The American Dream is alive and well: Editor’s Note

This past July 4, instead of having a barbecue and watching fireworks, I did something on the quieter side.

With my teenage daughter in tow, I attended a naturalization ceremony in Seattle.

While jetliners soared overhead and an American flag flapped from the nearby Space Needle, we saw a group of 500 people, from all walks of life, become U.S. citizens.

It was a poignant moment: Watching these newly fledged citizens, hailing from 87 different countries, taking their oath, then reciting the Pledge of Allegiance for the first time. We weren’t the only audience there, either. Hundreds of people – family, friends, sponsors and Lookie-Lous like me, were there to cheer them on as they did it.

Although I didn’t know anyone, the ceremony had deep meaning nonetheless. My father’s parents, and my mother’s great-grandparents, took these same vows, shortly after taking the slow boat here from Ireland and Spain.

My fiancee, an adoptee from South Korea, took this same oath as a child.

Looking out at this sea of expectant faces, I wondered, is this the same America where my relations so desperately wanted to live?

Is this the same America my fiancee wanted to become a part of?

In many ways, I think it still is.

Did you know that immigrant-owned businesses generate approximately 11.6 percent of all business income in the United States? And that immigrants own 11.2 percent of businesses with $100,000 or more in sales and 10.8 percent of all businesses with employees? Or that immigrants are 30 percent more likely to start a business than non-immigrants are?

These figures are from a 2008 report by the U.S. Small Business Administration titled “Estimating the Contribution of Immigrant Business Owners to the U.S. Economy.” Granted, it was completed before our current economic recession, but it illustrates that even recently, the American Dream hasn’t been just empty words. It’s a real and laudable goal. The United States is still considered a place where you can take an idea and turn it into something successful. Sometimes wildly successful.

The United States, for all the griping that goes on within its borders, and throughout the rest of the world, continues to be a place where you can work yourself up from the bottom, with nothing but an inner compass. It’s still a place where you can earn others’ respect by your drive to succeed, and your integrity about doing the right thing.

In short, you get back from this country pretty much what you put into it.

What frustrates me is when I see people who were born with this birthright bitching about how awful everything is.

Do they really know how bad it can be?

They didn’t have to scrape the money together to get passage over here. They didn’t have to hope “coyotes” would get them safely across the border, as opposed to abandoning them in the desert. They sure didn’t have to hope their safe passage to America didn’t mean more suffering to their families back home, living under repressive military regimes.

One thing I learned from a publisher I knew was that if you wanted the right to bitch, you had to follow it up with a solution. He didn’t have the time for my griping – he had a paper to put out. You wanted to see change? Then tell him how you would make that happen, and he’d do his best to help you. Otherwise it was just a lot of hot air.

That’s the same thing that should be happening more often in this country, a place of dichotomies, agendas and multiple ways of doing things. If you want the right to complain, then realize that comes with the responsibility to try and make things better.

Bitching is easy. Fixing something? That’s a lot harder to do. But just because something is hard doesn’t mean you shouldn’t attempt to do it.

Which brings me back to July 4.

Looking out at those 500 hopeful faces, I think our country got the better end of the deal.

The benefit of 500 more solutions.

Make us proud, you new Americans.