A message to all Americans (from a Naturalized Citizen) - General

So I was not born in the US like MOST OF YOU, I was born in India. At the age of 5 or so, my parents moved away from there (thank god) and we lived in Western Europe for 5 years. After that we moved to America, we lived in California for about 2 years or so and NY for about a year. Moved down to the deep south where I have lived for the past 7-8 years or so. Having talked to family members living in other countries, family members in India, reading about peoples' experiences in different countries, meeting immigrants who have lived in different countries before, and all of that. I have learned a true lesson, America might be one of the VERY FEW countries in the world that allows an immigrant to work hard and truly make something of themselves. From what I have read and talked to others about, most other developed countries are not like this. I mean when my parents and I moved to where we are, we were not very rich, we weren't poor either. Then shortly after that, my dad and the whole family worked hard and now we can afford to go out and eat every week, parents can afford to send me to college, and we can afford so many things. Not too long ago we became citizens of this country. But it gets EVEN BETTER. Americans ACTUALLY try to get to know foreigners and get involved with them in the sense that they want to be your friend if you are foreign. Like I have met people down here who were curious about Indian food and I have had the privilege to make friends with White, Black, Asian, Hispanic, and mixed race people. Like so many people here are CURIOUS about foreign cultures instead of being hostile towards them, I heard in a lot of European countries this is not the case. Now, I do have my complaints about some things here. I think Hollywood kisses up to the Europeans a lot (preferring actors from Europe even over American actors for major films), I feel that not a lot of younger Americans are patriotic as I am, and I feel that women here can be rougher to deal with than foreign women. With all that being said, I really feel there is not any better country in the world faith could have brought me to. Americans, love yourselves, you aren't as bad as the world paints you as and whatever you guys have been doing, keep doing it. I am grateful to be a part of this country, will stand up for it when I can, and will do my best to contribute to this country AND THIS COUNTRY ONLY.

Thanks bro. I'm glad you are having a good time in America.

<3 It's nice to see someone on here that isn't a rabid anti-American.

america is pretty cool. glad to have you aboard

welcome aboard the freedom train

USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA

This is a nice change of pace with all the anti American sentiment on facepunch. Love you too bro

If only everyone had perspective.

[video=youtube;tX5ZRE26YWM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tX5ZRE26YWM[/video] Great to know you feel that way, I'm glad we were able to provide a good home.

[QUOTE=sgman91;38155967]If only everyone had perspective.[/QUOTE] Okay this is silly though, lots of different immigrants to the U.S. have very different experiences, some have good ones, some bad, mostly mixed. Picking the people whose experiences mesh best with what you already think and saying that they "have perspective" is actually the opposite of having perspective. Which isn't to say I'm not glad MBB has had a good experience thus far, but you know.

Welcome to the US of A, although this is probably a little late since you've been here a while already. I'm glad (and relieved) that there are still Americans like you living here in the states (I know you weren't born here, but you're more American than many of the people I know :smile:). You know, this post actually made my day, now that I think about it. There are so many things going around where I am, political stuff that have simply pissed me off. People who were once friends who are on the opposite sides of the political spectrum, and have now gotten so pissed off with one another that they don't talk, and when they do it's in the form of an argument. There's too much division going on, and you making this post has really cheered me up. I'm grateful that you've become a part of this country.

America's a nice place and most of the people there are friendly, sometimes it gets way too much abuse than it deserves.

I LOVE YOU! I always make it a point to get to know foreign people. America is a very nice place to live, (and I was born here) and I've always been very interested in foreign peoples' backgrounds. I'm so glad you like it here.

i'm an expat from england living in america so far i'd give the US a 6/10, good effort but falls short [editline]23rd October 2012[/editline] [QUOTE=MBB;38139935] America might be one of the VERY FEW countries in the world that allows an immigrant to work hard and truly make something of themselves. From what I have read and talked to others about, most other developed countries are not like this. [/QUOTE] i don't know what this means.

just out of curiosity what would you rate the UK then?

5/10 glad i got out before that whole recession crisis happened, sounded kind of bad there

I'm glad you're enjoying it in the US, I'm glad your family was actually able to accomplish a great life and such. More power to your family, and I hope all gets even better!

Always nice when people can look past the silly stereotypes. Doubt I'll live here past college, though. I've been thinking seriously of immigrating to Australia.

[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;38156775]Doubt I'll live here past college, though. I've been thinking seriously of immigrating to Australia.[/QUOTE] B-but... "Big Dumb [i]Australian [/i]" doesn't have the same ring to it though

Welcome home. Personally, I believe the reasons the rest of the developed world hates us, as well as some of our own citizens, is because of the way we flaunt ourselves about as the best of the best. Looking from a positive side of things (which is rare for me), we are doing pretty well actually. Looking from a negative/realistic side of things. We've got a lot to work on. We shouldn't be sticking our noses into other countries' affairs saying "we're just trying to help". It's not helping. We have enough problems as it is. Hurricane Katrina happened 7 years ago, some of the French Quarter is still leveled. We have rampant issues with reverse religious persecution here. Christians are taking their majority numbers and running with it. They think they're the only ones here and it's starting to annoy the shit out of me. Intolerance is tragically growing because of them. I can't even begin to express my hatred for corporations and what they do to the population. We're falling into the hands of the families with the most money. The Morgans, Rockefellers, Waldons, Vanderbilts, and worst of all, the Koch Brothers. More than half of US Congress are Millionaires. Nobody gives two shits about people who have the right ideas in politics. It's all about who can get the most funding. Gov. Romney, from his own tax havens in the Cayman Islands. Pres. Obama from manufacturers. Frankly, I find it hilarious how excited people get over election day. They will never understand that their vote doesn't mean shit to anyone. With the Electoral College in place, the popular vote couldn't be more useless. The 2000 election is a perfect example of this, Al Gore won the Popular vote by miles. Bush only won the presidency after a recount was forced by the predominantly Republican Supreme Court. No matter what fucking president manages to get elected, shit will never change. This country isn't getting any better. People couldn't give two shits about their friends and neighbors when it comes to welfare of the being. That's what modern free market capitalism does to people. It demoralizes them. People look at their neighbors, usually the first thought in their mind is "I wonder how much they make". Then they spend the rest of their lives doing useless desk jobs and crying about how they don't make enough money. I'll use another example. Recently, in Chicago, thousands and thousands of public school teachers went on strike because of a Union Contract negotiation. The contract negotiated with the City of Chicago dropped their pay slightly due to a loss in tax revenue. Not a single fucking teacher went back to their respective school and said to their students, who were patiently waiting in the classroom, "I'm sorry kids, your education means more to me than my paycheck." These kids waited almost 4 days for the strike to end. This just shows how little anyone cares about each other anymore. That a school teacher, let alone thousands of them, would have the audacity to completely ignore their students well being and education, so they could hold up a sign and riot in the streets because the government couldn't afford to pay them more money frankly disgusts me. On to the horrific activities of the american police force, we come to the new trend of a situation similar to a military dictatorship; currently, and quite silently, sweeping across the nation. A 12 year old girl shouldn't have to suffer 3rd degree burns from the flash grenade thrown through her window by the SWAT team who managed to raid the wrong house. Somehow, it's completely legal for tweens to camp out and block the street, leaving garbage everywhere, and wait for the midnight release of the new Twilight. However, a completely constitutional, peaceful, justified protest results in thousands of arrests and use of deadly force on people who are sick and tired of because stepped on. In New York City, if you wanted to protest something you would first have to spend months in the Court System trying to get a permit to use street space. When Occupy Wall Street came about, people started attacking the concept by saying that the protesters were making a mess of Zucotti Park. In response to this, the protesters actually cleared out their tents temporarily, bought household cleaning supplies, and began cleaning the park. Some of them sweeped the sidewalks, some washed the benches, others trimmed the fucking trees. It's amazing to me that, while they were cleaning the park, a man climbed up the tree to grab a newspaper that had blown into it and was immediately shot with pepper spray and chained to a fence. I have no idea what the hell is going on in this country. I'm only 16, I've never lived life outside my school or my house. But I can plainly see somethings wrong here. People shouldn't have to make a choice between dinner and a place to sleep. I shouldn't have to skate down the Streets of the City and worry if I'm going to be tackled by a cop and beaten, then arrested under some bullshit charge he made up. I shouldn't have to worry that I'm being constantly watched by a security force that is only paranoid because of the actions that are our country's own fault. I don't mean to start an argument, but I've been waiting a while to express my feelings on domestic issues like these. I'm a a liberal, an atheist, and a socialist stuck within the walls of a conservative, zealous, capitalist Catholic School. It's not often I get to express an opinion without being ostracized.

[QUOTE=Fhenexx;38156882]B-but... "Big Dumb [i]Australian [/i]" doesn't have the same ring to it though[/QUOTE] It's literally the [I]only[/I] reason I haven't moved.

Sometimes I think about all the things that suck about this country, but then I realize that it isn't the United States that's bad, the world just sucks at a lot of stuff at the moment.

move to japan BDA-kun

[QUOTE=Adelle Zhu;38156971]Welcome home. Personally, I believe the reasons the rest of the developed world hates us, as well as some of our own citizens, is because of the way we flaunt ourselves about as the best of the best. Looking from a positive side of things (which is rare for me), we are doing pretty well actually. Looking from a negative/realistic side of things. We've got a lot to work on. We shouldn't be sticking our noses into other countries' affairs saying "we're just trying to help". It's not helping. We have enough problems as it is. Hurricane Katrina happened 7 years ago, some of the French Quarter is still leveled. We have rampant issues with reverse religious persecution here. Christians are taking their majority numbers and running with it. They think they're the only ones here and it's starting to annoy the shit out of me. Intolerance is tragically growing because of them. I can't even begin to express my hatred for corporations and what they do to the population. We're falling into the hands of the families with the most money. The Morgans, Rockefellers, Waldons, Vanderbilts, and worst of all, the Koch Brothers. More than half of US Congress are Millionaires. Nobody gives two shits about people who have the right ideas in politics. It's all about who can get the most funding. Gov. Romney, from his own tax havens in the Cayman Islands. Pres. Obama from manufacturers. Frankly, I find it hilarious how excited people get over election day. They will never understand that their vote doesn't mean shit to anyone. With the Electoral College in place, the popular vote couldn't be more useless. The 2000 election is a perfect example of this, Al Gore won the Popular vote by miles. Bush only won the presidency after a recount was forced by the predominantly Republican Supreme Court. No matter what fucking president manages to get elected, shit will never change. This country isn't getting any better. People couldn't give two shits about their friends and neighbors when it comes to welfare of the being. That's what modern free market capitalism does to people. It demoralizes them. People look at their neighbors, usually the first thought in their mind is "I wonder how much they make". Then they spend the rest of their lives doing useless desk jobs and crying about how they don't make enough money. I'll use another example. Recently, in Chicago, thousands and thousands of public school teachers went on strike because of a Union Contract negotiation. The contract negotiated with the City of Chicago dropped their pay slightly due to a loss in tax revenue. Not a single fucking teacher went back to their respective school and said to their students, who were patiently waiting in the classroom, "I'm sorry kids, your education means more to me than my paycheck." These kids waited almost 4 days for the strike to end. This just shows how little anyone cares about each other anymore. That a school teacher, let alone thousands of them, would have the audacity to completely ignore their students well being and education, so they could hold up a sign and riot in the streets because the government couldn't afford to pay them more money frankly disgusts me. On to the horrific activities of the american police force, we come to the new trend of a situation similar to a military dictatorship; currently, and quite silently, sweeping across the nation. A 12 year old girl shouldn't have to suffer 3rd degree burns from the flash grenade thrown through her window by the SWAT team who managed to raid the wrong house. Somehow, it's completely legal for tweens to camp out and block the street, leaving garbage everywhere, and wait for the midnight release of the new Twilight. However, a completely constitutional, peaceful, justified protest results in thousands of arrests and use of deadly force on people who are sick and tired of because stepped on. In New York City, if you wanted to protest something you would first have to spend months in the Court System trying to get a permit to use street space. When Occupy Wall Street came about, people started attacking the concept by saying that the protesters were making a mess of Zucotti Park. In response to this, the protesters actually cleared out their tents temporarily, bought household cleaning supplies, and began cleaning the park. Some of them sweeped the sidewalks, some washed the benches, others trimmed the fucking trees. It's amazing to me that, while they were cleaning the park, a man climbed up the tree to grab a newspaper that had blown into it and was immediately shot with pepper spray and chained to a fence. I have no idea what the hell is going on in this country. I'm only 16, I've never lived life outside my school or my house. But I can plainly see somethings wrong here. People shouldn't have to make a choice between dinner and a place to sleep. I shouldn't have to skate down the Streets of the City and worry if I'm going to be tackled by a cop and beaten, then arrested under some bullshit charge he made up. I shouldn't have to worry that I'm being constantly watched by a security force that is only paranoid because of the actions that are our country's own fault. I don't mean to start an argument, but I've been waiting a while to express my feelings on domestic issues like these. I'm a a liberal, an atheist, and a socialist stuck within the walls of a conservative, zealous, capitalist Catholic School. It's not often I get to express an opinion without being ostracized.[/QUOTE] I must say that I agree with a number of your points (the relative irrelevance of a single vote, the corruption in high offices on BOTH sides, the greed that is fairly prevalent (the Chicago teachers union (unions in general imo) are just as bad as the worst of the greedy executives of massive corporations) the problem with the Occupy movement is that there WAS a lot of crap going on on both sides of the issue, and the media loves to point the camera at the people saying the craziest shit. I consider myself fairly conservative but I believe that free speech (unless it is connected to issues of national security that will cost lives) is the most important right of a citizen. It is also one that should be exercised freely without fear of retribution by people who disagree with you. That, however, means that you really SHOULD vote for the person that you feel is most likely to accomplish at least SOME of what you believe in. While politicians are not going to achieve high office without some kind of corporate tie these days, that doesn't mean that they will completely ignore the wishes of their voter base, and if they do they should not be RE-elected. The police situation is one that varies from town to town, city to city, and each individual police officer. You can't say that the 'American police force' does horrific things, that's too broad. It is more accurate to say that the police of certain areas are not being held accountable for their bullshit, or are even being supported after having done something wrong. I'm sure the opposite happens routinely too, where a police officer does everything according to regulations but is offered as a scapegoat if the public doesn't like what ended up happening whether it was an accident or not. Socialism though. Lol. Anyways, it really sucks when you can't talk about your beliefs with anyone because they will treat you like an idiot. At least you have FP :D

[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;38156775]Always nice when people can look past the silly stereotypes. Doubt I'll live here past college, though. I've been thinking seriously of immigrating to Australia.[/QUOTE] Personally i agree with you, but i'd head to canada.

[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;38156775]Always nice when people can look past the silly stereotypes. Doubt I'll live here past college, though. I've been thinking seriously of immigrating to Australia.[/QUOTE] I have heard Australians are generally very unwelcoming to foreigners trying to live in their country. [img]http://blogs.crikey.com.au/northern/files/2010/01/Foff.jpg[/img]

[QUOTE=MBB;38139935]I heard in a lot of European countries this is not the case.[/QUOTE] Yeah Europe fucking sucks [editline]23rd October 2012[/editline] Fuck those European faggots

I can't speak for the rest of the country, but here in the Pacific Northwest, we love foreigners.

[QUOTE=Lamar;38157746]I have heard Australians are generally very unwelcoming to foreigners trying to live in their country. [img]http://blogs.crikey.com.au/northern/files/2010/01/Foff.jpg[/img][/QUOTE] Not generally, but we do have enough fuckheads to make foreigners cringe at times. If you're american I wouldn't recommend it because people will make the assumption that you're naive and ignorant the second they hear an accent. Depends on where you go too. I think we're a mostly reasonable people. DO NOT COME HERE ON AUSTRALIA DAY

You will be assimilated. Resistance is Futile.