The U.S. is hosting naturalization ceremonies at unusual sites, including historic landmarks and on sandy beaches, in a renewed promotion of citizenship.

BY ALFONSO CHARDY

This evening, on the sands of Miami Beach, where scores of Cuban and Haitian refugees have landed over the years seeking the American Dream, more than a dozen immigrants, including five adopted children, will become U.S. citizens.

The siting was not accidental.

From the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas, to Epcot at Walt Disney World, more than 16,000 immigrants are taking the oath of citizenship in ceremonies at landmark or historic venues -- part of a growing national trend by the federal government to host naturalization ceremonies in high-profile places.

Shea Stadium in New York plans to host its first-ever citizenship ceremony Aug. 26 before a Mets-Padres game, said Ethan Wilson, a Mets spokesman.

''What can be more traditionally American than baseball and a citizenship ceremony?'' said Dan Kane, a spokesman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Ceremonies today also will take place in Boston, where imported British tea was dumped into the harbor in 1773, one of the key events that sparked the American Revolution. New citizens will be sworn in aboard the USS Constitution, Old Ironsides, the oldest warship in the world.

After the Sept. 11 attacks President Bush expedited naturalization for immigrants in the military. One of the first unconventional ceremonies for military personnel took place in 2003 aboard the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt in Norfolk, Va. About 225 sailors became citizens in a ceremony presided over by Eduardo Aguirre, head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, himself a naturalized citizen who fled Cuba as a 15-year-old.

Though immigration has occasionally hosted naturalization ceremonies at landmark sites before, those events were not as widely publicized and coordinated as today's.

Ceremonies at stadiums and landmark sites are likely to become more common as long as the immigration service can guarantee the occasion remains solemn, said Alfonso Aguilar, chief of the immigration service's Office of Citizenship. ''We need to be sure they are proper and dignified,'' Aguilar said.

These ceremonies, he said, will not replace the more common ones at convention centers, courthouses or auditoriums, which are convenient when naturalizing large numbers of immigrants all at once.

Mammoth ceremonies involving thousands are already being prepared in connection with Citizenship Day, Sept. 17, at the Miami Beach Convention Center, said Jack Bulger, Florida district director for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.