Editor’s note: The U.S. Coast Guard coordinates closely with its partners at the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS). The Naturalization Program’s Military Outreach Team, embedded within a local USCIS field office, supports Coast Guard members through the application process. To learn more, please click here: Naturalization Through Military Service | USCIS
It all started about twenty years ago. Over a nine-year career in the Philippine Merchant Marine, Gay lord Amores rose from the rank of cadet to deck officer. He still remembers supporting a search and rescue operation after a vessel capsized in the Indian Ocean. And he vividly recalls working with U.S. Coast Guard Port Sate Control officers on multiple vessel inspections during ship calls in the United States.
After coming to the United States in 2014, those two experiences, the now-Lieutenant says, inspired him to serve his new country. By July 2015, he was in boot camp at Coast Guard Training Center (TRACEN) Cape May.
“It was tough,” he recalled. “I guess [I was] the oldest person in boot camp,” he laughed. The then-thirty-year-old initially struggled to meet the physical demands of basic training. But he refused to give up. Eight weeks later, he earned his company’s Best in Seamanship Award and was also nominated for Best Shipmate. He jokes that his years in the Philippine Merchant Marine made boot camp a little easier.
When Amores joined the Coast Guard, he was unaware that immigrants serving in the uniform were almost immediately eligible for U.S. citizenship. As soon as he found out, he hit the books and began studying history, government, and the Bill of Rights. “When I was at Station Philadelphia,” he recalled, “my shipmates told me that I [was] more American than them because I studied all these civic texts.”
Amores passed the citizenship test and completed his interview soon after. His memories of taking the Oath of Allegiance are particularly vivid. In a room of thirty fellow new Americans, Amores was proud to stand out. As the only new citizen wearing a military uniform, he beamed with pride as others admired his dress blues.
Not long after naturalizing, Amores was determined to become an officer. With strong support from the command at Station Philadelphia, he applied to the Direct Commission Officers Program. He was commissioned in December 2017, and in June 2018, he reported to the Leadership Development Center at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London.
Since completing the program, he has served as a Marine Inspector at Sector New Orleans and as Chief of Inspections Division at Coast Guard Forces Micronesia/Sector Guam. Today, Amores runs the Prevention Department at Marine Safety Unit Pittsburgh. Recently selected for promotion to Lieutenant Commander, Amores has set his sights on a twenty-year career in the Coast Guard and hopes one day to serve as a sector commander.
In the meantime, he’s thankful for his journey and proud to be an American. “I’m deeply grateful to this country for opening its arms and granting me the privilege of citizenship,” he said. “I remain committed to serving and honoring the trust this country placed in me.”
-USCG-
Resources:
In the News: