Americans Wake Up Canadian!

Thousands of people woke up in the United States on April 17, 2009 to discover they were Canadians!  Woo Hoo!  After just a short quiz posted on the Canadian Immigration Site (www.free at last dot com) about your Canadian heritage, you were looking at a lifetime of maple leaves and Tim Hortons!

It seems as though this was instigated by a small group of disenfranchised Canadian families whose grandparents and parents wandered back and forth between Canada and the U.S. and Mexico before mankind invented bureaucracies.  These families retained their love of all things Canada but were unable to enjoy full citizenship.

Let’s give them a round of applause!!  I’ve been driving back and forth to Canada as well.  If things go according to plan, I’ll get to enjoy my donut and coffee in Sarnia or Vancouver Island, or wherever I please!

This brings about my own concepts of global repatriation that I have been mulling around for many years.  In fact, I started the “Better of British Society of America” several years ago, and I”m the only member due mostly to the lack of a website.  

I became very bored one Winter when I was living in St. Louis, and spent all my time at the big library that was close to the big foreign film theater.  I could drive in and kill two birds with one stone before I had to drive back to my place.  St. Louis is still one of the grand old cities that has something for everybody.  It took me a while to actually find the 3rd floor of the library that housed one of the largest genealogy libraries.  I knew nothing at all about my father’s family so I looked them up.

It was finally confirmed, they migrated from Ireland at the same time the Indian nations were trying to throw them out of here.  My great-great-grandfather from Sweden on my mother’s side, had his ship blown up in the harbor and he had to swim here.  No Ellis Island memories here.  He had incredibly bad timing and came during the Civil War.  

I have his letters in Swedish, translated of course, telling the rest of our family, the forerunners of Ikea, never to come here, that it was “a terrible place where they do despicable things to each other!”  

They must have received the letter and taken heart, because the family stopped coming here.  They raised their children near what is now Ground Zero Strategic Air Command, on a family farm.  My father’s Irish relatives soon married into every other immigrant family, so literally, I”m related to everybody.  

My grandfather from Canada, just happened to be standing in the territories when they made a state out of New Mexico.  Do you think anybody kept records?  Of course not.  They invented that much later.

This is the case for global repatriation.  All of us had our own ethnic heritage to deal with  while the government of the United States realigned our priorities.  Each of us has our own individual value system put in place by our heritage.  It’s difficult to abandon heritage for the interests of the State.  People in Sweden, have Swedish heritage.  People in Italy, have Italian heritage.  But when you look at the United States, none of us really have American heritage to the degree that we don’t bring out the family cookbook or the family photos.  Each of us loves to talk about where our grandparents came from, but we can’t just pack up and go home to every country.

I have always thought that since we don’t seem to have a government that includes everybody, that the interests of a few override the interests of many, that maybe we really are better off British, or French, where there is a tradition of government.  Where they have already worked out the kinks.  We’re still hacking around trying to align priorities, and then here comes some special interest group, and their money, and next thing we’re doing what they want.

I would rather just hang it up altogether and join Her Majesty’s own government.  Their Parliament is certainly much more vocal than ours.  They all sit down in the same room and argue with a sense of perspective.  Congress gets 3 minutes to spew and nobody is even in the room.  If we can’t lock them all in a room together, how are we supposed to get a consensus on anything?

I think that the United Nations should just throw open the doors and repatriate all those people who would rather just go home and forget it.  If you’re French, and you’re heritage says you’re French, and you just happen to like Brie and wine, then France should just let you go home.  

My Irish family were actually Normans, so I’ll take Paris anytime.  In fact, my Irish relatives went back to France during Cromwell.  I guess I”m just for global chaos.  If you’re heritage and your loyalties are really some where else, then the U.N. should just endorse letting you go home.

Then the U.S. wouldn’t have to deal with all of us rugged individualists.  There was no such thing as dual citizenship when people settled this place.  I think we’re all entitled to dual citizenship no matter when our grandparents came here.  I know if my great-great grandfather had had the money for a ticket back to Sweden, I would be working at Ikea and enjoying a little socialized medicine.