It is perhaps one of the most profound and widely known passages in our nation:

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

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These words still ring as true today as they did when they were etched into our Statue of Liberty more than 100 years ago. Immigration is undoubtedly an American tradition. Masses far and wide still flock here hoping just beyond that “golden door” there’s a better life — or as one immigrant says: “You’re not at the pearly gates with Peter, but it sure feels that way.”

That attitude is a reminder that we live in a great nation, a place where people can come as they are and take their best shot at their own American dream.

These are the stories of some who have left it all behind for a new life here in our neighborhood. As we celebrate our nation’s birthday this month, let’s celebrate with some of the immigrants who help make so remarkable.

Luis Granados

Circumstances that might thwart the average person’s progress only made Luis Granados stronger.

When he began his American education, Granados didn’t know a speck of English, yet he finished with the fourth highest GPA in his senior class at Lake Highlands High School. A wrestling team captain his junior and senior years, he suffered two nearly debilitating injuries. But Granados pressed on, winning sixth place in the state this year.

When he began applying to colleges, financial aid officials informed him he was not eligible for assistance because he was not a permanent resident — the news frustrated him only fleetingly. After being awarded three different scholarships, he plans to study math, engineering and business at Southern Methodist University beginning this fall.

Granados is not your typical 18-year old. He stood out even among all the gifted and diligent students who applied for scholarships through the Exchange Club of Lake Highlands, says Keith Ross, the Exchange Club’s scholarship committee chairman.

“He’s just an amazing young man — possibly the top [student] of all we interviewed for the scholarships,” Ross says.

Granados was born in El Salvador. The country’s failing economy and impoverished conditions forced his mother to seek a job in the . She saved money and moved with her son to Texas. U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service granted them Temporal Protection Status (TPS), amnesty granted to immigrants whose countries are in a state of war or disasters, which allows them to legally live in .

American elementary school was confusing for Granados.

“I’d walk into class with a bunch of kids, and I didn’t understand anything they said — or anything the teacher said,” Granados says.

Occasionally, bilingual students helped him out, but they often just teased him or refused to answer his questions. “I’d get frustrated — I was like, come on man, I’m dying here!”

Granados laughs about it now, but back then it was no joke.

After a few months of spending school time in bilingual studies, he began to feel as if he was missing out on something. He scored well enough on an English test to get out.

“I feel like I learned fast because I was young — when you’re young, you soak things up like a sponge.”

Granados’ drive was partly fueled by his upbringing.

“My mom didn’t ever graduate high school, so with most of the academics, she couldn’t help me, but her encouragement and support really helped me understand the importance of education — that what you do with your education determines what you’ll do with your future.”

While excelling academically and athletically, he also maintained a vigorous work schedule all year at Top Golf in Lake Highlands, where he will continue to work throughout the summer. Granados says he will keep renewing his TPS status until he can qualify for citizenship, which he says is one of his ultimate goals.

Daniela Castillo

Situated between a substance abuse counseling center and a cluster of civil attorney offices, the Maple Avenue Catholic Charities Immigration office provides guidance to immigrants hoping to become residents and, eventually, citizens.

The waiting room is packed but quiet at 8 a.m. on a Friday. Twenty-eight-year-old Daniela Castillo looks young and small — almost out of place — behind her desk there. But it quickly becomes evident as she tells her own immigration story that she’s exactly where she should be.

Castillo was born in Mexico City, where her father worked for a Mexican airline. When the company went bankrupt, her father came to the under an amnesty program to work in farming and agriculture.

“It was very hard as a child being separated from my father,” she says.

But things became even worse financially. Soon her mother had to take a job in another city. A younger brother stayed in with her mother while Castillo and her sister went to live with two separate sets of relatives.

At age 13, just when she was getting used to her circumstances, Castillo’s father moved the family to , where the teenager was enrolled at Lake Highlands Junior High. While happy that her family was reuniting, Castillo experienced an unfamiliar kind of turmoil.

“I was in seventh-grade; I had to leave all my friends and come to this new place where I didn’t know anyone. I didn’t understand the language, and the culture was so different. I came home and cried every day for a while.”

But Castillo pressed on and, with help from her father, teachers and fellow students, she learned English in less than a year.

Even after living in the country for several years, she had a few more hurdles to jump before earning her citizenship. She had to pass a series of tests, including history and government.

“It wasn’t too hard,” she says. “We’d learned it all in school.”

She feels for illegal immigrants who are “living in hiding” in the United States.

“That is no way to live. Once you are legal, it’s like you can finally breathe. You can get an education, a job and a home.”

Castillo also counsels women who are victims of crime or abuse but who are afraid to contact authorities because of their immigration status. She helps these women connect with advocates.

Today Castillo lives in Lake Highlands with her husband, Edgar, who is still working toward citizenship, and their two young children, Gabriela and Eddie. Though they married more than three years ago, Edgar wasn’t legally allowed to move to the until a year ago.

“It’s not like people think,” she says. Being married doesn’t automatically make one a resident. Castillo calls the separation from her husband “heartbreaking”.

She recently visited her hometown in and says it opened her eyes to how fortunate she is to be an American.

“It made me realize how lucky I am. I’m so thankful my parents forced us to come here.”

Judy Ravkind

As a child living in Germany in the early 1950s, Judy Ravkind remembers her mother and aunt talking endlessly about the wonders of America, “the place where you find a better life.” But it was years before Ravkind understood the adults’ preoccupation with this so-called better life.

Her family endured difficult times in — her grandfather spent time in a concentration camp after refusing to declare loyalty to the Nazi government. Her mother, Dorothea Jonzeck, once a designer and fashion magazine publisher, lost her livelihood during the country’s post-World War II depression.

In the mid-1950s, Ravkind’s aunt, Hanelore Davis, married an American diplomat and moved to the United States. Jonzeck soon followed, found a job with an investment firm and worked quickly to establish a home before bringing over her daughter.

“At age 7, I suddenly found myself on a plane to ,” Ravkind says. “I remember landing in New York and then taking another plane to Texas.” Ravkind didn’t know a word of English, so she was briefly enrolled in a private school just long enough to learn the language. In public school, she shied from her German roots.

“I was not proud of my heritage at the time. I spoke only English and pretended to be American. You know, when you’re a kid, you just want to be like everyone else.”

Meanwhile, her mother was studying diligently to gain citizenship.

“I remember helping her memorize the Constitution,” Ravkind says. “I was 15 when she went through the process. She studied and was sworn in at a ceremony. It was amazing. There was no doubt in my mind that I wanted to be an American.”

Ravkind became a citizen when she was 18. It was as a teenager, she says, that she began to realize how fortunate she was to be here. Eventually she embraced her German background, but not right away. Her husband, Alan Ravkind, says it wasn’t until several dates into their relationship that he realized she wasn’t a native.

“I heard some sort of jibberish coming from down the hall one day. Turns out she speaks German … especially when she’s angry,” he jokes.

Today, says Alan Ravkind, “Judy shows her European roots,” and she’s proud of both her German and American heritage.

“You can take the girl out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the girl,” he says.

Her European tongue comes in especially handy in her career as a service specialist for Paris-based fashion house Louis Vuitton.

“Many of our clients are European,” she says.

As a fashion specialist, Ravkind is following in the footsteps of her mother, who died from cancer at age 45.

Today, the Ravkinds live in an attractive Lake Highlands home that is, except for a sweet chocolate Labrador named Jolie, an empty nest. The couple has raised three children here, impressing on each of them the importance of family, history and family history.

Marietta Tuniynts

It was like any other Friday morning at Grill and Deli Stop. The regular crowd of neighbors had gathered to start their day with breakfast cooked to order by Marietta Tuniynts and her daughter, Kristina Arjomandi. A plate of Eastern European pastries made their way around the room, a standard gesture of the women’s hospitality.

But on this particular morning, the Friday regulars had a present of their own to give.

Chalmers Omberg ushered Tuniynts front and center and began asking her questions much like the ones she had recently answered on her citizenship exam.

“Do you know what the building is where Congress meets?” he prompted her. A bit flustered, Tuniynts blurted out: “Washington, D.C.”

She was close enough. Omberg pulled out an official-looking letter and began reading, “On Nov. 15, this flag flew above the Capitol in honor of Marietta Tuniynts, who recently became a citizen.” He then unfurled the flag to cheers and applause all around the dining room, and Tuniynts gushed her gratefulness.

“I just want to say I love this country, and since the day I got here, everyone has been like my sponsor,” she says. “What can I say? I am very happy.”

The Armenian family, including their father and two brothers, fled their home in the late ’80s when war broke out, threatening their lives with the ethnic cleansing taking place. Arjomandi, then a teenager, recalls riding in the trunk of the family car for up to 12 hours at a time because of the possibility of girls being kidnapped and raped.  Tuniynts says they not only lost all of their belongings but also her 59-year-old mother, who succumbed to the stress of the situation. And if that wasn’t enough, Tuniynts’ husband was suffering from a brain tumor and not even the hospitals were safe.

The family wound up in Moscow, where Tuniynts’ husband finally received chemotherapy treatments. Around that time, President Ronald Reagan began offering political asylum to people living in the Soviet Union.

“My husband said, ‘You know what, Marietta? We going to go to ,” Tuniynts recalls. “I said, ‘Are you crazy? My whole family is here. What if the war stops?’ He said, ‘No, it’s never going to stop. We need to go away from here for our kids.’ He said, ‘If I die here in Moscow, if something happens with me, you take my three kids and go.’ And I said, ‘OK, I’m gonna go. I don’t know nobody there; I don’t speak English; I don’t know nothing.’

“And he said, ‘People are going to help you.’”

They waited for years — Tuniynts remembers that she was No. 16,084 on the list — and on Feb. 10, 1993, the family flew into Dallas. It was a bit of a harsh welcome, especially for then 17-year-old Arjomandi.

“I didn’t like it,” she says. “It was cloudy and muggy and hot, and they take us to apartments, and cockroaches were all over the walls.”

But eventually, Dallas became home. Arjomandi married a man from , and the couple sought citizenship soon after they wed. The rest of her family followed, and now all five are citizens.

“Here, it’s a safer life than back home in ,” Arjomandi says. “There’s mafia nowadays, and if you don’t give them money, they’ll take a member of your family hostage, usually the kids, and you have to give everything, basically, to get your kids away.

“Here you pay taxes that way — you just pay it to the government,” Arjomandi jokes, but then seriously adds: “Here I can sleep OK in the middle of the night. You have every right to talk, to say what you think. I don’t live in fear.”