I was not born in America, I CHOSE AMERICA.
In a citizenship ceremony that had some 80 countries represented, I stood up and took the oath to support and defend the constitution of this country. And this is how it came about.
I had arrived in America in the year 2000 on a bright April morning, a wide-eyed young woman on a decidedly one-way ticket, with a heart full of hope and a head full of impossible dreams. After the stifling patriarchy and everyday misogyny of India, I was ready to use every opportunity that America offered me. And it did offer me many opportunities. I worked as a Software Engineer then earning the respect of my all-male colleagues, I drove cross-country to LA never worrying about being unsafe as a woman so I could study film at UCLA and fulfill my dreams of being a film-maker. Dreams that were not feasible for me in India.
And because I was curious to learn about the world, I traveled – both inside America and abroad. Which was always a bit nerve-wracking because living on a visa means you can never be too sure if despite all your documents being valid and the dotted “Is” and the crossed “Ts”, how things will go at the border. The immigration officer might find a deficiency that you overlooked, they may be in a bad mood; have an upset stomach, decide they didn’t like you because you had the wrong haircut – or – the wrong skin color. Those things occasionally did make news. But by & large the system worked as designed, and it was designed NOT to be capricious. So I always came back home to America.
I also spent time learning about my adopted country; immersing myself in American history, civics and politics. I marched against the Iraq war in 2003 – while I was on a visa. I marched for climate action in 2005 and 7 and 8 and 12 – while I was on a visa, and later while I was on a Green Card. I participated in the women’s march in DC in Jan 2016 – while I was still on a green card. Never once did I worry that my Green Card could be canceled because of my political views, that I could be disappeared or deported to one of the worst prisons in the world. Whatever other faults America had, it was clearly a country that, to me, strove to live up to its ideals of the 1st amendment and due process.
So finally – after an excruciatingly cumbersome legal process of visa renewals and green card approval – the day came when I realized I would soon become eligible to apply for citizenship.
And then another realization sunk in – I would have to surrender my Indian citizenship.
Because unlike the UK or France or Germany, India doesn’t allow dual citizenship. So here I was, having to make another excruciating choice – birth country OR adopted country. As much as I wanted to be an American citizen, I couldn’t bring myself to renounce my Indian citizenship. I spent months agonizing over the decision. I nagged Mark; my husband, about how much I envied the ease with which he carried his dual citizenship; American and British. I wept like a child who is asked to choose between her parents.
And then Edward Snowden happened. For those who don’t recall, Edward Snowden is a former NSA contractor who leaked classified documents in 2013, exposing global surveillance programs and sparking worldwide debates on privacy and government overreach.
I remember reading an article one morning in The Guardian. Snowden, before he fled the US, sent his documents to The Washington Post in America and the Guardian in the UK, pissing off both governments. The article was written by Alan Rusbridger; the editor-in-chief of the Guardian, who chronicled in grim detail, the story of how agents from GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) in the UK, walked into the London office of The Guardian and under the pretext of national security, forced the Guardian staff to smash the hard disks that contained files leaked by Snowden. Whether one agrees with Snowden’s actions or not, there is something deeply disturbing about the sight of government agents walking into a newspaper office and forcing the editors to destroy evidence about a story they didn’t agree with. And then I read Rusbridger’s final words and I quote: “It felt like something you’d expect in a totalitarian state… not in a democracy. This kind of thing could not happen in the United States, where the First Amendment protects the freedom of the press. Snowden’s material is safe with the Washington Post. We will continue to do journalism. Just not in London.” End quote.
I sat still. I understood my reason for becoming an American citizen.
The oath one takes at the citizenship ceremony is a living oath. It feels a bit like a wedding vow; to remain true to the promise – in sickness and in health, and especially in sickness. Because love, like citizenship, is tested not when things are easy, but when they are hard. I chose America not because I thought it was perfect, but because I believed in its promise. And no promise is more sacred, more singular to my citizenship than the First Amendment — that radical, luminous idea that a voice, no matter how small, has the right to speak, to be heard, to challenge power without fear and to hope for change.
It is this promise — fragile yet fierce— that makes this country I love worth committing to, worth fighting for, and worth choosing over and over again.
That is why I chose America.
Swati Srivastava is an immigrant and a multi award-winning writer, director, and voiceover artist. A filmmaker & storyteller, Swati turns ideas into experience. She is also a trained facilitator for Crossing Party Lines moderating conversations that bring people together across their political divides. Swati is also an environmentalist and lives in a Net Zero Energy home with her husband. She can be reached via Linkedin and swati@TiredAndBeatup.com