The United States of Shame!
9/20/2016
This is a story contributed by a US citizen and an immigrant women. Her name and country of origin will remain unnamed due to safety concerns.
I was in my early 20s when I decided to move to the Free World because I thought it was better anywhere but in my home country (For safety, I prefer not to name it). I was young, I was beautifully naive and I was a dreamer.
My idea of the United States, as is the case for most immigrants, was that of a land where people were free, had common sense, don't discriminate and are positive without judgement of the past and always looking forward to the future with unbelievable sense of openness. My idea of the American Dream was a place where I am free to be me without rules that dictate morality or correctness. A place where as a woman I would be free not to marry if I chose to, where my worth is measured by my intelligence rather than my reproductive abilities.
And so I moved. The story of the immigration process I went through is a painful book I could write with tears from start to finish but that's another story. The struggles of the immigration process were by far the biggest struggles of my life and I moved from a country where I could be killed for talking to a man face to face!
Before I go further, please don't get me wrong. I LOVE this country with all my heart and it is this love that makes me write this but it's also my anger and frustration.
15 years later, I am today more American than apple pie. I can't identify myself any other way but "American" and proudly so. I am not saying I am proud to be an American like how most Americans say it when they did not do anything to earn it. They are simply proud that they were born here and not in Kenya! I am proud because of the struggles and pains I had to endure to be a voting tax paying American woman.
Yet, after all these years, I feel like I was cheated. I was sold a big fat lie. The image of a free and open minded country I dreamed of is still far from the reality I live everyday and this election not just highlights that reality for me but it angers me because I was fooled into believing I made the best choice when in fact I could have made a better one had I moved to Denmark instead.
This 2016 election does not just make me angry for my choice but embarrassed and ashamed because I made the conscious decision to move to this country. If I was simply born here like most Americans, I could simply say "well, I did not have a choice, I was born and raised here" but I made the choice and I feel embarrassed.
I fled a country because women are not respected for their intelligence only to see the asshole running for president in my country talk about women like they are a piece of meat. I fled a country where discrimination among ethnic groups is almost unheard of only to find myself in a country where the man running for president advocates ethnic cleansing as a way to handle illegal immigration.
I am proud to have gone through everything to become an American, proud of my efforts but not of my choice. I could have made an effort to immigrate to Canada, France, Denmark or Australia and I would have been equally proud of my effort to be Canadian, French, Danish and Australian. But for my choice, I am ashamed. This is is a feeling shared today by many Americans, those who were born here as much as those who made the choice to move here. But those who made the choice feel much more embarrassed today.
But we are all United in the state of shame that is our country today. So to all of us born here or not, immigrants and natives, we are here together and we shall be united in our efforts to make this nation a hopeful one for us all. The way to do so is to VOTE for anyone but Trump because for all the pain I have gone through to become an American, I would vote for Mickey Mouse before I vote for a man who makes me ashamed to be American.
This is the United States of Shame but I am still proud to be one of its citizens!
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