I'm a legal alien...

It is hard to get used to yourself being termed a legal alien, but that is what I am going to be for the rest of my time in the US. I really don't want to become naturalised (more of this later), and I don't particular want my kids growing up hearing that their dad is an alien. I mean I am weird but not that weird.

In my dictionary alien has the following meanings:

"unfamiliar; unacceptable or repungent, different or separated, foreign, relating to beings of other worlds".
Nice words aren't they? Wouldn't you be proud to be thought of as unacceptable or repungent, different or separate? I'd much rather be considered a man from mars or a woman from Venus than those words.

It does, however, show the way that Americans and in particular the people in governmental positions and high powered business execs view the rest of the world and immigrants. Immigration has been a huge issue here political recently and with elections coming up for the Senate and the House of Representatives in November I am sure we will hear more about it. It is important to remember that when a politician here talks about immigration they are concerned with Mexican immigration. Apparently millions of immigrants flood the poorly defended border between the US and Mexico each year. Bush wants to put up a fence running the entire distance of the border. Yet nothing has been talked about the largest unprotected border in the world, which lies to the North of the US, the border she shares with Canada. Well not until recently that is. You see with the Canadians discovering a terrorist plot suddenly the US government wants to put up a fence with Canada as our Colonial cousins apparently are a soft touch and a safe haven for terrorists who can then rush over the undermined border with Canada.

The outcome of all of this is anyone's to guess. Having not made a joke in the last 2 paragraphs I fear I may lose some of you, but I am going to press on. Americans in general are not exposed to foreigners any more. Which is strange when you consider how this country was stolen, I mean, founded. Of course some people meet tourists and if you live on the coast of the US you are far more inclined to meet tourists go abroad and be interested in life outside of the US. But if you live in the fly-over states (the bits in between the coasts which aren't worth visiting so you just "fly over them") you may never meet a foreigner or here foreign accents. Since moving to California I have had to make some adjustments, one of them is having to get used to people staring at me when I speak. I am not sure if it is because I am with an American wife and child and so they are not expecting me to speak with an English accent or if they just haven't heard one in the flesh before, but almost everywhere I go I will get at least one person staring at me open mouthed. It has got to the stage in restaurants that I know the 1st thing I say to the waiter or waitress will not be understood. So I prepare myself to repeat it.

I am unclear the reason behind this next phenomena, maybe it is because I have a slight Cornish accent (you should hear me say pasty - it has around 12 "a"s in it) mixed with 7 years of living in London but no-one has yet guessed correctly where I am from. I am not talking about which part of the country, I am talking about WHICH country. I have been asked if I am Australian twice, Irish 3 times and Ukrainian and Russian once each. Never once has the UK or England come up. When people do ask me where I am from I find myself going for the easy option and say London rather than go into the whole back story. But enough of that I am going to explore my Cornishness in a later post.

My final point about the lack of exposure is this. I sat down with Emma and her 2 cousins to watch Bob the Builder. Wow - I was shocked, I mean truly shocked. Not about the show - although let's explore the happiness these workers have - that can't be good for young kids to see people happy in their work. No what truly shocked is that the voices have been changed. No longer is that guy from men Behaving Badly doing Bob but it is some American. The same for the Tellytubies, Thomas the Tank (good bye Ringo hello Alec Baldwin), and more recently the Magic Roundabout movie. Not sure what execs are worried about here - that oh no, someone may here a different accent? It seems crazy that they would dub voices over professional actors and voiceover artists (and Ringo).