The Value of Citizenship
I heard Cici and her Vietnamese classmate talking as we drove home from school yesterday. Maybe you can ask your Dad, her friend said to Cici. Ask me what? I said. We want to know if her Aunt can adopt her so she can become a U.S. citizen. I just want to become a U.S. citizen, her friend said. Is there any way I can do that? Well, when you go to college, if you fall in love and marry a U.S. citizen you can stay in America and become a U.S. citizen, I suggested teasingly. She is only 15 years old, Papa.
As we talked about her desires to become a U.S. citizen, she told Cici that she wants to live in America, not in Vietnam. As she listed some of the reasons, I think the value of Cici's U.S. citizenship came home to her for the first time. For her, citizenship happened so quickly and easily that the enormity didn't really hit her, I believe. Her friend has studied year round and will skip the 11th grade, so she will graduate after the next school year. Then she will be in college with her sister. But she is looking ahead with dread because she knows that one day in the not too distant future, she faces the prospect of having to return to Vietnam.
These two young ladies are designing a T-Shirt for their school because they don't like the designs of the past. That brought up a discussion about trademark and copyright laws, which aren't necessarily considered and honored in some countries outside the United States. But we just want to use some of the pictures, Cici said. Yes, and someone drew those pictures and they belong to them unless they have released them to the public to use, I told her. So they went to Photoshop to design their T-Shirt that way.
The early departure time for band practice always seems to cut my posts short in the mornings, so here we go again.
As we talked about her desires to become a U.S. citizen, she told Cici that she wants to live in America, not in Vietnam. As she listed some of the reasons, I think the value of Cici's U.S. citizenship came home to her for the first time. For her, citizenship happened so quickly and easily that the enormity didn't really hit her, I believe. Her friend has studied year round and will skip the 11th grade, so she will graduate after the next school year. Then she will be in college with her sister. But she is looking ahead with dread because she knows that one day in the not too distant future, she faces the prospect of having to return to Vietnam.
These two young ladies are designing a T-Shirt for their school because they don't like the designs of the past. That brought up a discussion about trademark and copyright laws, which aren't necessarily considered and honored in some countries outside the United States. But we just want to use some of the pictures, Cici said. Yes, and someone drew those pictures and they belong to them unless they have released them to the public to use, I told her. So they went to Photoshop to design their T-Shirt that way.
The early departure time for band practice always seems to cut my posts short in the mornings, so here we go again.
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