A French-born and French-educated PhD engineer, my wife first came to the United States for post-doctoral study, then married an American and then become a US citizen. Her idealization of America began when her vacationing parents sent her a post card from New York City in 1969. The image of Manhattan’s skyline from the Brooklyn Bridge coupled with that summer’s images from the Apollo moon landing cemented her future. She was going to be part of America’s exceptionalism when she grew up.
Just twenty-one years after her arrival she suddenly finds her adopted country almost unrecognizable. She often remarks that she didn’t immigrate (legally) to the US so that it would come to imitate France. If she wanted to live in a country that embraced socialism, accepted persistently high unemployment, encouraged nationalization of major industries, supported dictatorial labor unions and promoted countless communist government insiders, she could have stayed put.
But in case things continue to deteriorate she insists that we make contingency plans. She once left the country of her birth and she could leave the country she adopted if its prospects diminish. Maybe Australia, Canada or even New Zealand offers better opportunities than America. Australia turned Left in their last elections, though only moderately so, while both Canada and even New Zealand seem to have solid right-of-center governments. All three have stronger currencies than ours. And New Zealand of all places, rates according to the World Bank, as one of the easiest countries in the world to do business in.
My wife has lived through two Bushes and a Clinton but only under Obama has America’s atmosphere become so poisonous and its future so heavy with gloom and fear that serious discussions about packing it all in could emerge. This is what Obama’s election has wrought. I doubt if we’re the only relatively mobile couple to have had this discussion, one unimaginable in any other era.
“Dear”, I ask, “can’t we just try Alaska or Wyoming or Tennessee first?”
California has birthed the four horsemen of the apocalypse: high taxes, over-regulation, suicidal environmentalism and unfettered illegal immigration
Of course, living in California, described even by the loony left Huffington Post, as America’s first failed state doesn’t help matters. Huffington doesn’t even realize that it’s the policies of the loony left that have killed California. And Obama is hell-bent on bringing California’s dysfunction to the rest of America. Economically, California has birthed the four horsemen of the apocalypse: high taxes, over-regulation, suicidal environmentalism and unfettered illegal immigration. Obama is excitedly bringing all of these things to the country at large.
Why did my wife have to sweat through a five-year legal immigration process, demonstrate English fluency, display an understanding of the US Constitution and establish independent financial bona fides before being awarded US citizenship, while compassionate politicians are only too happy to bestow citizenship on millions who illegally entered the country?
Why does she have to endure and accept a combined 50% federal and state income tax burden as a penalty for earning a Ph.D, MBA, and various profession certifications, while half the country pays no income tax at all? Obama is only too happy to redistribute her hard-earned income to illegal slackers whose only contribution to our country is to remove soda bottles from our green curbside recycling bin for their nickel deposits.
In a last ditch effort to help reclaim her country and turn back Obama’s policies, my wife has become a tea partier. During her education in France, she managed to avoid marching in May Day parades and resisted constant pressure to join communist teacher/student unions. But starting last April 15th she began marching and laughing with a bunch of like-minded, well-behaved American protesters. I think it was Ayn Rand, who while fighting against collectivism of every sort, tried to mobilize 1960’s radicals to embrace capitalism with this vision: “Those who work for the future live in it today.”
My wife is increasingly attracted to Rand and she rediscovers why she immigrated to America whenever she reads something by Milton Friedman or Thomas Sowell, or listens to Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh or Mark Levin. She wrote her first letter ever to a Congressman at the height of the health care debate last summer.
Happily, some untraditional politicians have imbibed the populist fury of her new philosophical allies in the streets, and have decided to run for office. My wife is almost desperate to recognize again the country she passionately adopted over twenty years ago. If Obama really wants to understand what that country once represented for her, he should give her or any other proud legal immigrant a call.
He’d learn that she didn’t come to America to reduce her carbon footprint. She didn’t come craving universal health care. She came to be inspired and driven. She was drawn to America for its energy, dynamism, creativity and power.
And these are all the things that Obama is in the process of destroying.
Claude (and his wife) an be contacted at
csandroff@gmail.com
