Working for her dream: ‘I want to be a part of this country’

Marta Komorowska’s first trip to the United States was for an internship that was supposed to last for 18 months.

“[I told my parents] ‘This is the last thing, and then I’m just going to come back and settle here [in Poland].’ But that’s what I always wanted to do — I always wanted to go to the U.S. and visit,” said Komorowska, who lives near The Summit on U.S. 280.

After that first internship, however, the United States became her home. Now, 14 years after first arriving in the U.S., she can call herself an American citizen.

Komorowska’s 18-month visa expired at the end of her internship, but a supervisor offered her a job with HCMS, a company that worked with J-1 visa students for job training, in Florida. She went back to Poland for six months between jobs, saved money and returned to the U.S. in January 2006. 

Her parents were shocked when she decided to return to live in the U.S., she said, but were always supportive of the decision.

From there, she held a six-month visa, a three-year visa that was extended to six total years and a green card that was sponsored by her company.

“It is a long process overall, it was for me, but I would not take it any other way,” Komorowska said. I’m just so pleased and really happy and honored and all that. I always knew I wanted to do this. After being here so long, I said, ‘I want to be a part of this country. I want to be able to vote.’”

The ability to vote is one of the main differences between a green card and citizenship, she said, as well as the ability to leave the country for extended periods of time. With a green card, you must reside in the U.S. for more than six months of the year, and Komorowska said she wanted to have the ability to be out of the country longer, in case she had to return to Poland to take care of aging family members.

“All my family is back home still. I’m here by myself. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I don’t want to risk the fact that if I have to go back for whatever reason, go back home, that I will still be thinking ‘I need to go back to U.S.,’” she said.

She moved to Birmingham in November 2017 following a transfer with her job, and on April 27 was sworn in as an American citizen. The process to become a citizen, she said, was an easy one, despite some stress leading up to the day of her interview and test.

“I was studying a lot. I remember the night before, I was like, ‘Oh my God, I can’t remember anything.’ You go back to your school days,” she said. 

Once the day was there, however, Komorowska remembers being emotional. “You’ve been waiting for so long. At the ceremony, I just got really emotional towards the end, when we had to pledge. I had tears in my eyes.”

There were years, especially toward the beginning of her time in the United States, when Komorowska said she was essentially working just to pay her attorney and visa fees. Even with those difficult years, however, she said “I wouldn’t do it any other way.”

“My thing is to tell, if you come here, there’s always a way to do it the legal way ... You don’t need to go to cut corners,” Komorowska said. “Everybody’s got the same chance. There was not even one day that I was out of [legal] status here.”

From the small New Mexico town, two hours outside of Salt Lake City, where she first lived, Komorowska said she felt like she wanted to stay in the U.S. The first 18 months were difficult to be away from home, but support from the community where she lived helped her get through it.

“There were still so many families who, they wanted us to go and stay in Park City [New Mexico] with them for the weekend or they would come and pick us up and take us to their homes and host us. I was just blown away with how the majority of the people [were] so kind and supportive,” she said.

Now, she returns to Poland every six to eight months, but said technology has also opened many opportunities to stay in touch with friends and family back in Europe. 

“I love being here. I’ve made so many friends here, and some of them became like my family because you don’t have them anywhere else,” she said.