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On a Wednesday morning in the Mission District, the classroom fills with middle-aged and elderly men and women. Most are Latino. All are there to become U.S. citizens.

“Do you support the Constitution?” the instructor, Jake Simons, asks the class of twenty or so students. “ Qué decimos ?” he says in Spanish. “What do we say?”

“Yes,” the group choruses in English.

For some in the room, this free citizenship course is the closest they’ve ever been to a formal education.

Simons is the associate director at Centro Latino de San Francisco and its naturalization

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