Marty: Not born in the USA

A few days before the nation’s 235th birthday, 49 people from
nine different countries recited the Oath of Allegiance and were
sworn in as American citizens during a naturalization ceremony at
the Hollister Municipal Airport. I welcome them.
A few days before the nation’s 235th birthday, 49 people from nine different countries recited the Oath of Allegiance and were sworn in as American citizens during a naturalization ceremony at the Hollister Municipal Airport. I welcome them.

Their stories contain an element that often dominates among those who choose to follow the long and difficult road of legal immigration and U.S. citizenship – it is optimism driven by opportunity and tempered by experience. That attitude is in stark contrast to so many natural born American citizens who display pessimism because they no longer believe in opportunity or connect it with effort.

I remember when my wife gave up her Dutch nationality and became a naturalized U.S. citizen 44 years ago; she was happy and proud. She was also a little upset that the examining officer had given her only a simple English sentence to write. She had studied English in school for five years and used it daily for five more – she wanted to demonstrate her fluency.

The naturalization process also requires applicants to pass a civics test that emphasizes “the founding principles of American democracy and the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.” It’s a simple test, but many natural born citizens would have difficulty with some of it.

The majority of naturalized citizens come from third-world countries and some from levels of poverty that many Americans cannot comprehend. Between 1995 and 2005, the naturalized citizen population that had been born in South Asia and East Asia grew from 2.1 million to 4.0 million. During those 10-years, the group born in Latin America, other than Mexico, doubled from 1.4 million to 2.8 million while the number from Mexico increased from 600,000 to 1.6 million. At the same time the number of naturalized citizens in the U.S. population that had been born in Europe or Canada increased by only 300,000.

According to the Pew Hispanic Center 2007 report on naturalization, “Mexicans still have a comparatively lower tendency to become U.S. citizens,” but “the number of naturalized citizens from Mexico rose by 144 percent from 1995 to 2005 — the sharpest increase among immigrants from any major sending country.”   

Overall, the proportion of all legal foreign-born residents who have become naturalized U.S. citizens has been going up. It rose to 52 percent in 2005, the highest level in a quarter of a century – a 14 percent increase since 1990, according to the report.

Economic opportunity is still the strongest incentive to immigrate to America, but there is no shame in that; natural born citizens are often focused on the same goals – more money and the better standard of living that it can buy. Why is it, then, that so many immigrants see opportunity where so many natural born citizens see obstacles?

Natural born American citizens start with better prospects than the majority of people in the world and believe, erroneously, that they deserve a better future merely because they are on the first-place team. Meanwhile, the poor among the legal immigrants know what it means to do it the hard way – they do not come from countries claiming to be “number 1” and they have had to work much harder just for life’s basic needs.

Our fundamental problem is that too many of my fellow citizens are resting on their laurels and even worse, the laurels of previous generations. They can learn something very important from those struggling to become U.S. citizens; you get out of life what you put into it; no one owes you anything. If, by fortunate accident of birth, you start out as citizen of this great nation, you should do something good with that invaluable advantage. 

Marty Richman is a Hollister resident.