July 31, 2008

Today, I am an American.

Of course, being an American is about more than paying my $675 application and fingerprint fees, and getting an official piece of paper that says I’m a U.S. Citizen. It’s not even about the Oath of Allegiance I took.

When I started to tell people I’m applying for Naturalization, I got an alarming number of people tell me “Don’t do it!” – to varying degrees of seriousness. Now whether or not you agree with this sentiment, unless you’ve been holed up in a cave for the past five or ten years, I don’t have to explain where this response might be coming from. Yes, our government hasn’t been doing so well. I’m sure they’re at least partially responsible for the fact that I haven’t had a real job (or the health insurance that goes with one) in over a year. And of course, let’s not forget the death and destruction abroad.

But for better or worse, this land, the United States of America, is my home. I’m 24 years old, and I’ve lived here since I was a month shy of my 4th birthday. When I am in Japan, I feel like a foreigner. I do have some ties there: I remember a surprising amount of my early life there, I have relatives to visit, and I’ve been there enough times to know my way around. But I’ve known in my heart, for a long time, that it will never be home again.

And I do truly believe in the ideals and principles that this country was founded on. Isn’t that why we’re so angry with the current administration? Because they’ve done so much to try to circumvent the Bill of Rights? Am I not an American, to want to engage in this struggle, as a citizen of this Nation? Shouldn’t I vote?

I have paradoxical feelings about my Citizenship: at the same time that I feel like this is mostly just a formality at this point, I can’t help feeling that this is a profound moment. Last night, I sat and stared at my very first passport, long expired, with the photograph of my 3-year-old, baby-fat self and my mother’s signature on my behalf. There is only a single trip recorded on this passport: a one-way flight, departed from Narita Airport on October 18th, 1987. I somewhat remember that day. Mostly, I was blissfully playing a handheld game my parents had just bought me, completely oblivious to the fact that the direction of my life was about to drastically change.

I think of my late mother, and I think about what must have been going through her head that day. My dad is an adventurous, ever-optimistic type of person, but my mom was not so. I imagine her devastated to leave her friends, her family, and everything she knew in her life. I imagine her nervous about what the future will hold in a foreign country she’d never been to where she doesn’t speak the language, and worried sick about what all this will mean when it comes to raising her only daughter.

But this is a similar story to countless other immigrant stories, the stories that America is made of.

Today, I am an Asian-American.