I am continually amazed by the number of immigrants that I meet here in Chicago. The night before the election I was walking to my house, and I passed three adult guys who were definitiely not Swedish. My best guess is that they were from the middle east or southern Europe. As I past them, I was surprised to hear them conversing with each other in heavily accented English. I only heard one sentence as I passed by, but I felt it was an interesting one. The older man said, "This is the only country where you can say what you think."
In my short time in Chicago I am getting a better glimpse of the uniqueness of our country. From talking to a few immigrants and using my own imagination, I am getting a clearer picture of how hard it must be to leave everything that is so familiar and attempt to take up residence in a distance land. These brothers and sisters must only do this out of pure necessity for I have to consider what it would take for me to leave the USA and my extended family to live in Bulgaria (to pick a random country). The USA is still the land of opportunity and freedom which is simply not found in so many other countries in our world today.
This was proved true again last night. No matter the politics, I am proud that our country has been able to move from slavery to having an African-American as President. Yes, some might say that it took a long time (and we still have work to do in areas of race relations), but if you take into consideration human depravity, history in the end might look back on this day as happening quite quickly. Regardless, I am happy that this barrier has been broken and am excited to see what positive effects this might have on the African American community. May God Bless America!
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