Posted on 12/16/2011 7:44:21 PM PST by thecodont
A decade ago, Shyima Hall was smuggled into the United States as a 10-year-old slave, forced to cook and clean inside the home of a wealthy Irvine family and, at night, sleep on a squalid mattress in a windowless garage.
On Thursday, the Egyptian-born 22-year-old stood before a federal judge in Montebello with nearly 900 others and was sworn in as naturalized U.S. citizen. The ceremony capped a hard-scrabble journey that began with Hall's rescue, wound through the foster care system and ended with her living on her own, working, and with ambitions to become a federal agent.
"I went through something terrible, but right now I'm in a great place," Hall said after Thursday's citizenship ceremony at the Quiet Cannon Country Club. "I can't imagine anything greater than having my own life."
Hall's Egyptian parents sold her into slavery when she was 8 for $30 a month, according to authorities. The Cairo couple who bought her moved to Irvine two years later, smuggling Hall into the U.S. where she toiled for them and their five children until she was 13.
Hall said she worked 16 hour days, scrubbing floors, cooking meals and cleaning house, and was rarely allowed outside the spacious home. She was forced to wash her own clothes in a bucket and was forbidden from going to school. She never visited a doctor or dentist and didn't speak a word of English.
Her captors, Abdel Nasser Eid Youssef Ibrahim and his former wife, Amal Ahmed Ewis-abd Motelib, berated her and occasionally slapped her around, authorities said.
"I didn't know anything about what America was about. My only hope was to go back home and live a normal life with my family, my brothers and sisters,'' she said. "That's all I wanted."
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
I hope she doesn’t vote for 0bama, but I am happy for her. Very attractive young woman.
This one lady was sold into slavery, but she has more freedoms now than the people left behind in Egypt, who have to live and work under a repressive regime.
This is disgusting.
My only relief is that the “family” wasn’t “American”, per se.
I do want to know how she ended up a “Hall”.
We are the most benevolent country on earth.
This is the "admirable culture" that The Left wants us to emulate.
Why weren't these slavemasters arrested and deported back to the Muslim hell-hole of their choice?
This young woman has a bright future ahead of her, and she came to it the hard way. Bless her.
May she meet some great guy and have a wonderful life.
May her captors burn in hell.
wait a sec.... I thought the MSM told us there is no path to citizenship..... how did these 900 people do it?
/sarcasm
All things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose.
I'd bet a pint of beer on Adoption.
And who wouldn't want to adopt her, she's cute as a bug, and knows how to do laundry and scrub floors.
When you start digging into modern day slavery, there is a LOT of it going on in the Islamic world.
What I would like to know is if she's islamic? Because the Quaran says that a muslim can't own a muslim slave.
/johnny
OH, I think we can figure out what religion they are.
/johnny
From the article:
...Her captors told her to never speak to police, that officers would beat her. She stayed tight-lipped until she was allowed to call her parents in Egypt, and her father ordered her to go back with her captors...
Father was probably afraid to lose that 30 bucks a month income.
They were. Read the article. Sheesh, the way people around here routinely leap to incorrect conclusions is pathetic!!!!
You mean there is an already established way for foreign nationals to legally become US citizens?
God bless her.
Anaksunamum. This girl is going to be gorgeous. And I don't sense an ounce of muslim sentiment in her.
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