Only under Obama has America’s atmosphere become so poisonous

My Wife Didn’t Immigrate to America for This

By Claude Sandroff
Monday, November 2, 2009

A French-born and French-educated PhD engineer, my wife first came to the United States for post-doctoral study, then married an American and then become a US citizen. Her idealization of America began when her vacationing parents sent her a post card from New York City in 1969. The image of Manhattan’s skyline from the Brooklyn Bridge coupled with that summer’s images from the Apollo moon landing cemented her future. She was going to be part of America’s exceptionalism when she grew up.

Just twenty-one years after her arrival she suddenly finds her adopted country almost unrecognizable. She often remarks that she didn’t immigrate (legally) to the US so that it would come to imitate France. If she wanted to live in a country that embraced socialism, accepted persistently high unemployment, encouraged nationalization of major industries, supported dictatorial labor unions and promoted countless communist government insiders, she could have stayed put.

But in case things continue to deteriorate she insists that we make contingency plans. She once left the country of her birth and she could leave the country she adopted if its prospects diminish. Maybe Australia, Canada or even New Zealand offers better opportunities than America. Australia turned Left in their last elections, though only moderately so, while both Canada and even New Zealand seem to have solid right-of-center governments. All three have stronger currencies than ours. And New Zealand of all places, rates according to the World Bank, as one of the easiest countries in the world to do business in.

My wife has lived through two Bushes and a Clinton but only under Obama has America’s atmosphere become so poisonous and its future so heavy with gloom and fear that serious discussions about packing it all in could emerge. This is what Obama’s election has wrought. I doubt if we’re the only relatively mobile couple to have had this discussion, one unimaginable in any other era.

“Dearâ€