When people ask me what made me come to the United States I usually answer: The opportunity came up and I took it.

Although I appreciate people’s interest, I have been wondering for quite some time now why they don’t ask me the more important and more obvious question: What made you decide to stay?

Like most of us I will never forget 9/11. When I got up that morning I turned on the news just to find out that the Twin Towers were gone. The Pentagon had been hit and unidentified planes were still in the air. Local news stations were reporting that the military was on its way to protect the Hoover Dam, right outside of Las Vegas.

I never knew what it’s like to be in the middle of a war. I was born long after World War II, Vietnam is something that I associate with old Rambo movies, I hardly know anything about the Korean War as well as the war in Cambodia, and during the first Gulf War I refused military service and worked in a homeless shelter in Germany instead.

But when I saw the planes hit the World Trade Center on September 11th, when I saw people jumping off the buildings to get away from the unbearable heat, when I saw men and women running in panic from falling debris of the burning and eventually collapsing towers, I knew right away: We’re at war.

You get scared in moments like these. Really scared, especially when you are living in the country where the disasters are happening. You expect the worst and the news media aren’t really doing anything to ease your mind. Bush took care of that when he gave a speech later on that same day. He let everybody know that America would not tolerate such a heinous attack. He promised to take action, to do everything in his power to ensure the safety of the American people.

I believed him and I still do. I trusted him and I still do. To me he is the right president at the right time. He doesn’t care what people might think about him, he doesn’t care about opinion polls or hysterical Dummycrats and, most of all, he doesn’t care about his own career when it comes to doing the right thing.

Bush had such a major impact on me that I actually started looking at America in a totally different way. Until then I had viewed my new home as just a place with more conveniences compared to Germany. I began to get interested in historical events to find out what makes this country so special, and it didn’t take me long to realize that I was living in one of the greatest countries ever founded on Earth.

All the good that America has done in the world could never be listed in one lousy essay by me. If I had to put it in a single sentence I would have to say: The United States of America stand for freedom. It’s as simple as that. And those who don’t see that must be blind.

Therefore, becoming an American citizen is the next logical step since I have no intentions to move back to Germany. America has been very good to me. America has been very good to millions of people from all over the world who have come to this wonderful country to start a new life, a better life, a life they couldn’t think possible in the countries they’ve left for good.

But it would be silly to deny my German roots. My English will never be perfect, for the rest of my life people will ask me “So, where are you from?” Even my thinking, my mentality and my way of approaching things will always be that of a German, at least in parts. But that is ok. America doesn’t ask you to transform into this new kind of human being. America doesn’t want you to shed your skin and become something totally new.

“Come as you are!” That’s what comes to my mind every time I see a picture of the Statue of Liberty. “Come as you are and be part of something amazing!” I have gladly accepted that offer and with great joy I can now say:

I’m proud to be a Germerican!

This entry was posted by Michael Meyn on Sunday, December 4th, 2005 at 2:33 am and is filed under Miscellaneous, Meyn's World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or a trackback from your own site.