July 4, 2004
EPIDEMIC AND INCURABLE:
Life in U.S. has a way of catching on (Rob Asghar, July 03, 2004, LA Daily News)
My father left a mud-hut village in Pakistan to come to America, hoping to receive some technical training. He had not counted on catching the "America bug," but that's what happens to unsuspecting visitors -- and the world is becoming a better place for it.Dad enrolled at North Carolina State University nearly 50 years ago and earned a degree in electrical engineering. On a brief return to Pakistan, he met my mother at a wedding -- their own. You may realize this means it was an arranged marriage.
The prefabricated couple decided to spend "just a few years" in the United States because of the job opportunities here. And they took on more of America than they had bargained for.
The "America bug," a sort of mad-cow disease for immigrants, was first described to me by a college president who noticed that foreign students tend to catch a cultural infection here that bends their plans and warps their dreams. If they return to their homeland, they wish it was more like America, and will work to make it so. Often they choose not to go home, or choose to return to America after a while.
Once infected, you begin to see life in a cockeyed manner; you begin to believe you can write the script of your own life instead of letting family or culture write it for you; you fume on your visits back home that life there is too corrupt or inefficient or boring; and while you're concerned about the feckless morality of America, you also sense that these Americans aren't overly uptight, and something feels right about that.
And when your children begin to drift from your heritage, as was the case with my father's progeny, you may stay awake late cursing this place, but you suspect your destiny is tied inextricably with it.
Apt, since everyone's destiny is. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 4, 2004 7:19 PM
"If they return to their homeland, they wish it was more like America, and will work to make it so."
I knew a Saudi student who graduated in the early 70's and returned. Six months later they chopped his head off in the public square for sedition.
Well, like my old Dad used to say to me after I had told an off-color joke to my Grandmother: "Know your audience!"
Posted by: Governor Breck at July 4, 2004 8:44 PMI have witnessed the "America Bug" first-hand, in a young German I met in my particular branch of SF fandom.
About 10 years ago, I put him up at my place while he attended a local con. At the time he did admire his homeland and told me about the advantages of Germany's "Social Market" economy.
During further visits to the States, he must have been bitten by the America Bug. He's now married to an American, living in D.C., and working at an American company (he finds the corporate culture of a small American high-tech firm to be quite a change from the German chemical conglomerate he used to work for). A lot of bitching about the year of bureaucracy to get his green card and some longing for the greater security of German society, but other than that he's become very American in attitude.
Posted by: Ken at July 6, 2004 1:17 PMHmmm.
How many of the 100 million Pakistanis have to come here to get Pakistan to change?
Posted by: Harry Eagar at July 7, 2004 1:29 AM