Lions linebacker Steve Longa now has a new home team, one he’s been dreaming of joining for years.
Via Dave Birkett of the Detroit Free Press, Longa completed the process of becoming a United States citizen last month.
Longa came to this country 12 years ago, the son of a refugee from Cameroon, and he and his family dreamed of the day they’d become citizens for years. But then 19 months ago, his father was killed, making the ceremony a bittersweet one for Longa.
“It hasn’t been smooth,” Longa said. “But I am fortunate enough that I’ve got to this point cause some people have been waiting a lot longer. Although it hasn’t been smooth, I am happy with the way it went. I’ve learned a lot through this process, watching my dad go through it, my mom go through it. I thought it was just going to be something that’s cool, go in and do it. I didn’t expect all the emotions to hit me like they did.”
His mother became a citizen last year, and his sister is scheduled to finish the process later this spring, completing the journey that Etienne Longa began in 2002, when he came to America as a political exile. Five years later, his family joined him.
“I [was never] really scared, cause my dad was living here and he always told us the great stuff about this country,” Longa said. “So the way he described when we arrived, I was about 10, 15 feet ahead of my mom and my sister and I was just so excited looking around. And he said if you didn’t know no better, you would think I knew where I was going, but I did not. I was just scanning so fast, and then I spotted him while my mom and my sister were in the back just following. It was like, ‘We’re just going trust that you know where you’re going.’ ”
Steve Longa applied for citizenship last December, as he was recovering from last year’s torn ACL, giving him time to study for the civics test that every applicant has to pass.
It’s also worth noting that in 2017, Longa was among the players who kneeled during the national anthem, as part of a protest against police brutality and racial inequality. The freedoms guaranteed by those documents he studied allowed him to do so, and his journey guaranteed that he could not have taken them for granted.