Cultural Differences and a 90 Day Fiancé Visa

So many people from around the world fly to America legally after a lengthy bureaucratic process. The lure of a green card and freedom of opportunity are hard to resist, especially when poverty and violence are often their only alternative for the future. Many cross illegally the southern border with the blessing of the Marxist regime in power.

Not long ago, immigrants were required by law to complete tons of paperwork, provide evidence of their health, of their ability to provide for themselves financially, allegiance to our country, interest in becoming Americans, and making our country better. Today these requirements have all but disappeared in the social justice drivel permeating our third world society and leftist government rule.

Immigrants still say that they come to the land of opportunity for freedom but freedom has become illusory as American citizens hear their chains of imaginary freedom rattling every day, ever more loudly, coming from a government out of control.

What immigrants really come for is generous welfare and the hope that they can bring their entire extended families with them. Having left the failed system of socialist governments and tyrannies behind, they come to a place where they have no understanding of this new and fabulously “rich” country. They have no history of democracy in their own countries, it is a totally alien concept. They only understand government dependency and control of their daily lives.

But a small group of foreign nationals with a 90 day fiancé visa come because they have fallen in love online with American citizens who were lucky enough to have been born in the most successful constitutional republic on the planet.

Money grew on trees in America once upon a time, but the trees have withered and died under the weight of constant money printing (quantitative easing), and the luster has tarnished on the famous city on the hill, now a fortress guarded by thousands of heavily armed soldiers and razor wire. As the constitutional republic has vanished after the disastrous 2020 election and year-long economic lockdown, the foreign newcomers will be sadly disappointed.

The people of the highly successful show “90 Day Fiancé” come on a special fiancé visa for an imaginary freedom and prosperity provided by a quick marriage to a lonely American for whom matrimony had been difficult to attain. But technology, dating sites, and the Internet are providing access to other “lonely” people from the most remote corners of the world.

The “freedom” they seek in wealthy America no longer exists but immigrants don’t know that because nobody truly understands economics and government and they are still wearing the rose-colored glasses of the land of plenty, a world painted by Hollywood craftily on celluloid. Immigrants are still coming for the economic prosperity they have seen in movies, movies that bear no resemblance to reality.

Making the audience feel better about themselves, the “90 Day Fiancé” reality show is entertaining to American viewers who have no appreciation or understanding of where these people came from and why, their feelings, values, their tragedies, and religious and marital customs. The fiancés seem narcissistic, materialistic, selfish, greedy, insulting, unappreciative, and braggadocious.

The engagement situations and the drama appear contrived, the dialogues are bizarre at times, and the comedic “reality” moments are very uncomfortable to watch but the emotions are real and so are the vast cultural differences.

Ordinary middle class Americans find themselves in situations where they have to pay for expensive dowries they can hardly afford, in cultures where a buffalo, a cow, sheep, goats, or gold jewelry make all the difference in the world to the parents of the future bride who must survive in subsistence economies and dismal poverty. It is an expression of appreciation and respect for their daughter whom they raised to the age of matrimony and for their standing in the community. Some are required to summarily convert to another religion or be baptized in order to get married.

Americans abroad offend their intended’s families because their lives are so different from our life in America. At the same time, the foreign fiancés insult the loved ones of those they want to marry in America because of their ignorance and misconceptions.

The foreigners are scared, miss their families, do not like the food, do not understand the fine nuances of language, or the American English idiomatic expressions, often resulting in comedic situations for the viewers.

The prospective fiancés become easily insulted and hurt, feeling disrespected and dishonored. They reject the new environment, the culture, the food, the practices, the sounds, the wardrobe, and the way people do things that are so drastically different from those where they grew up.

The immigrant fiancés don’t miss their poverty but they sure miss their countries, their culture, and their immediate families and friends.

They want instant wealth, the proverbial money that grows on trees in America where the streets are paved with gold, but they want to bring their old country, language, their enclave of comfort, their familiar surroundings with them, creating a small homeland within America.

They feel lonely, abandoned, and lash out at their American fiancé who does not seem to understand their feelings, thoughts, and emotions of relinquishing their former lives and everything they ever knew and loved.

Then a few women become pregnant which complicates and aggravates the process of melding two lives from such uniquely different cultures and languages. Adding the substantial age difference in some cases, cause the problems to compound.

Despite the obvious discomfort and pain of real people, American viewers keep watching because the show makes them feel better about themselves. Everybody loves a good and happy ending of a joyful reunion preceded by strife, deceit, terrible misunderstandings, and tears of disappointment.

My Take on the Teacher of the Year Award

Photo credit: IJR Red

As a former teacher, I was annoyed but not at all surprised by the choice for this year’s Teacher of the Year Award. The recipient with a political agenda showed the nation what an “exceptional teacher” looks like. With her boorish and rude behavior during the ceremony at the White House, she bashed and disrespected our President in front of the entire nation and in front of school children who look up to teachers like her to be objective. Yet many indoctrinate their students into their twisted political world eight hours a day, not into the American-exceptionalism that they should.

President Trump, exhibiting class and respect, mentioned the “incredible devotion that has earned her the adoration, total adoration, of her students and colleagues, the school district, community, and the entire state.” https://www.facebook.com/ijrredpresents/videos/179722432727814/

The petty little ideologue was not just wearing an insufferable smirk the whole time, she was rude and ungrateful and refused to shake the president’s hand or clap when appropriate.  Honored for her “adoration” in the classroom, she could not muster the slightest propriety for the moment and the place.  

Her rudeness and lack of decorum are a disgrace to the profession. There are so many deserving teachers out there who work in the education trenches every day without being recognized for their work because their politics are of a different kind than the Democrat-sanctioned socialist plantation of Marxist adoration.

Selecting a Teacher of the Year begins at the local level and each school district has their own criteria that tend to match the national guidelines. You will be very surprised to know that parents and students have nothing to do with the selection process even though they say the nominee is adored and respected by the community which they serve. The high ranking administrators form a selection committee composed of administrators, teachers, educational service personnel, student support personnel, and past Teacher of the Year winners and nominees.

Some common denominators are membership in the National Education Association (NEA), American Federation of Teachers (AFT), with their financial support for the Democrat Party, and other university-sponsored organizations who are mills for future teachers.

Teaching awards are nothing but a Democrat popularity contest of who is the most progressive, outrageous, and anti-American progressive ideologues in good standing with the top administrators and other decision-makers who can send that person to the top of the heap.

“According to the criteria for the National Teacher of the Year Program, a Teacher of the Year should inspire all students to learn. Teachers who aspire to this award do not stick to the textbook or traditional methods of teaching.”

The nominees usually push the latest fad in education, currently the Common Core curriculum. The top nominees believe in global education, global citizenship, no borders, the anthropogenic global warming, the rights of the illegal aliens and refugees that trump those of American citizens, alternative lifestyles, Islam over Christianity, and deviant sexual behaviors promoted as the norm and introduced by force into the classroom as early as kindergarten in some states.

Mandy Manning, this year’s awardee, is an English teacher in Spokane, Washington, and teaches refugees and immigrant children from countries like Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Guatemala, Myanmar, Mexico, and Tanzania. It is no surprise that a political person like her would be chosen as spokesperson for an entire profession. https://www.yahoo.com/news/mandy-manning-teacher-handed-trump-080024349.html

No mention is made whether these immigrant children are legal or illegal as it does not matter to liberals if we follow the law as long as we have more future Democrat Party voters in our midst.

Is it any wonder that such “educators” are turning our children into communist agitators and snowflakes, with no allegiance to our country, our history, our sovereignty, our flag, our pledge of allegiance, God, and to a sound education?

This teacher of the year affronted our President the entire time.  If she is the teacher of the year, the best and brightest that our country can produce, what must the rest of the teachers be like?

Based on the buttons she was wearing during the ceremony, a rainbow apple, Transgender Rights, Women’s March, and the letters she gave the President from her immigrant students, this person obviously puts the interests of immigrant children, refugee children, and a women’s movement that embarrasses at least half of this country’s female population ahead of America’s students’ interests.

Whatever happened to teaching reading, writing, American history, American exceptionalism, science, and American civics objectively, without the teacher’s political agenda being front and center eight hours a day?

 

Becoming an American citizen

Few Americans give much thought to standing in endless lines or fighting daunting bureaucracy. That is because they are very seldom faced with such possibilities in every day life.
My move to the U.S. started three years before I ever set foot on the plane to New York - three years of endless audiences to various vice ministers, police, security police, passport office, translators, notaries, attorneys, and other mayoral officials. I had to prove that I had not debts, no criminal record, no communicable diseases, mental illness, associations to undesirable agencies and organization, etc.; each document had to be translated into English, notarized, typed only by state approved functionaries, and approved and re-approved by state, ministers, and security police. By the time I finished the entire process, I was exhausted, had not a dime to my name, and had lost all my rights as a Romanian citizen. I was literally a person without a country, a persona-non-grata, with no rights whatsoever. I had a Romanian passport with a single visa to the U.S., but no home and no ability to earn a living. I had to pay back my schooling although the Constitution stated clearly that education was free to all Romanian citizens at all levels. I was stripped of all rights simply because I petitioned for a visa to come study, work, and live in the world's freest republic. Unfortunately, the communist dictatorship thought that I was a spy and my motives were less than honest. As a matter of fact, everyone who made contact at all with a foreigner without prior authorization, was immediately under suspicion and surveillance by the dreaded Security Police. When my fiance's mother came to visit, we had to answer questions at 2 a.m. downtown at the police headquarters. The interrogation lasted over two hours - the cops wanted to know why we did not notify them ahead of time of the visit? All the while, because they controlled the population's whereabouts through draconian block by block registration, they knew exactly who was coming and going into and out of the country. My parents and I were taken in separate vans and interrogated separately as if we had committed a crime. Jean and her son Bill were bewildered that their visit had caused so much distress and heartache to us. Americans could not understand or fathom total control, but we were used to living under constant surveillance and under a microscope. Our phones were tapped, our letters opened, our visits, moves, and job locations were recorded carefully. Nobody could ever be incognito anywhere on the soil of a totalitarian society. And they were doing this without the benefit of cameras or computers! We had become a nation of spies and traitors - spying and betraying our own families for an extra loaf of bread, a pound of meat, bananas, or oranges. It was very sad, knowing that nobody trusted anybody. The survival instinct taught us to accept and circumvent disturbing laws and rules and to keep quiet. People learned to take secrets to their graves.

Was it easy to become an American citizen? Not really. After my arrival in 1978, I lived for two years as a resident alien. I could not vote, I could not be on welfare (not that I wanted to, I was certainly poor enough to qualify), and had no rights. I did not march in the streets demanding same rights as American citizens because I understood I was not an American. I did not wave the Romanian flag in the face of Americans while shouting angrily that America will some day be ours. I learned English better each day. I had studied two years in high school, but it was not good enough. I wanted to become part of the fabric of this society, to understand it, honor it, respect it, and immerse in its culture. I did not want to lose my heritage, I kept it alive at home, but I wanted to be an American. After two years, I felt competent enough to apply for citizenship. I had to study the Constitution, take a test, pass it with flying colors, and be interrogated for three hours by an immigration officer in Memphis. I knew more about the U.S. history and Constitution than most Americans. I spoke better English than most Americans. I spelled better. I was truly prepared. The paperwork was very expansive, difficult to obtain, expensive to translate, and the taxes to the government were costly. As a poor student, just driving three hours to Memphis several times a year was prohibitive. I had to decide sometimes whether I paid for documents and gas to the Immigration Office, or for food and shelter. It took two years and a few months before I was approved and finally sworn in as a Naturalized Citizen in the Court of Oxford, MS. It was a very proud day for me and four years in coming. I was no longer persona-non-grata, I had gained a country, a language, safe borders, and a culture resplendent with a tapestry of many nations, ethnicities, all united by a common language and goal, freedom. We were truly a melting pot, not a tossed salad bowl. What a sweet day, May 20, 1982!

I don't take my American citizenship lightly and I watch in helpless disbelief the demonstration of utter contempt and hatred for our laws by illegal aliens and their supporters, La Rasa, the democrats, and the administration who are demanding amnesty for breaking the law. The foreign flag-waving and the burning of the American flag in the faces of Americans is shocking. The calls for violence against Americans, racial hatred, pitting one ethnic group against another, go unpunished. The federal government is approving and stoking lawlessness, racial divide, and the destruction of our culture and country. What makes hispanics more deserving of American citizenship just because they jumped a fence illegally? Why should we reward bad behavior? There are thousands of immigrants who are waiting their turns patiently, filling out forms after forms, waiting years sometimes to receive or be denied a visa to freedom. Vast oceans separate them from our borders. Does that make them less deserving of becoming legal residents? I had to prove that I had a sponsor in the U.S. who was willing and able to support me if need be. I also had to have thousands of dollars in a bank account so that I won't become the ward of the state. Yet that is exactly what is happening now with all the hispanics who illegally set foot on our soil - they drop their anchor babies and claim permanent residence and citizenship rights when their anchor babies turn 18. I had to pay for years for the birth of my babies because we had no insurance, yet all illegals benefit from free medical and pre-natal care, food, housing, WIC, compliments of the U.S. taxpayer. Why? Should the Mexican government not have some responsibility for their fleeing citizens? They have more wealth in petroleum than our country does, they certainly can afford to institute social programs to eradicate poverty in Mexico. The Mexican gang violence and drug trade are spilling onto our southern borders and the federal government is doing very little to curtail it. It is up to the states like Arizona to defend their own borders against the massive invasion. As one very savy conservative had said, borders, language, and culture are very important and must be preserved at all costs. Our soldiers would have died in vain if we fail to protect our borders and allow illegal immigration to wreck this beautiful nation. We are successful because we are free and are united by a common goal and our faith in God.