Citizens!

Part of the problem we’re having with our discussion of voting rights and the SAVE act is that I swear 90% of the people in the US have no idea what the difference between illegal “migrant”, legal immigrant, green card holder and CITIZEN.

Look, I’m going on my own experience going TO Green card holder, then being a green card holder, and then becoming a citizen.

I know it sounds completely insane to most people here. I tried to explain to my husband that there was this confusion out there, and he just stared at me going “What? What do you mean they don’t know?”

But his mom, the day after we got married — I hadn’t yet applied for a green card! — told me my name was pronounced differently because I was “An American Now.” And though in her last years my MIL became a View fan, I want to point out in no way was she a stupid woman, and she had a a bachelor of arts from Oberlin. (Yes, that probably explained the View habit. But again, she was not stupid.) At the time I hadn’t yet absolutely decided I was going to change citizenships even. (Mostly because I didn’t want to hurt my dad. It took me a few years to decide, but hey, when I did I went to it full tilt. It’s sort of how I do everything.) But I kept running into people who told me I was a citizen now, including notably a Yale graduate. They would ask me who I was voting for. They told me “You’re American now.”

Curiously, once I became a citizen, I started running into a different kind of crazy — still do — including the people who tell me that I must still have dual citizenship, because I wouldn’t want to give Portuguese citizenship up. And of course the jokers who tell me all the work I did to become an American citizen doesn’t count; being in the US for my entire adult life; living completely isolated from any Portuguese culture in the US; practically forgetting Portuguese (I no longer speak it as a native, really) none of that counts. I was BORN on the magical dirt, and that’s the only thing that counts.

And then there are the people who understand the LEGAL divisions, but not why it should matter. So you get the rank idiocy of foreigners wanting to vote in American elections, because what we do influences their countries.

And the rank — and self interested, because fraud — stupidity of democrats and extreme leftists (BIRM) claiming that everyone who is in the country should vote because “Why shouldn’t they have a say on what happens where they live???” This has given us crazy cakes stuff like ILLEGALS allowed to vote on local and state elections, because after all they live there, don’t they?

This makes as much sense as my having a say on how a hotel room is decorated because I stay there for a week. I can guarantee that the hotel would have something to say if I got in with cans of paint and painted the room bright yellow to cheer me up, got rid of their carpet for luxury vinyl and brought in all my cats to stay.

The reason they would have a problem with it is that I don’t own the hotel room, yes. But more importantly, it’s that I stay in the hotel for about a week. I’m a guest — supposing at least that I pay the rates. Otherwise I’m a squatter and have even fewer rights — and frankly whether the hotel room gets demolished, or every wall painted black the minute I leave couldn’t matter less to me. It’s there while I need it, and I pay the price to stay there legally (Again, if I don’t, they’re entitled to dump me and my stuff in the driveway, and call the police. At least they should be. Let’s not go into how crazy some local laws have gotten.) But it’s not MINE. I have nothing invested in it, and in the end I leave and go back home.

This is actually roughly equivalent to most illegal (and even a lot of legal) immigrants, yes, even to America. They come here because it’s convenient to them. They come here specifically to make money to send “home” and they fully intend to retire back “home”, if possible by building the most expensive house in wherever they came from and living from some kind of US pension.

Now compare that to people who are born in the US, whose entire LIFE, family, their entire experience of everything is in the US.

They are citizens and have invested in the future of the country, particularly those of us who have kids/grandkids/great grandkids. You live here, and try to steer the country to what you think will be a good future for your kids. Sure, you might admit the occasional foreigner, just like families adopt the occasional kid. But they should very much want to be Americans, fit in America and raise their kids to be Americans. They should, as much as possible, make themselves American and marry their future to America’s. Which justifies them being citizens.

Which is what I did. I suppose you can’t demand that every immigrant marry an American, but I will point out this is ideal. While I was born in a different culture and family, American culture and ideas had a very strong influence on me from just about when I started to read science fiction. (And mystery, but mostly science fiction.) I’m not using this to claim that people who read American fiction/watch American movies/etc. are American or should vote in our elections. Possess your soul in patience.

What I mean is that there were seedlings of American culture in my brain even back then. However they were partial and weird, because fiction — I know this is hard to understand, but trust me — isn’t reality. As is, my ideas were more accurate than if I’d watched Hollywood movies, but not by much. Fiction I read gave me a picture of the US somewhere between the 1920s and the 1970s, but not exactly any place on that time line, and it concentrated MOSTLY on the big cities, particularly NYC and Los Angeles. And the news were no help there.

In fact, the first three years, until I decided I’d become American (or bust) were spent mostly in correcting misapprehensions I had about the US. And this was AFTER I’d finished High School in the US.

It takes time. It takes time and living here, even if you’re fluent, isolated from people from your native country and really want to be American.

For instance, it took me five years to realize crime wasn’t out of control just because I heard sirens all the time: like American policemen turn on the sirens for traffic stops, or (as a cop acquaintance put it, yes, I know it’s a joke) the “fresh doughnuts” sign went on at Krispy Kreme. It didn’t mean it was like the movies, and people were being murdered left and right.

Or take the complete idiocy of our very first house purchase. If I’d been acculturated, I’d know that house would never sell at a higher price, and it was a stupid purchase. Or–

Anyway, the thing is, I came here. I came here as a full speaker of English. And once I’d decided (Might have been two years in. I’m old. The years bleed together) that I was going to become American…. I went all in.

Since I’ve moved to the US, my entire time in Portugal has been maybe a total of three months, cumulative, over FORTY years. My kids have spent maybe a total month there, in one week or less increments.

We got news of the family every week, via my mom. And my kids like the family there. BUT they are very much foreigners (They are to my kids, and my kids to them.) My kids grew up in the US. My kids grew up Colorado Kids. that’s a far greater identification to them than the fact they had a mother who was born abroad. One of the cutest things about my boys is that they don’t hear my accent, but they do identify the ten words or so I still pronounce the British way (because I first learned British English.)

I became a citizen before first son was born. And yes, the reason was pretty much because I was going to have AMERICAN kids and raise them to be American.

I remember one of the moments of frustration my mom had with older son, when she just yelled at him, “You’re so, so so so….” Hands up in the air “American!”

She did not expect the kid — he was fourteen — to give her a slow smile and say, “Why, thank you ma’am.” (One of the rare occasions of communications across languages.)

Anyway, this is the oath I took:

“I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.”

And I meant every single word of that. When I naturalized, I gave up all allegiance to the place I was born. I love my relatives, of course, but they are foreign. This is the country I married, as much as I married my husband. I built my home here, and I work to make this a country for my children and should I have them, my grandchildren world without end.

I’m not a guest. I’m not spending time here and intending to “return home.” THIS IS HOME. MY HOME. I have no other.

And that’s why I have the right to vote here. Because if this country gets demolished, or turned into a socialist shithole matters very much to me. And to my kids who, G-d willing, will live here after me.

And that’s why citizens are different. Now, can we police citizens to make sure they are wedded to this land of ours, and don’t intend to go back? No. BUT requiring citizenship is the very minimum you can do.

Citizenship and proof there of means there’s at least a chance they’re of us. Not just a hotel guest — or squatter — who wants to paint the walls black, or set explosive charges off in his room.