let’s see…

my dad arrived here when he was 12 as his father and mother decided life would be better without fidel castro getting all up in their business. my mom was born here and i think her family came to ellis island as irish / polish immigrants. they’ve been here a long while.

my dad is pretty apolitical. i think he’s just generally mistrustful of government. if anything, i’d say he was a libertarian in his views even though he’s a registered republican. he’s concerned about the u.s’s foreign relations though. my mom agonizes over the war and wants it to come to an end. she’s also pretty mixed when it comes to issues like abortion… on the one hand, she’s told me she would never have one, but doesn’t feel that’s something she can decide for another person. she is catholic, so i think its something she really struggles with. i have to admit its an issue that concerns me as well. i dont think i would choose to abort, but i wouldnt want someone making that choice FOR me.

my dad and mom are both leaning towards obama, i think mostly because sarah palin frightens them. they do feel, though, that obama’s stances on “redistributing wealth” makes them feel …. nervous, to say the least.

as for me? i dont know. im undecided. maybe i get it from my dad, but i just cant seem to get behind a person who claims to have my best interests at heart without ever meeting me.

maybe that’s being too cynical?

1. Maternal side: grandmother born in Mexico (Tamaulipas) and moved to south Texas, grandfather born in Texas to an Apache Indian family. My grandmother became a US citizen in 1990.
Paternal side: grandmother born in Texas to a Spanish/French family, grandfather born in England and died in Texas in 1955.
Both of my parents were born in the Texas and so was I. However, there was a massive “civil war” in my family because of the mixed races in earlier generations which led to a break in some family ties.

2. The economy. Education - that long lost issue that has been hidden under other issues for a while now. Immigration.

3. Obama. My views on the issues happen to match most with Obama’s. I don’t care what age, color, gender, race, religion a candidate is - if they share my views they get my vote.
However, I will say that I kinda relate to Obama because he is judged by his color and even by his name. I have people (some of them family members) who judge me because I have an English last name and happen to be rather light complected. Some Latinos tell me I’m not “Latin enough” - as if my color and name have something to do with me being Latina. Some White people scoff at my last name and ask exactly how I got it - as if I’m not allowed to have it. When a relative does that to me, Latino or White, it’s even worse! Being judged by your name, heritage and/or background is unfair and I see how that happens to Obama. Unfortunately, his is in a global, public arena. Mine is on a much, much smaller scale.

On my father’s side, my grandmother was born in California, my grandfather in Mexico. They were both migrant farm workers, working both sides of the border. My father spent most of his early life in the fields picking fruit and cotton with his parents until they saved up enough money to buy a house in south Phoenix.

My mother’s family comes from Edinburgh, Scotland and are all the epitome of liberal white women.

The issues facing my parents are different than for me, because I’m an adult and live in another state.

Both my parents intend to vote for Obama. My mother, because she’s the kind of 60s liberal that thinks that the world should be one beautiful happy village where everyone shares and shares alike, and she despises the Republican “everyone for himself” mindset. My father believes that Republicans have entirely fucked the economy and that the US can’t afford to maintain the Republicans’ isolationist policies and survive.

I live in the Santa Cruz mountains in California in a community that at the best of times is hanging on by the skin of its teeth. It got a shot in the arm during the housing boom because real estate here is slightly more affordable than in the Silicon Valley, so a lot of people bought. Unfortunately, the same percentage of our loans failed as everywhere else. The difference here is that our little mom-and-pop businesses depend on a certain population level to stay afloat, so when a fair chunk of the population leaves because they’ve been foreclosed on, businesses here fail and residents here are without services they depend on.

I’m an adult with children of my own and I’m voting for Obama because I’m looking at what decades of neglect of infrastructure have done to our country. Our children are among the poorest-educated, worst-cared-for and most violent in the world. We boast of being the only world superpower, but that’s a bald lie. China and the EU leave us entirely in the dust at this point. The US has to face some hard truths and deal in reality, or we’re going to become the same kind of third-world backwater we currently spit on.

I was born either in Mexico or the south part of Texas and somehow given to an extremely white family. Raised as a bit of a ‘black sheep’ in a very conservative environment, since my adulthood I have rejected the lock step love of anything white and conservative.

I am over the moon that Barack Obama is kind of a man who grew up outside his culture a little bit. I identify strongly with the idea that he, like me, may have brown or orange or whatever skin, but doesn’t get automatic membership in that culture because he was ‘raised white’.

I came to this country when I was 15, my parents after divorcing when I was 12 decided that my sister and I would be better living with him so they sent us, mom followed later that year, At one point we were all ilegal until dad married his now wife 3 yrs later.

I got accepted to a California University, got a scholarship and financial aid, they all knew I was ilegal, including the school then Prop 187 passed in california and it all went to shits, I wasnt able to go back to school, they basically said you cant be here until prop 187 gets sorted out. Dad got married and eventually we all got our green cards.

I married my high school sweetheart and we are now living in hawaii courtesy of the US Army, Iam now an army wife and mother of two boys. As I write this my husband is in Iraq he has been there since Dec ‘07 and wont be home wntil March of ‘09

The issues that matter the most to me are the war the economy and inmigration, I am leaning towards Obama, he seems to have more common sense and maybe an exit strategy. McCain wants to be there until “we win” which is BS they just need to bring our men and women home. My vote will have nothing to do with the color of their skin but more with how close to my views they are on the issues.

Hey everyone, these are great comments! If you could go to http://current.com/topics/88837910_us_the_immigrant_nation
and upload these as webcams it would be really great! You could end up on TV as part of our election special. My email is severshed@current.com if you want more information.

Thanks!
Sarah