Obama Win

While the incentive may be an American passport or eligibility for job, the greatest privilege of gaining citizenship is participating in the essential function of the democracy by voting. Single votes matter as we have seen this year in Georgia and Minnesota where only .001% difference divides winners and losers.

With the recent presidential race, many pundits ( an abused Hindu term) are looking for the deciding factors. I, for one, attribute the victory to myriad factors and among them were soccer moms (us), community organizers, educators or exhausted National Guard members, casting a vote for change. Within the story, however is our story. It is a different nation that voted for Obama. Bush carried 40% of the Latinos and ran promising “open arms not long lines.” There was a backlash over broken promises by his party. 10 million Latinos voted and went 2 to 1 for Obama. But still, though Vietnamese, Cuban and Russian immigrants tend to the political right, the new American population was active in this election often reflecting their hope for a renewed esteem for their adopted country and often identifying themselves as part of the minority in America seeking opportunity for all, even at the highest level.

The Boston Globe columnist Peter Canellos argued that Obama owes immigrants his victory. America was 85% white, very Eurocentric, in 1965. Today we are over 30% minority. Indeed, the diversity of America is part of the immigrant story though many of us still come as white as the Pilgrims from England, Canada, Ireland, Russian, Bosnia and a host of other nations.

It was the Immigration Act of 1964, begun by President Kennedy and completed under Johnson, which literally changed the complexion of the nation. Canellos writes:

Simon Rosenberg, president of the liberal think tank NDN, formerly the New Democrat Network, calls the Immigration Act of 1965 'the most important piece of legislation that no one's ever heard of,' and said it 'set America on a very different demographic course than the previous 300 years.'

By adding so many Asians, Latinos, and African immigrants, Rosenberg says, the act changed the racial narrative in America from one of oppression - the white-black divide dating to slavery - to one of diversity. That change was strongly echoed in the Obama campaign, which emphasized the candidate's mixed-race background as making him representative of a new generation of Americans.

WE are part of the great experiment called Democracy that renews itself with changing policies and changing tastes. It renews its blood line with fresh labor and eager entrepreneurs. Our new country has never been “one nation” (ask slaves or native Americans) but it is a nation that makes it possible for you and me to be part of that indivisible whole, that unites us when attacked, unites us in freedom and unites us in an allegiance to our nation. If Obama is the epitome of a new America, well, who better to partner with than new Americans?