In the same aggressive tone he uses to rile up supporters at his infamous rallies, Trump barked out a welcome message to the group of new citizens who had just sworn the Oath of Allegiance.
"There were a couple of laughs across the room when we were facing just Donald Trump screaming at us, telling us how proud he was, and all of this stuff we know is not really true," Yildiz told INSIDER, laughing.
For Yildiz, it was a bizarre, but emotional moment. He felt a mixture of pride in his new country and bitterness toward the immigration process that got him there.
Like so many other naturalized citizens, Yildiz's journey from immigrant to American was a years-long struggle that cost thousands of dollars, crippled him with anxiety and depression, and even contributed to the breakdown of his marriage.
In a Reddit post that he was surprised to see grow wildly popular, Yildiz described the "huge, difficult process" it took to immigrate to the US. He put up series of photos from his ceremony, which showed him smiling proudly as he held his new naturalization certificate and a tiny American flag, and watched as the comments and upvotes rolled in, congratulating him on the milestone.
Here's the story of how it all happened:
Yildiz said he always felt drawn to the United States. As a young child growing up in Turkey, he remembers being entranced by American movies and leaping at the opportunity to learn English in school.
He remembers working incredibly hard to learn the language fluently and sound as American as possible. Today, his English is perfect, and he speaks with barely a lilt of an accent.
The pull towards America only became stronger when Yildiz grew older and became a businessman. He knew America prided itself on its entrepreneurial culture, and felt Turkey regulated its companies too forcefully.
"I always kind of felt proud of America for some reason, even though I had never been here," Yildiz told INSIDER. "I was not American; I was on the other side of the world."
So when he met an American woman, who had been teaching English in Istanbul, Yildiz was immediately drawn to her.
"When I met my girlfriend, obviously I didn't go out with her to come here," he said. "But as an American, she was very fascinating to me."
After a year of dating, Yildiz and his girlfriend decided to get engaged and move to the US. They chose what they thought would be the fastest immigration process for Yildiz a K-1 visa but quickly learned it would be anything but simple.
The K-1 visa, which has shot into pop culture relevance thanks to the TLC show "90 Day Fianc," allows foreign nationals to enter the US on temporary visas and later receive green cards, so long as they marry their American fiancs within 90 days of arriving in the country.
When Yildiz received his visa, after roughly a year of processing and an interview in Turkey, he entered the US in October 2012 and married his fiance immediately.
That's when the problems started.
Yildiz paid hundreds of dollars to file an application with the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) for a work permit, which was meant to last until the agency granted him a green card, also known as permanent residency.
But he didn't know at that point that his wait for a green card would eventually last roughly 15 months and his work permit would never arrive.
USCIS did not respond to INSIDER's request for comment.
Yildiz was unable to work, stuck in a new country knowing no one but his wife, uncertain of how long his green card would take to approve, and living in Washington, D.C., one of the most expensive cities in the US. His mental health rapidly deteriorated and so did his marriage.
Yildiz's wife was a graduate student at George Mason University, and also wasn't earning an income, he said. The pair lived off the money Yildiz had saved up back in Turkey, but that was intended to last them just a few months, not upwards of a year.
"This is an extremely expensive place to live. We made that choice based on the timelines we were given, which meant that I would probably be able to start working sometime in June or May of 2013, but that never happened," he said. "None of it was our fault; we did everything right."
Yildiz said the experience of moving to a new country with no way to support himself or his wife, and no friends or relatives to lean on, caused him to quickly spiral downwards.
Adding to the stress was the fear that at any time his green card would be rejected, and the dread that he might have left his whole life behind in Turkey for nothing.
"You just sit and be depressed," he said. "It did a lot of damage to our relationship, and it did a lot of damage to me. I got extremely anxious and extremely stressed about the whole situation not only just financially; we were not doing well. But it was also not progressing. I was never sure if it was actually going to work out in our favor in the end."
Even when Yildizs green card was eventually approved in January 2014, it still couldnt undo the damage that had been done. His green card was conditional for two years before he could file for a permanent version but by then, he and his wife had already divorced, possibly throwing his entire legal status into question.
By the time Yildiz finally heard back from the government requesting "further evidence" to support his application, Trump was in office and had just implemented his first Muslim ban, and Yildiz's anxiety was at a high.
Though he said he never received any indication from USCIS that his application would be treated unfairly, he was still concerned about the effect Trump could have on the agency, given his anti-immigrant rhetoric on the campaign trail.
"Even if he didn't do anything or say anything to USCIS, just the stuff he had said during his campaign and the first couple of months of his presidency was enough for me to feel extremely unwelcome here," Yildiz said. "Especially after he tried to put a Muslim ban banning even green card holders from the country, initially, which was struck down. But it just meant to me that nothing here was reliable anymore for people who were not just white Christians."
Yildiz said he doesn't blame the government for his anguish, or for his divorce, but he wonders how different his life would be today if he and his wife hadn't had to go through such a painstaking, impossible process.
"It was hell," he said. "It was jut months and years of anxiety and stress. And I'm not saying they're responsible for my mental wellbeing, that's up to me, but it definitely wasn't a positive influence."
Yildiz is far from alone in the struggle, and experts say the immigration system has gotten far more challenging under the Trump administration no matter who the immigrant is, where they come from, or how they get to the US.
In the last two years, the government has cracked down on nearly every corner of the immigration system, slowing down visas for skilled immigrants , implementing a travel ban on certain majority-Muslim countries, reducing the refugee intake , discouraging legal immigrants from accepting certain public benefits , and discouraging asylum-seekers from entering.
"I think you need to look at the broader picture at every level of immigration policies, there's been an attempt to have fewer foreign-born people come into the United States or stay in the United states," Stuart Anderson, executive director of the National Foundation for American Policy, told INSIDER. "You have to look at it all through the policy and see how it fits in."
The Trump administration has justified many of its immigration policies by citing a national security basis, or arguing that immigrants threaten American jobs.
But even though Trump has said in recent months he wants to see "legal immigrants" come to the US in "the largest numbers ever," Anderson said there's no evidence that's the case.
"I don't think anyone can identify a single measure the administration has done to encourage more people to come into the country legally," he said. "Everyone who follows this can identify many, many measures to make it more difficult."
Eventually, Yildizs application was approved and his green card became permanent. He applied for citizenship in October 2018, and was surprised at how smoothly the process went from there. He was sworn in as an American citizen in January 2019.
To Yildiz, citizenship was actually the part that mattered the least. His green card already bestowed permanent residence and work authorization the only thing he couldn't do was vote.
Nevertheless, he was surprised at how much the citizenship ceremony meant to him. He treasures the pictures from the ceremony that show him proudly holding up his hand and swearing allegiance to the country.
"It was a lot more emotional for me than I thought," he said. "I already felt like an American, but I had never actually thought about what it would feel like to be legally an American. It was kind of conflicting, I'm not quite sure how I feel about it yet, but I'm really glad I did it."
Yildiz loathes seeing comments from people who praise him for coming to the US "the right way," unlike the asylum-seekers who cross the US-Mexico border illegally. Yildiz found immigration nearly impossible, and wonders how someone without similar wealth or English-language skills could possibly be expected to navigate the US immigration system.
"People keep saying, 'Congratulations for doing it the right way as opposed to illegally jumping the border,'" he said. "The lack of information someone has to possess to make a statement like that is mind-boggling to me, and I don't understand how they can say such strong opinions while obviously not knowing anything about what they're saying."
The immigration system is a labyrinth of complicated rules and narrow eligibility categories, and people who don't have close relatives, employers, or spouses to sponsor them, as Yildiz did, may not have any path to immigrate at all.
Yildiz said even someone who follows the rules to a T, like him, will endure an agonizing process and face rejection at any moment.
"I just want to make the point that even for me I did everything right. I had money, my English is good, I had no problems with the law, I'm a law-abiding citizen, I've paid the United States hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes, I was married to an American. I did everything right," he said. "This is exactly what they say they want to see. And this is just so, so stressful."
