They’re Coming to America…

Posted on Aug 01, 2009 - 11:21am by Marshall J. Gruskin in Lifestyle, Politics

“What is this land America so many travel there – I’m going now while I’m still young my darling meet me there – wish me luck my lovely I’ll send for you when I can – and we’ll make our home in the American land – There’s diamonds in the sidewalk – the gutters lined in song – dear I hear that beer flows through the faucets all night long – there’s treasure for the taking, for any hard working man who will make his home in the American Land” ***

I have been fortunate in my 54 years to have traveled to many places throughout the world – France, England, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Mexico and of course, all the States, but Alaska. I just posted a brief piece on Freeport & Nassau in the Bahamas. The hard working folks that were on board the cruise ship hailed from Russia, Serbia, Australia, Indonesia, Vietnam and many other places.

And there was one consistent theme in my conversations with all of them – their love of America and their desire to live here. My wife asked a waiter from the Philippines what place he liked the most – Cozumel? Puerto Rico? He answered – New York City – America. He would like to eventually make enough money to relocate his entire family there.

These beautiful amazing people that I’ve met overseas are no different than us. In their country they’re truck drivers, dock workers, salespeople, waiters and waitresses and office workers. They all want to be free to earn a decent living and live peacefully. They want to worship the religion of their choice without prejudice. And they all share in the ultimate desire to live and work in the United States.

We Americans are too caught up in the small stuff. Unless you travel outside of our great country, you will never understand the yearning of the rest of the world to come here. In the Bahamas, for example, there are posters and newspaper clippings everywhere of Barack Obama being elected President. A cabbie in Nassau, who paid $40,000 for his SUV – which is cheap there – had great admiration for what to him is an almost magical place that elected a Black man President. You have to go there to experience this. And no, I never saw any pictures of George Bush other than on a military base.

So if you haven’t been – Europe, Mexico, Canada – wherever – please go. And just listen to the people there. They don’t hear the garbage from Rush, Hannity or Ann Coulter – their opinion of America is broader and more basic. It is part and parcel of the human need embedded in the dreams that America offers its immigrants. Just as they have since the birth of the country. And thank God for that. God bless America.