One morning last winter, I was getting a coffee in the office lunch room when a colleague joined me.
“Now, you’re a voting American citizen, right?” she asked.
I shook my head. “No. I’m a resident. I’ve a green card.”
My colleague and friend is the multi-lingual daughter of Haitian immigrants.
“Why aren’t you a citizen?” she said.
She wagged a finger. “Next November, if that – insert a bad name here – gets in by a narrow margin, I’ll hold you personally responsible.”
She was joking – sort of. “Come on. We need people like you to keep that ignorant, xenophobic – insert another bad name – out. If you apply now, I bet you could get it all processed in time to vote next November.”
I had no argument with those bad names, nor with the fact that we needed to ensure that that bad name was never preceded by the title president. But that morning, I doubted that I could apply and get processed in time to actually vote.
Back in my office, I logged into the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) website. The application forms were long and detailed. Then there would be a visit to the local USCIS office for fancy fingerprinting. Then another visit for the interview and oral exam on history and civics.
Plus, in my native or adopted countries, I’ve never been one to join or follow the group. I’ve never been a flag-waving patriot.
As a kid, I got kicked out of Irish dancing class because I couldn’t and wouldn’t keep up with the three-hand reel. Ditto for team sports. As a teenager, I spent a month in the Galway Gaeltacht where all those group activities and nighttime céilís made it the longest month of my young life.
Stateside, I’ve lost count of how many writers groups and book clubs I’ve flunked out of. I avoid St Patrick’s Day parades and parties, and – don’t get me started on Weight Watchers.
Now, as a farmer’s daughter, I get that whole thing about building a fence or a wall to say, “This here is my land, and that over there is yours”. I also know that, when our neighbouring farmer gets flooded, it’s our duty to lend her some grazing, to share our own harvest.
The national brand
Yes. I know. Nations are about a lot more than land grabs or marking our territory. Nationhood is about languages, cultures, religions, laws and history. It’s about reclaiming or protecting the national coffers. It’s about the national brand.
Then there are those days when a country is just the blurry backdrop for the rest of our lives – the place where we commute and work and eat our evening dinners. I mean, except for the actual words on the licence plates up in front of you, isn’t a Dublin commuter traffic jam the same as its counterpart in Montréal, Manhattan or Melbourne?
Why hadn’t I applied for citizenship before this? And, my friend’s jokey threat aside, why was I researching it that day?
I still haven’t figured out the answers to these questions, except to say that in this presidential election year, the stakes are infinitely higher. Also, I’ll admit that my previous trepidation came from that required US pledge of allegiance.
I bristle at any outfit or organisation that wants my unmitigated allegiance. I distrust those set-ups in which the group ethos supersedes the individual.
I left Ireland during the 1980s, during what was dubbed the Gubu era – it was grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre, and unprecedented. Still, I didn't flee persecution or starvation or war. So as a very willing emigrant, as someone who no longer pays into the Irish tax coffers, what allegiance could or should I claim to Ireland?
Equally, as someone who wasn’t born in America, on whom some of the cultural references are still lost or baffling, what allegiance did I feel to my adopted country?
For any of us, if it came to an actual showdown, isn’t our primary allegiance to ourselves and to those who love or need us?
Luckily Ireland allows us to carry dual citizenship, so I decided to download and complete those citizenship forms.
Application spike
As it turned out, I was part of a trend. Between October and March 2015, the US Immigration Services saw a 6 per cent increase in citizenship applications – and in immigrant strongholds such as Los Angeles, that rate increased by 24 per cent.
Despite this application spike, the entire government process was fast and pleasant, including the final ceremony in the river city of Lowell, Massachusetts.
Lowell had one of the first pre-famine Irish settlements when, in the early 1800s, a band of Irish men walked up from Boston to dig the canals that powered the textile mills that spawned America’s industrial revolution.
As I walked down the footpath toward Lowell’s historic auditorium, it was easy to spot my fellow immigrants because we were the best dressed. In our bright clothes, head dresses, hijabs, saris and suits, almost 800 of us from 94 countries filed into that auditorium. Toddlers clutched their parents’ hands. Babies slept in their buggies. In my assigned row, we did our best to pronounce each other’s names. We chatted, laughed and watched each other’s stuff during quick toilet breaks.
National anthem
On stage, two little girls in frilly dresses led the national anthem while their father, like me, waited to become a citizen.
After the pledge of allegiance, I looked behind me at that packed auditorium.
Here were 800 stories of panicked or planned departures, of scared or grateful arrivals. Here were people who had taken a gamble – some with their own and their children’s lives.
Now or in the past, most of us had worked those low-wage or back-breaking jobs that challenge our human dignity and scar our flesh.
And I promise you this: Beneath our suits, dresses and head dresses, we still bore some of those scars.
That June afternoon, our siblings and cousins were hundreds or thousands of miles away. But we were all here. Together.
Áine Greaney is an author who lives in Boston. She also teaches writing. She has published four books, many short stories and essays. See ainegreaney.com.
