AmeRicana

So I was driving to the grocery store, running some errands for my mom today. I had my window rolled down, listening to some music (in English, quite unusual for me) and was waiting to turn out of the development when this kid who's in a car that's speeding past me sticks his head out the window and yells: "GET OUT!"

I sit there for a minute, in shock. What did he just say? And then it's clear. This little punk told me to get out. Get out of what? My own country?

I didn't have time to give him the history lesson: No, punk, I'm PUERTO RICAN. That means I'm a US citizen. No really, I was born a US citizen, and so were my parents and so was my grandma. My great-grandmother, she became a citizen in 1917 with the passage of the Jones Act because the US needed some more manpower to help fight in World War I and President Woodrow Wilson thought he'd pick up some soldiers in the US's Caribbean colony. And actually, my daddy is a colonel in the US Army. So, what was that again? Get out? Yeah, I thought so.

This, I'm sure, is a result of the anti-immigrant sentiment that seems to be settling on this nation. Personal baggage and politics aside, I know that immigration cannot continue unchecked at the same pace; not only for the good of the US, but also for the good of the nations that are losing hardworking citizens by the thousands. I KNOW this. Something has to be done. But at the same time, this crackdown has allowed for all these prejudices simmering just under the surface to rise. And I can feel it.

I'm a well-educated woman. I know the difference between lay and lie, between good and well, between your and you're; which is more than I can say for a large number of "real" Americans. ;) I've been in this country since I was four, and I'm an American. Not only in the broad continental sense, but in the specific estadounidense sense - I'm from the US. And what would the US be without that ethnic diversity? Not the US, that's what.

I'm a brown-eyed, brown-haired, brown-skinned Latina, and I can't hide that. My mouth spills forth both Spanish and English with equal ease. I'm that border child, the one with a foot on each side, blending together a hybrid culture. And I'm proud of that. But having said that, I have just as much right to this land as the blondest, tallest, whitest person.

And even if I didn't have that right, that cowardly act, that shout of "GET OUT!" as you zoom by safely in your car, that's not going to get anyone anywhere. Land of the brave, huh?