QUENTIN ROUX / Staff

Sascha Bonte celebrates Independence Day today for the first time as a bona fide American Citizen formerly from Germany. Bonte met and married an American, Patricia, in that country in 1998. They returned to the United States in 2002 with their young son Daniel. Bonte took the oath of citizenship earlier this year after a long legal process that applies to all immigrants.

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In a sense, Friday is a routine holiday for the average American, but it’s particularly significant for a newly sworn-in citizen such as Sascha Bonte.

Sure, there’ll be the swelling of pride across the nation, the cookouts and the spectacular fireworks shows, but for Bonte it’s his first Independence Day without carrying the official tag of “alien.”

Plus, he says, he now has the privilege of being able to vote.

Born, bred and educated in Germany, Bonte took the oath of citizenship earlier this year at a ceremony in Miami’s Convention Center along with about 3,000 other new citizens from countries all over the world.

To get to that stage, Bonte had to adhere to a strict and inflexible set of rules set out by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, even though he’d married an American girl, Patricia.

Bonte dutifully followed those rules, first acquiring his green (permanent residence) card, and then having to wait for five years before being eligible for citizenship.

The final steps included being fingerprinted, and then being summoned to Miami for an interview that included a general knowledge test on American history and government.

Some questions were a little easier than others.

“They asked me, for example, what the colors of the flag are,” Bonte said, chuckling, “but they also asked questions like who votes for the cabinet.”

“I felt proud after the ceremony,” Bonte said. “I felt I now belonged to the community; and I was not referred to as an “alien” anymore. (The green card refers to holders as “resident aliens”).

Bonte met his wife, a flight attendant for a German airline, in his former home country.

They married in Germany in 1998, and decided to head for America in 2002 with their young son Daniel, now 10, and one of a group of about a dozen gifted children at Tommie Barfield Elementary.

Patricia’s parents had settled in Marco Island, so the couple decided they’d like to be close to the family, and did likewise.

Bonte established a salon in 2002, calling it by his first name.

As for cultural contrasts between his homeland and his new country, Bonte says the American lifestyle is a little less regimented than that of Germany.

Some things, however, he believes are important for America’s future such as to think more globally, more environmentally and to reassess the time-honored American value of “bigger is better.”