http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mp ... an/3250249

July 2, 2005, 9:59PM



An asset to two lands
By RICK CASEY
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

ELENA Vega celebrates her first Fourth of July holiday this week as an American citizen.

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She was sworn in Wednesday at a giant ceremony at an Aldine Independent School District gymnasium, along with nearly 2,500 other immigrants from 145 nations.

Sept. 16, she will celebrate another Independence Day, that of Mexico. Diez y Seis de Septiembre marks the day in 1810 that Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla read the Grito de Dolores, the Mexican version of the Declaration of Independence, calling for the end of Spanish rule in Mexico.

It will be her 33rd Diez y Seis celebration as a Mexican citizen.

That's right. Vega retains her Mexican citizenship. Some of her new compatriots will have a problem with that. I'll explain below why I don't.

As a student at a Jesuit college in Mexico City, Vega couldn't imagine ever wanting to become a U.S. citizen.

"I was very critical of the United States," she said. "I felt it was an oppressor nation, and racist. I would never live in that place."


Long lines at 5 a.m.
Then as a part-time employee of Reuters news service, she met the man who would, years later, become her husband. Jeff Franks was Mexico City bureau chief and is now chief correspondent in his hometown of Houston.

Vega married him in 1999. On visits and then as a resident, she learned that her stereotypes of Americans were wrong. She found them friendly and open-minded.

She obtained a work permit and, three years after the wedding, officially began the road to citizenship.

It wasn't easy. Twice a year she would have to renew resident permits.

"I would go at 5 o'clock in the morning, and there would already be 500 to 700 people ahead of me," she recalled. "I'd get inside about 10 o'clock but would have to wait four hours more for my turn."


Breath of fresh air
Once, she received a deportation notice. It wasn't clear whether the immigration service had misplaced some of her paperwork or whether her lawyer had failed to file something. She was, fortunately, able to clear up the matter.

Part of her delight in the United States is lifestyle. She enjoys jogging in her inner-loop neighborhood and riding her bike. And for all of Houston's traffic angst and pollution worry, it's a free-wheeling breath of fresh air compared to Mexico City.

She also loves the ease with which her hard work converts to money here. She has cobbled together freelance reporting jobs for Spanish-language newspapers, translations for a local television news show and on-call interpreting for hospital emergency rooms.

Then there's her thriving eBay business. She turns her frequent family visits to Mexico into buying trips, then sells her imports online.

"I make five times as much as a full-time job at Reuters in Mexico," she said enthusiastically. Yet she still has time for her work with a nonprofit that refurbishes old houses for low-income families.

And for citizenship.

New citizens tend to be active voters. That's why U.S. District Judge David Hittner, who presided over Wednesday's swearing-in ceremony, made a point of introducing his son, George Hittner, the City Council candidate, to the new voters. And the speaker was Councilman Michael Berry, who talked at campaign length about his immigrant (from India) wife.

But isn't Vega's patriotic devotion to the United States in conflict with, or at least diminished by, her unabated devotion to Mexico? After all, she expects to continue to vote in Mexico.

For the first few Fourth of July anniversaries, patriots had to choose. Independence
meant war with the mother country.

But we're not at war with Mexico, and not likely to be.

There is no more reason to think Vega can't love the United States and Mexico, too, than to think she can't love her husband and also love her mother.

It would be a jealous and immature nation that would claim exclusive rights to her affections or her civic contributions.

Vega will be an asset to both countries. For all the complexity of dealing with problems of illegal immigration, America has unarguably from the beginning benefited from legal immigrants. The vibrancy of America comes from the varied people who were ambitious enough to make their way here.

Citizens like Vega have meant that every Fourth of July, from the beginning right up to this 230th one, we are not only celebrating a birthday.

We are continuing to be born.