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What is Citizenship Worth?

An Immigrant Feels American, But What Do Americans Feel About Him?

By Sandip Roy, Pacific News Service  

My passport expires in a few months and I had been thinking: Should I go to the Indian consulate to get a new one, or should I apply for U.S. citizenship? As the World Trade Center went up in flames, I wondered whether American citizenship was quite so desirable.

My friends immediately worried that immigrants would be among the first to feel the brunt of xenophobic hysteria as Americans try to hermetically seal themselves off from suicidal foreigners. Yet, I never felt so American in my 12 years in this country as I did right then. “They are attacking us,” I told my mother in India over the phone, my eyes glued to the television.

I remember the massive earthquake in Gujarat in India at the beginning of the year. Strangely, I know far more people in New York than I do in Bhuj, Gujarat. Everyone asked me then, “Is your family okay in India?” I said yes, because they were on the other side of the country in Kolkata. Now, my mother says she keeps getting calls from worried relatives about me. Yes, she knows San Francisco is on the other side of the country from New York, but still she asks.

When earthquakes and cyclones hit India, the Indian community in the United States is galvanized. Safe and secure in their SUVs and air-conditioned suburban homes, they suddenly feel their dollars can make a real difference to the disaster victims in India. The exchange rate is in their favor. What do you when disaster strikes right here — in the richest country in the world? I can’t even donate blood if I have been to a malaria-afflicted country like India in the last year.

I have never been much for flags, even back in India. Now they are everywhere. The Indian grocery story where I get my spices. The Iranian restaurant in San Mateo, where we sometimes go for lunch. The little Chinese bakery down the street. Half the cars in a Silicon Valley parking lot seem to be sporting red white and blue stickers. It makes me nervous every time I pass by one. I feel like I am intruding on someone else’s memorial service. But I can’t make myself carry a flag. I remember hearing the Taliban had issued an edict asking Hindus to wear yellow bands for their own protection, so that their soldiers knew they were not Muslim and did not arrest them for failing to follow local Islamic clothing restrictions. I feel like a flag would be my yellow band of protection, except that it would help me blend in, not stand out. To be honest, I don’t know if I am more scared of a random bigot harassing me for not wearing a flag on my lapel, or of my strident leftist friends reading me the riot act for wearing one.

A group of Indian professionals was having a candlelight vigil in San Francisco. A local Indian magazine asked my partner to cover it in hopes of coming up with a photograph of an Indian woman in a sari, with an American flag in the background. He scanned the crowd of 20- and 30-somethings, all in de rigueur yuppie black, looking for a sari. Fortunately, someone’s parents were visiting from India. The cold wind from the San Francisco Bay was biting and the poor woman had a hard time managing her sari and her candle in its styrofoam cup. The little group launched hesitantly into the American anthem. After the first two lines, my singing petered out because I didn’t know all the words, although I rallied towards the end. Then someone suggested singing the Indian national anthem. A couple of people were confused. After all, no big tragedy had befallen India. “Oh, I don’t know the words,” said the young woman next to me. But the lady in the sari and her husband gamely stepped forward and began to sing.

Downtown San Francisco is back to business as usual. As I dodged my way through the snarl of traffic, I saw a couple of women selling American flags. “Only three dollars,” they said cheerily, waving them. I asked the women where they were from. They hesitated. “Mexico,” they finally said. Business was good, although it had been better last week.

Back at my computer, I see that the e-mail lists are abuzz. Some Sikhs have been beaten up because with their long hair and turbans, they look like pictures of Osama bin Laden. A friend of a friend has been harassed by some youths. We keep hearing reports of stabbings. At the candlelight vigil I attended in San Francisco, a man on a bicycle went by yelling, “F—ing Indians, go home.”

“At least he knows who we are,” said someone then with a wry smile.

The woman next to me shook her head and said, “It’s so scary now — they are attacking us.”

I kept quiet. I remembered saying those words to my mother – “they are attacking us”— in another context as I watched the events of Sept. 11, when I felt so American. Now I am no longer sure who the “they” are, and who are the “us.”