other immigrants in Seattle and — for better or for worse — swear allegiance to the U.S.

"Becoming an American citizen makes me proud," Kazic said last week as he grilled chicken on his deck. "I can't say I like everything about America all the time, but I like far more than I hate."

New Americans Some 518 Seattle-area residents will take the Oath of Allegiance and become United States citizens tomorrow. Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels will serve as master of ceremonies and Gov. Gary Locke as keynote speaker. The public is welcome to attend the ceremony, which will start at noon at the Fisher Pavilion at Seattle Center. Source: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services

For a family that has seen the ugly underbelly of life, citizenship represents new hope. The right to vote. Access to federal jobs, if they want. A passport that allows them to travel unimpeded to practically any country on Earth, including back to Bosnia to visit family they haven't seen in more than six years.

"It sounds better to say you're American; we don't want to be aliens anymore," 37-year-old Eveldina Kazic said. "We don't have to say we're Bosnian anymore."

The Kazics were focused on survival, not citizenship, when they arrived in Waterloo, Iowa, in the fall of 1998, anxious to put the past behind them.

"In my mind I wanted to start a new life, forget about the past and look to the future," Reuf Kazic said.

In Eveldina's past lay a civil war, begun in April 1992 after Bosnians voted for independence from a disintegrating Yugoslavia. Serb extremists rebelled, initially with the backing of the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army.

In the war that pitted Muslims, Orthodox Christian Serbs and Catholic Croats against one another, more than 260,000 people were killed and 1.8 million were forced to flee their homes.

Still concerned for their safety, the Kazics, who are Muslim, won't talk about much of what happened to them in Bosnia.

Reuf moved to Germany with his first wife and two sons in 1989. After his wife died, he met Eveldina. She had fled to Germany in 1994 to escape the bloody war in Bosnia. They met in 1997 and married a year later.

Starting life in U.S.

Eventually, the family qualified as refugees and in September 1998 flew to Waterloo.

	Eddie Kazic, 5, hugs his brother Adis at the family's home in southern Washington.

"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."

While Iowans were generally nice, the Kazics say, they were unimpressed by the Corn State's flat terrain and extreme weather. "There was nothing to see there. It's so flat," Reuf Kazic said. "We were disappointed a bit. We'd decided we should move back to Germany."

Not long after arriving in Waterloo, Kazic quit an English course he was enrolled in so he could begin work as a plumber.

"I hardly knew any English. I could say, 'How do you do?' and, 'My name is Reuf.' "

The family became fed up with their cramped apartment, especially after Eddie, now 5, was born. They bought a house for $20,000, tore it apart and began to remodel it.

They ran afoul of the city's building department when they proceeded without inspections, and were forced to redo some of the work. "A Bosnian guy comes to the U.S., he doesn't know the laws. He doesn't know about inspections," Reuf said.

The experience did nothing to endear their new country to the Kazics.

In 2001, some friends in Iowa suggested that before giving up on America, they should see if the Seattle area suited them better. Reuf had an uncle in Vancouver, Wash.; his friend's father lived in Seattle.

	MIKE SIEGEL / THE SEATTLE TIMES Reuf Kazic barbecues in his back yard. He and his wife plan to fly a flag outside their home tomorrow after gaining citizenship.

The family "undersold" the house for $55,000 and left, Reuf Kazic said.

"Compared to Iowa, it was unbelievable," he said of Western Washington.

The mountainous terrain reminded them of home. "I left Iowa with 3 feet of snow piled on the top of the car and I got to Vancouver, my uncle was out mowing his grass," he said.

Almost immediately, he landed a job with a plumbing company in Portland. A year later, the family bought a three-bedroom house in Battle Ground, a small city north of Vancouver.

Up and down their street on a recent day, American flags flapped in the breeze.

The Kazics plan to fly their flag on July Fourth, after they are citizens.

In their front yard, colorful roses bloom. A tiny vegetable garden in the back sprouts tomatoes, eggplants and green beans that Eveldina Kazic first planted last year. There's also a strawberry patch.

Eddie practices his swimming in an oversized inflatable pool at the side of the house.

"Here, compared to Europe, everything is large," his mother said. "Here you buy milk in gallon. In [Europe] we get it in liters."

Injury hits

The Kazics were hardly prepared for the events that changed their lives last September, when Reuf injured his back trying to move a water heater in a client's home.

The Washington State Department of Labor and Industries initially paid him some benefits, but those were stopped in May.

"Eight months I've been off work," he said. "I'd like to be able to work to make money for my family."

His case is under appeal.

"My life in Yugoslavia was as a building engineer. In Germany, I became a plumber. What am I supposed to do now?"

New citizens

As refugees, the Kazics could have chosen to move to Australia, Canada or the United States. But Canada was too cold, and Australia has too many snakes. "America is the land of opportunity," he said, repeating the popular cliché.

"In Germany I was an outsider," a status he realized he could never change because naturalization for non-Germans there is rare. "Now, I'm going to be an American."

Eveldina recently completed a bookkeeping course at home so she could care for Eddie.

He heads off to kindergarten in the fall, she said, "and then it will be my turn to go to work. Maybe I'll try a government job, maybe medical, maybe at the post office."

Her husband added: "Maybe I can get a government job, working as a plumber again."

Lornet Turnbull: 206-464-2420 or lturnbull@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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