Imagine this is a Filipino man holding an American passport that he has just received in the mail, after many years of waiting.
Like millions of other people around the world, to get this, he was willing to spend weeks and months filling out applications, to spend hours and days waiting in lines at government offices, to spend years waiting for citizenship.
This passport is a very small book, the size of a small prayer book. But for this man as a Filipino, it was harder to get than gold.
Finally! He stands, amazed, holding it up against a sun-drenched wall in a cold wind. In Ohio, or in Texas, or Nebraska, somewhere in America.
Now having this in his name, he can travel almost anywhere in the world without an entry visa. Often, his luggage won’t even be examined on entry.
At last he can live and work in the U.S. without worry. And he remains a Filipino, his Philippine passport still valid. The ground is solid under him.
Think of him as a professional — a CPA, an engineer. Now, he has a decent job; when he arrived, he could only find work as a janitor.
But even janitors in the U.S. make more in an hour than they would get for a whole day’s work here in the Philippines. He was able to get by, waiting for something better.
And he knew that even in the Philippines, he was better off than people in many countries in the world — Indonesia, China, India — the long list.
But like all of them, he was willing to wait. Not just to make more money, but to pass on to his children what he hopes will be a better life for them. While still maintaining their identity as Filipinos.
But oddly enough, he finds many Americans who do not value this passport — which they got for free.
On the internet, in restaurants, he hears them denouncing America as cold-hearted, racist, genocidal, violently- oppressive to all the peoples of the world.
They call down doom on the United States, like Jeremiah on Jerusalem.
But for all their moral posturing and distaste for their own country, he sees that these people never offer to renounce their citizenship and surrender their American passports.
Nor will he ever surrender his. Even in the cold wind of Nebraska, he likes where he is.
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Author’s email: john.stevenson299@gmail.com
