"And may I ask you, 'What took you so long?" the interviewer at Immigration and Naturalization asked me.

I had to chuckle a little bit. I had been living in the United States for about 30 years at the time I applied to become a citizen. I had a lot of time to think about it. There were a few reasons, I sometimes thought I may want to return to the home of my birth. After my son was born I argued with myself that I wanted to keep an option open in case he didn't want to become a soldier. I also felt that if a person were to change their citizenship, which was really changing their loyalty, they had better be 100% positive. I didn't think changing one's allegiance should be taken lightly.

I had most of the benefits of being a US citizen, I could work at most any job I wanted, I could live where I wanted, I paid taxes and I paid into Social Security so I questioned what would be the advantage of changing citizenship? The only thing I could NOT do was VOTE or participate in political activities. When I was a teenager that didn't matter. When I was a young woman working and raising 3 children I didn't have the time to be involved in political activities. I met other immigrants who had come to the US under arduous and difficult circumstances and were grateful to be here because of war, famine, political strife or oppressive governments in their own country. Canada isn't like that- it's a lovely, peaceful place with fine people and good laws and justice so I didn't feel compelled to stake a claim here so that I would never have to return.

As my children grew and started going to high school and working discussions started taking place in the house. Why was this politician doing this? Why was this group fighting for this issue or that cause? I could give them my opinion but I couldn't do anything about it. Then my first born became 18 and registered to vote immediately. I was really proud of her especially since so many young people don't vote. I watched as employee's rights and salaries and benefits were continually being hacked away. What would be left for my children? But still I wouldn't commit.

When The Towers came down I started to realize that I was a citizen whether I admitted it or not, that I was part of the US even though I hadn't made a commitment. It occurred to me that I felt hurt and wounded and attacked and I began to consider why I felt that way. I have always considered myself a citizen of the world, that all the planet was my home and I still feel that way. I am a human of the world first and a citizen of the US second. When I saw how people came together in grief I realized how good we could be and I wanted to share in that. As the drums of war started to beat I was not sure that was the answer but I could not speak about it. I was not allowed to be political due to my status. I had no voice.

Entering into the Afghanistan war was something that I felt a lot of trepidation about, entering into the war with Iraq was something I could not agree with at all. My husband grumbled at George Bush JR on TV as he told America of his plan to invade Iraq, "It's a damn mistake! We'll be there for 20 years. These politicians don't understand how easy it is to get into war and how damn difficult it is to get out." My husband had served in Vietnam and he believed Iraq was going to be Vietnam in the desert. He turned out to be right- we're still fighting there. My husband always voted. My husband was a disabled veteran and the last 10 years of his I spent a lot of time with him at VA hospitals. Initially, I would joke with him and say, "You have an appointment at the 'old man's hospital' tomorrow." Because that was the primary patient there, older men. Slowly, very slowly I started noticing young men as patients, then young women and then posters about PTSD therapy and I was saddened- we now had a new generation of soldiers coming back from the field.

I printed an application for citizenship and mailed it in. I had my finger prints taken. I had my picture taken. I stood in a theater with hundreds of other people and pledged allegiance to my new old home. As I stood with my hand on my heart I looked down and my 3 year old grandson was standing next to me with his little hand on his little heart. That's why I decided after 30 years to become a citizen; because if I was going to live here, if I was going to work here and raise my family here then I needed to participate. I need to be able to speak freely and vote and discuss and debate and be a part of the messy business of being part of something bigger than myself. I want to be an example to my grandson, to my children, of what it means to be a citizen. It means being active. It means speaking out when things are wrong. It means marching in a parade or protest to support issues that are important. I recently joined my local party chapter and have become a member of the council.

The difference between someone like me and all my other immigrant friends is that we are the fresh batch. This country has been built by immigrants and they are still coming. The difference between me and Americans who were born on US soil is that I am choosing to live in this country and not another country. Natural born citizens had the luck and good fortune to be born here. Immigrants have to choose. I could have returned to Canada or gone to another country because I have always had the freedom to do so but I decided to commit and commitment means participating. It saddens me to read that in the election last Tuesday some places had voter turnout as low as 30.7% (Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes said voter turnout in Kentucky was 30.7 percent.)Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes said voter turnout in Kentucky was 30.7 percent.)  However challenging it may seem and however unresponsive our government seems it is only as good as we make it and we can only do that by our voice and our vote.

Many have suffered and died for the honor of voting don't make their efforts pointless. Some people in other countries walk through war zones to get to polls. If they can do that we can get up and go to the particpate in our own elections.

Participate in your own history and the history of your home. Leave your mark.

Vote. It still matters.

Every once in a while it seems that Puerto Rico's government decides to fix the economic problems it has caused by –unofficially– pushing the population to leave the country. And now that it has dragged the island into a decade-long recession, irresponsibly accumulated $72 billion in debt, hiked utility rates while cutting service, and imposed excessively high taxes on consumer products, among other things, hundreds of thousands of Puerto Rican families are again packing their bags in hope of finding a new, prosperous home in the US.

It's as if the government doesn't realize that in capitalist economy, cutting already downtrodden consumers' disposable income is a surefire way to create a permanent recession.

In fact, according to the Pew Research Center, "Puerto Ricans have left the financially troubled island for the US mainland this decade in their largest numbers since the Great Migration after World War II, citing job-related reasons above all others."

^{Looking for a job in Puerto Rico? Well, Walmart might have a minimum wage job for you!}

There is a difference between the Great Migration of the 1950s and that of today. The Great Migration happened at a time when the Puerto Rican government was transforming the economy from an agrarian to an industrial one. The theory at the time was that an agrarian economy was not sufficient to support the growing population. But while the transformation did improve Puerto Rico's economy, thousands of Puerto Ricans who were not absorbed by it, mostly unskilled workers from rural areas, were indirectly encouraged to move to the States.

Today's migration, meanwhile, is the result of the government not having found an adequate replacement to the now expired corporate tax incentives that attracted many skilled, industrial jobs to the island. Those incentives were replaced with new incentives that ended up attracting mostly low paying jobs that offer no benefits, forcing the people who took those jobs to have to also seek government assistance to make a living. To wit, minimum-wage employer Walmart is Puerto Rico's largest private sector employer.

While the new northbound migration includes both unskilled and skilled workers, it is resulting in a brain drain that has never before been seen in Puerto Rico. In a nutshell, the government is scaring away the people who are most needed to get the economy back on track.

In a 2013 interview with Caribbean Business, Puerto Rico's only business-focused newspaper, Terrence Ryan, the president of headhunting firm Ryan Executive Search & Outplacement, said "We have lost 20,000 professionals in the past three years, physicians, architects, engineers, professionals at all levels. Gone. I had to open an office in Florida because there are some professional positions for which I have to search among [Puerto Rico] residents who left for the U.S." Among the jobs Ryan has filled from Florida include environmental lawyers, ceramic engineers, accountants and banking professionals.

For many years the Puerto Rican government has gone on and on about creating a "knowledge economy" but all it has done is run the country to the ground, forcing a large part of its skilled labor to move out. How does the government expect a smaller, less skilled population to pay off its debt?

There is a class of political and journalistic "Chickens Little" scurrying about, spreading the myth of a fallen Parisian sky. Our government and news media have been remiss in not making it clear that we are not subject to the same type of internal, coordinated terrorist attacks that plague France. Our country is more in danger from the local types of multi-murder terror with which we have lived these many decades. The venues are various: university bell towers and a variety of other educational institutions, of all levels; fast-food outlets; movie theaters; private homes; etc. Surely, by now, we should be inoculated against the idea of mass, human slaughter. If the spattered blood, brains and broken limbs of elementary school children do not enrage us enough to lift a finger against the cause thereof, then, why should we be concerned that an urban bloodbath, an ocean away, might be duplicated here?

The fact is that Paris and next-door, French-speaking Brussels, Belgium are a special case. As was recently pointed out in this space, they both have teeming ghettoes of pissed-off, Arabic Muslims who have been at war with their governments for decades. They are European-born, -bred and –educated. They have not overcome France's century and a half, racist conversion of Algiers to French culture and language. Despite being European citizens from birth, they are discriminated against and held to the margins of society, as a race and religion. They are unable to progress in business, politics or the professions. In other words, they are a tinder box. The Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL/ DAISH) is well aware of this, it has a lot of matches.

That is the big difference. Over there, there is a ready-made population of disenchanted people, sitting right in the middle of the general population, with all of the civil, language and mobility skills necessary to manage the type of coordinated mayhem we have witnessed. They are super-motivated to accept and act upon any destructive initiatives emanating from the likes of DAIDSH.

As a matter of fact, they have been waiting decades for this opportunity. While they have been steaming under the inequalities of their own society, there has been little outlet, except for occasional car-burnings and such. But, now, with a well-heeled and talented sponsor such as DAISH, they are able and willing to rock and roll against their tormentors. With the added qualifier of willing self-sacrifice, they are a formidable foe for the French and Belgian governments.

That is there and this is here -- not that our own house is all that clean! But we were smart enough to get it in order before it became that disorderly. On these shores, DAISH can only hope to encourage individual, unconnected disciples to take mainly single and unskilled action. As Boston showed us, that too can be quite deadly. Over all, that type of isolated action is a lot easier to deal with than a roiling Trojan Horse in the front yard.

So, America, let's count our blessings. We are still buffered by two oceans, and we are non-violently taking care of our internal disputes. We have only one problem in attempting to control the regular public bloodbaths on our shores – The NRA!!!

***** ***** *****

The fires from distant shores burned bright.

We trembled at the awful sight.

Someone said. "Relax,

"Grab yourself an axe –

"Look behind you; they're here to fight!"