My Friend Steve......

I am a proud citizen of this country, as I am sure you are all aware. I am a natural citizen of this country, I was born here and I will die here. When the Star Spangled Banner plays, I get chills. When I hear of a soldier serving and dying for this country it brings tears of pride and sadness to my eyes. Do I sometimes take for granted the liberties that are commonplace to me because I was natural born into the greatest country on the face of the planet? Yes I do. Everyone does. These thoughts have brought me around to my friend Steve. I can take or leave most of the customers I come across in my line of work, but Steve was different. When I first met Steve I found him to be funny, sincere, nice and just a generally good guy to hang out with. When so many people are fake, he was not. He was a department manager, married, working through college as an engineer, 1 kid.....living the American Dream. I have now known Steve for almost 5 years and he has since moved on to his own store and is one of the most successful managers in the Central Valley, his store is consistently in the top of the charts. He has continued his education and is very close to a degree, which is more than I can say for myself. Although we have never been everyday friends, I still consider him a close friend. He has my work and personal cell phone numbers and knows he can call me anytime with any problems he has.
Steve is living the AMERICAN DREAM!
There’s just one little thing......Steve is not an American. Steve is Jordanian, and his name is not Steve, his name is Azmi (OZ-MEE).Steve is the name he uses here in America, although his legal name is Azmi, which means "determined" in Arabic. If there was ever one word for Steve, determined is it. After I had known him for a couple years one day I had just gotten to his store and I was sitting there talking with him when He got a call on his cell phone. All of a sudden I could not understand what he was saying. He was speaking Arabic. I had always just considered Steve an American, when I heard him speaking Arabic it was very surreal. He proceeded to tell me that was his mom on the phone; she still lives in Amman, Jordan with pretty much the rest of his immediate family. He then proceeded to entrust me with the story of how he came to be where he is at today. I will not get into the specifics but let’s just say things were not very good in Jordan when Steve and his Mom decided it might be good for him to get out of the country, right around January 1991 at the begging of the Gulf War. He went through a lot to get his Visa and come to America. Steve loves America. Even though he loves his home country, he told me how different his life would have been if he had stayed home. He is grateful that the USA opened the door for him, took him in. When he was done telling me the story I was trying not to cry. America has been good to Steve and his family, which he still sends money to in Jordan to help out. Steve is currently in a resident alien status which means he can live here and work here legally, but after a certain amount of time he will have to go back to Jordan.
Here’s where the story gets real good.
I called Steve the other day to go over some work related stuff with him. After we had finished the conversation about work Steve informed me that he had just heard from Immigration, he had completed his final interview and would be able on 11/7/05 to take his oath of citizenship as a United States Citizen. He was very excited; I was very excited for him. This is a huge moment in Steve's life and I will be there to see him take his oath.
Steve has fought long and hard, 14 years to get where he is today. Now he is going to be a citizen. Steve had to fight and scrape for all this time to achieve what was a god given right to me when I was born.Everytime I think things are going bad, or I get pissy because I have to drop 500 dollars into the car (which happened recently) I just think about the fact that I have a car and 500 dollars to put into it. I thank God every day for the fact that I was born into the greatest country on the face of the earth, it’s like winning the lottery! I can believe what I want, do what I want and be anything I want to be.
Don’t ever take this country for granted my fellow Americans, praises your God, whoever he/she might be, every day that you live in the "shining city on the hill"

Steve is happy and proud he is becoming an American, I am happy and proud I am an American.