Tuesday, April 21, 1998
Good aspects outweigh bad in decision to live in States
IMMIGRANT: Perspective doesn’t take into account purpose for
coming here
By Ryan San Diego
After reading your column last Tuesday ("Green card for sale" by
Neven Jeremic), I found myself agreeing with you for the most part.
What I could not explain right away, however, was why it seemed to
leave a bad taste in the mouth.
Like you, I am a foreign student. On this level, I know from
where you speak. Unlike you, who have been here for five years, I
am just approaching my first year of residence. Unlike you, who
came here in your late teens, I came here to the United States at a
more "seasoned" age of 23. Unlike you, I wasn’t trying to dodge any
draft in the Philippines. (Already having tucked a bachelor’s
degree under my belt and been gainfully employed back in Manila, I
guess I can say I’m in the United States just for the heck (read:
experience) of it.
Clearly, the "unlikes" far outnumber the "like," but you will
find that my strongest disagreements hinge on the fact that we are
both foreigners.
For five years, America has successfully served your purpose.
(You have not been drafted, right?) For this reason alone, it
doesn’t deserve the "venom of (your) words" for not serving your
expectations. I will not even delve into the dubious composition
skills with which you lambasted certain Americans for being
airheads. I hope you did not mean this to be a generalization of
the American collective IQ, because if you did, you might have just
bashed your own kind. Stupid people exist everywhere – in the
States, in the Philippines, and I’m absolutely sure they exist in
Bosnia. If in your life you run into an inordinate number of stupid
people, I am certain geography is not the culprit. Stupidity is
often coated by arrogance. Even stupid people know this and
gravitate toward those who wear the disguise. Personally, I feel
that all the bad that America is and has are part of a foreigner’s
choice to live here. (We’ll leave out the "good America" because of
your obvious disinterest in it.) Throughout the 20th century,
millions have migrated to this land with goals much nobler than
yours.
Millions, too, have been disappointed on levels far deeper than
yours.
So if you feel you’re presenting us with something newer and
more exciting than sliced bread, you’re mistaken. What you yak
about is really over-written-about, over-discussed old hat. You did
write with passion. Though a misguided one.
And what’s this business of including yourself in the pronouns
"We" and "Us" and calling America your home? The simple fact is …
you can’t (especially for the flimsy reason that you have "no other
home but this one"). I assume that UCLA did not go pounding at your
door begging you to be a student. On this assumption, I liken you
to a gatecrasher who attends a certain party because he couldn’t
crash any other. The party sucks and the gatecrasher feels he has
the right to gripe about it. He feels that the host should
apologize not only to the invited guests but to him as well.
You wrote, "I am wrapping up my BA feeling I could’ve spent my
early 20s elsewhere, and much more productively." Of all your
statements, this is the one that strikes a chord in me. I had a
stable, comfortable life back home (I mean the Philippines, thank
you) strengthening the foundations of a promising career. I have my
moments when I doubt if going all the way to America and taking all
its shit will be worth it.
I’m positive, it will. But a foreigner tends to forget that.
With the benefit of hindsight, I am sure I’ll look back to the
years I spent in America as the most damn productive years of my
life – productive in the most intangible but emotionally profound
way. But you, Mr. Jeremic, demand a payback right here and now – a
testament to how you’ve grown slower than you’ve aged.
What really escapes me is why you decided to pursue a green card
in the first place. Someone like you who scoffs at stupid people
and has "quite a decent resume" surely could have forseen that your
repulsion at this culture would peak this high. If you won’t admit
to a lack of principles, will you admit to hypocrisy? Because a
hypocrite is really all you amount to if, after all you’ve said and
done, you still don’t give up your green card. (Nowhere in your
piece did you categorically say that you would and frankly, it
makes your integrity suspect.)
I ask only one question. In the past five years, would you
rather have served in the Bosnian armed forces or would you have
spent it, just as you did, in sunny Los Angeles? If you say the
former, I’d probably cease to see you in a tragic light. Or maybe
not. At the end of the day, I have no idea how deep your wounds
really are.