Hi Rasema,
I just saw your thread here. Let me try to address some of the points you raised.
As for praying fajr, the prophet said "land was made for me a masjed and clean" meaning that any spot on land is valid to perform your prayer. As far as cleanliness is concerned, as long as you don't see a direct harm (dog excrement, rancid water, etc) it is find to pray. Sidewalk is fine, a dry spot with a newspaper spread is sufficient. Grass does not require anything spread unless it is wet. If it is dry it is presumed Taher (pure) until indication of uncleanliness is clear.
Try to maintain Dhuhr sunna though, daily maintainance ensures your house in paradise.
(The prophet -pbuh- said: "Whomever prays 12 nawafel rakaa in the day and night, God builds him a house in paradise") Half of the 12 rakaa are the 6 of Dhuhr. Making up the Dhuhr sunnah is not required with Hanafi and Maliki fiqh, but is possible with Shafei and most of the Hanbali Sheikhs.
Brother Woodrow, praying in your mind is not permissible even for a quadraplegic, that is because they can pray by moving their eyes. It is good that you were saying this is your opinion though, God bless you. The person needs to perform the acts concerned with the prayer as long as his body can handle it. If the ground is completely filthy and cannot be prostated upon, then find a bench or rock, and perform your prayer standing, making rokoo as normal, and then sitting on the bench or rock and making a bow without touching the ground to resemble the prostration, standing up at the beginning of the new Rakaa. Chair is used if standing is impossible or a great distress, like in a car or on a plane.
As far as the US citizenship is concerned, what I am told is that the amount of hassles you get as a US citizen are more than otherwise when it comes to taxes and possession (You are not allowed to have offshore accounts, or have business interests with the blacklisted countries like Iran or Cuba, and all your worldwide income above 70k or so is taxed). I heard the warnings about that. Other than that, a US passport will give you protection and rights that your current passport might not (depending on your current citizenship this might be a big deal or a moot point). So it's really up to you to decide on what you will do. HOWEVER, you said something you need to be aware of:
My beloved sis, my mother wants to get a citizenship. She insists that I get one so she gets it easier. It's a little too personal but I don't have a word in my house "DO THIS,PERIOD."
I have never heard a single scholar ever asked about ANYTHING that a mother asked a person to do, and the scholar said anything other than "Do it immediately without delay!" That included leaving a beloved suitor, or marrying a specific woman, or staying away from a feud, or not going even on Umra (but not the obligatory haj, otherwise it is disobedience to God and you should go in spite)! Sheikh Shenqeetee has explained it in a profound lecture that brought him to tears when he remembered his dead mother, that with Parental Pleasure, every portal of mercy and providence is opened for you that whatever you do in life is blessed just because you're pleasing your mother.
He told of a young man who came to him once asking him that his mother is insisting that he marries this unattractive skinny girl that wasn't even a good muslim, and he yearned for his cousin who was both beautiful and devout muslim, and the sheikh told him to obey his mother. WHen the man argued that the prophet asked men to seek the one with better religion ("Woman is married for four: either beauty, or social class, or money, or religion. Win the one with the religion your hands will be blessed."), the Sheikh answered that it was mustahabb, not obligatory, and that obeying the mother is obligatory. The man revised the Shiekh over a whole month and the Sheikh maintained his position and told him to keep coming till he's dead if he wants to keep wasting his time, there will be no angle to tackle this.
The man married the woman his mother wanted, and he visited the Sheikh two years later, kissed his hand, and told him that the woman he married was the kindest he could ever imagine, and with marital life she brightened up and took care of herself and gained beauty, and most importantly turned out to be from an unreligious home but was hungry for learning, and learned from him and books and became the most pious he could imagine. As for the cousin he liked, low and behold she went through circumstances that made her depressed and nasty in treatment, and in rejection she dropped her religious obligations and was hardly ever praying anymore.
You don't know where's the good, and God will arrange it for you because you have obeyed him in one of the highest commandments he enjoined upon us as muslims: pleasing and obeying our parents. Because your mother has asked you to do this, and insists you do, and it is not a disobedience to God, you HAVE TO do it if you don't want to be commiting a sin of displeasing your mother, which is a huge one.
Barak Allahu feekee sister
