A Lesson on Immigration

One of the hottest topics in today's politics is immigration. More specifically, our people are divided in trying to either keep illegal aliens out of the country, or whether they should be granted citizenship, and I'll tell you something right now; I'm a registered Democrat but my British fiance and I agree with the Republicans on this facet, and here's why.

Everyone is focused on illegals.

Americans are forgetting that legal immigrants are totally a thing. And the fact of the matter is that these legal immigrants that want to join our country, and are trying to go about it the correct way, still have a difficult time, if not more so than an illegal immigrant that just does things anyway and doesn't tell anyone about it.

So let me ask a few questions.

If this person is here illegally, why are they still here? When landlords rent to tenants, they have very specific contracts and there are laws to protect both sides from bullshit, such as sub-renting, and letting your friends live with you without being on the contract. Those people get evicted. So why are we so lenient with illegal immigrants?

If California is giving away free healthcare to illegal immigrants, why can't our legal immigrants or even our own citizens get free healthcare? We're giving them driver's licenses in North Carolina. Fuck, we might be giving them citizenship in the near future. Why are we even giving benefits to illegals at all? That's like telling them it's okay to be illegal!!!

"Hello Ma'dam, I'm glad to see you've successfully evaded the U.S. government for several years now. Here's your citizenship card!"

So what does that say to our legal immigrants? "I'm sorry, you should've sneaked over here if you wanted to be a citizen"??

Just about every single American's knowledge of the immigration system comes from watching The Proposal, which is totally and utterly wrong. When I tell people that I'm getting married to a British guy and that we can't leave the country for our honeymoon because of his current visa status, they always say, "But you're getting married. Doesn't that make him a citizen?"

No. Just no. That's so totally wrong. Now let me tell you why.

My fiance is here on an educational visa. That means it's temporary and he was expected to return to the U.K. when it expires. Because of a very specific set of circumstances, his visa status became subject to a two year home residency clause, which also meant that when his visa expired and he went back, that he couldn't come back to the U.S. for two years, even if he was married with children. Getting married and starting a family has no bearing on his visa status, because his visa is like a contract with the federal government and it specifically states that two year home residency.

Now there is hope for us, and we did successfully get through this, but John applied for a waiver that would essentially remove that two year home residency clause from his visa. It took many months for the Department of State to do its investigation on him and then send their favorable recommendation to the Feds for them to make their decision. Well luckily for us, they decided to give him the waiver. So now the next step is available to us.

After we get married, I can then petition the government to sponsor a green card for John. Yes, I said that correctly. I petition the government to sponsor a green card for John. We don't just submit an application and get it. It is yet another lengthy process. The only thing that movie got right was that they do get interviewed, except that you can totally bring your lawyer with you to the interviews, and that they only interview the couple, not your entire family.

Also, the green card that he gets is only a temporary green card. If we were to divorce within the first two years of our marriage, I could revoke my sponsorship and his green card could get taken away. At the two-year mark, we will have to fill out another form to make his green card permanent. Just so everyone knows, this still does not make him a citizen. For John to become a U.S. citizen, he will need to have a permanent green card, and then go through the naturalization process. It basically ends with a history test on the U.S. Most naturalized citizens know more about our country than the American born citizens.

TL;DR
Getting married does not make my alien fiance into a U.S. citizen. It takes years of submitting forms to the government. And apparently we're okay with granting illegal immigrants citizenship for evading the government for five years.

Honestly, the only scenario in which I have any empathy for an illegal immigrant is one with which had no choice in the matter. And by that, I mean a child that was brought over. We should protect those children as they grow up, because they've grown up with Americans, believing that they too are Americans. That doesn't excuse the friends or family that brought them over, but not everyone is equal.

White Pride! Straight Pride! Wait, what?

I've noticed an increasingly, interesting trend happening on the internet these days, and it was a rather collective, but subtle (until recently this last week), movement I dare say: pride for the majority.

Before you angrily disagree, let me clarify what I mean when I say pride for the majority (and you're probably still going to disagree, I promise, I totally have a point after this next paragraph).

I mean the students in Ohio that celebrated a Straight Pride Week, or this website dedicated to celebrating Heterosexual Awareness Month (though I can't really tell what month they're claiming since they've marked July 6th as Straight Pride Day and July 22nd as International Day Against Heterophobia, but you can buy T-Shirts and mugs!). This forum that is for White Nationalists that say they support true diversity and a homeland for all people, but want to promote the interests, values, and heritages of the white majority simply because there's so many organizations that already do it for non-white minorities. There is this radio and billboard project that claim to be the voice of the white resistance.

None of this is new. That radio station I linked to is run by the Ku Klux Klan, and they've been around for a really long time. And that's also kind of my point. I'm a firm believer that when people don't learn their history, it's doomed to repeat itself. In this technological era, and millennials in particular, we have no real understanding of what it's like to see a repressed minority. We grew up in a world where everyone is equal on the internet (go Net Neutrality! Woo!). We asked everyone their ASL (age, sex, and location, for those older and newer folks that missed the trend before we had online profiles, and for people who don't say folks), so you could be chatting up someone of a completely different background whether that's racial, financial, sexual, religious, or something else. While you may have your personal bias of who you PM'd (private messaged), the melting pot of an open IRC chatroom did not.

This is how we used to internet. (The Fine Bros.)

So we have a generation of people coming into their twenties in America that have only experienced a world where everyone can have an opinion. Anyone can become instantly famous in 140 characters or less. We've also experienced a world where Black History Month is celebrated every February,  there are annual LGBT+ parades, and feminists can be found everywhere spreading awareness for equality between the genders both personally and professionally.

Equality.

We see that word, and we know the definition. But now we're starting to get confused. We see everyone fighting to be equal, but we forget what they're trying to be equal to. We've started to see these awesome parades and celebrations as privileges for the minorities, not as something as equal. And that's a hard thing to say. In fact, I'm kind of disgusted to say it, but I believe this trend to be true.

We watch silently as the rainbow flags wave above our heads. We diligently learn about Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream and the abolishment of slavery that followed. We learned why World War II and our own Civil War started (we briefly covered the Women's Suffrage, if at all in my school). But it all seemed so long ago. Those are just in our history books, and there are few people to recount memories of those events are alive today. In the time of the internet, those events may as well be in the Dark Ages because we move faster with the ever changing current of information available at our fingertips.

Now that we've grown up in this world, many of my generation are failing to understand why we celebrate the minorities like we do, and thus it results in my generation being led to believe that we are no longer the majority. That we no longer have these privileges that the minorities claim us to have had. That there are so many minorities banded together for equality, that we have actually become the outcasts.

And so white pride is born. Straight pride is born. We are trying to claim pride for ourselves because we're starting to feel like we're the minority.

People actually think this. I didn't just make it up. (USDemocrazy)

It simply isn't true.

Sure, you can be proud to be who you are, and you should be! But the problems begin when we start repeating history because we failed to learn it, or learn from it. I'm not saying you should be ashamed to be proud because you're heterosexual. I'm saying you should be ashamed for your ignorance when you get upset, angry, or annoyed when someone else expresses their pride for being something different.

If I were a parent of a child with a bad habit, I'd say that even though I don't agree with your choice of habit, I accept it. That's what we need to do as humans. We need to agree that we may disagree with each other's choices, whether that is who they identify as, who they choose as partners, what they choose to believe or not believe in, whatever, but we need to accept each other gracefully.

We need to tone it down with this pride for the majority stuff. We didn't have to celebrate it before because it was already known. It was already "default", if I might say it like that. What we celebrate for the minorities is because it isn't "default." We're celebrating the differences in people so that they don't feel so different after all. But now it's turning into celebrating all but one...

On the other side, Morgran doesn't want anyone to celebrate anything.

In the end, we may find ourselves on the cusp of another civil war, with businesses and buildings taking down their confederate flags because of what they may represent. Is it white history? Is it American history? Is it Southern heritage? Is it a reminder that we once coveted slavery and fought to keep it? Whatever it means, it may cause us to repeat history because we either didn't learn it or have decided to only believe the parts we want to believe.

Read a history book from England. I'm sure their take on the French and Indian War is much different than ours.


Tessa is a feminist that falls along the LGBT+ spectrum and supports equality for everyone. She believes racism and sexism are both virulent in our culture and hopes to spread the awareness. Tessa is also in support for turning our current "rape culture" into awkward conversations in order to return the value of the word to it. Yes, she will overreact to rape jokes because they're not funny. Neither are jokes founded upon mental illnesses or physical disabilities.

SPB: Vomit Chocolate

So have you always wondered why Hershey's chocolate tastes disgusting?

What's that? You like Hershey's chocolate?!

Then you must be American, because most people from outside the U.S. would agree there is just something not quite right about Hershey's.

The first bite is tasty, sweet but then there's a sort of rotten milk aftertaste that you can't quite put your finger on. Well, being a chemist I was curious about what this might be. 

It turns out that the rotten milk aftertaste is actually.... rotten milk. Not sure why I was surprised. More specifically, it is a chemical called Butyric Acid. 

Butyric Acid is the chemical that if you ever find yourself in a chemistry lab and open the wrong fridge, it hits you in the face like a jug of milk left on the radiator for a week and makes you wish you could remove your entire olfactory system with the nearest blunt instrument.

Fun fact about Butyric Acid: it's gross!

So here is a run down of Butyric acid's close cousins:

Formic acid (C1): The shortest cousin, and the stuff that red ants inject you with that burns like a son-of-a-bitch!

Acetic acid (C2): aka Vinegar. Okay, can't fault this one, vinegar is delicious! but many people think I'm insane to think that. Sorry, it's a British thing, fish and chips need vinegar!

Propanoic Acid (C3): aka Sweat! Yes, this is the smell of BO... 'nuff said.

So Butyric acid (C4) doesn't exactly find itself in excellent company....

But, the best part about Butyric acid is that it is not only literally the chemical that gives sour milk its delicious, "oh holy god, why did I just put that into my coffee?!" morning wake dry heave taste. But also the chief ingredient of vomit. 

So why you might ask would it be in chocolate of all things!

Well that is just a byproduct of how American chocolate is made. In an attempt to increase profits, the milk used in U.S. chocolate is partially lypolyzed... 

Okay so I probably just lost most people. Let's back-up.

We all know that milk has a shelf life, and left sealed the sour taste comes from the naturally occurring lypaze enzymes in the milk breaking down fatty acids to various carboxylic acids, one of which is Butyric acid. For this reason, sour milk tastes disgusting. Certain things, like exposure to light, oxygen, or excess heat can accelerate this process. So that's why milk is stored in the fridge where it's dark and cool.

To stop this process, milk in the store is pasteurized. This exposure to high temperatures destroys the enzyme (they are very sensitive to heat... as anyone who has studied enzyme chemistry can attest) meaning the milk can no longer sour itself as quickly and has a longer shelf life. The alternative is to lypolyze the milk slightly and actually partially sour it intentionally. This reaction produces some of the bad chemicals, but prevents the milk from fully souring. This is the method the chocolate manufacturers go for in the U.S.

So in the U.S. the milk is intentionally partially soured to increase shelf life and the profit.

To a non-American this is akin to urinating on a steak to keep animals away! 

But apparently Americans just develop some kind of immunity to the taste of vomit and just don't taste it! I have even given many Americans real British chocolate, Cadbury's Dairy Milk for example, and they all like it but somehow miss that sour milk vomit taste!

What is even worse to me is that this expectation is so widespread, and America is such a large international market, that rather than just make chocolate that is profitable, it just so happens to have Butyric acid in it. Legitimate chocolate manufactures actually add Butyric acid directly to their chocolate mixture!!!

Just let that sink in....

A guy in a chocolate factory somewhere is looking into a vat of delicious molten milk chocolate, and is actively getting a jar of concentrated super vomit and pouring it into said chocolate, presumably crying in actual pain while he comes to the realization that he is destroying something beautiful and basically declaring war on Switzerland. 

Hmm... needs more vomit.

This would be much like adding a mustache to the Mona Lisa to appease the mass market.

But don't worry, America, it's not all bad, There is still Ghiradelli and in my opinion the best chocolate in the world and made right here in the United States, so next time you're in the store looking for chocolate, do yourself a favor and get some real chocolate... hold the vomit!

Surprise Peanut Butter: An American Culture Shock

When you move from the UK to the US, most people would expect the degree of culture shock to be minimal. To a certain extent they are right. But the fact that you don't expect it makes those little things all the more surprising!

Early on in my American adventure I suffered from such a shock that I like to call Surprise Peanut Butter. 

Let me set the scene. In universities, most students are pretty poor so any promise of free food is likely to draw quite a crowd; that's basically the only sure fire way to guarantee a full auditorium of participants at a potentially very boring science lecture. So at my first such science talk, we were treated to a full spread of cookies and coffee (Princeton Chemistry department is certainly not shy about putting money into free food). I grabbed a plate of cookies and headed into the venue. I had grabbed a few of my favorites, oatmeal raisin included, as well as some unidentified plain cookies.

Getting the cookies I didn't fully understand was a huge mistake, but I figured, "How wrong can this go?" Apparently... very. The first bite was...

 SURPRISE! Peanut Butter!

To Americans, this occurrence is nothing strange but I'm sure my British kin can attest that biting into a cookie or biscuit from a varied platter and discovering peanut butter is very jarring. Not only is nut allergies a real possibility, and the tray was not labelled with a warning, but peanut butter seems to be one of those things that you either love or you hate...

I personally hate it!

So my delicious plate of sugary treats was turned to disappointment and broken dreams, and there was not enough coffee in the pot to drown out that flavor. 

Needless to say, I won't be diving into any unknown cookie trays from now on.

As a bonus feature, this is not an isolated incident.....

Everyone knows, at least in England, that purple is the best flavor. Loosely based on the concept of blackcurrant (although a poor imitation) in a mixture of colored treats, always choose purple, closely followed by red.

So imagine my surprise when in the US, purple means GRAPE!

What the hell is that all about! Grapes barely have a flavor anyway! why the hell would that even be a flavor, and why would anyone want to choose it on purpose! Needless to say, that candy ended up in the trash! And the candy based disappointment is continued.

Yet another jarring flavor experience, like when you are the passenger in a car and know where you're driving to, then the driver decides to take a different route and at a T-junction takes a left turn, when your whole body was expecting a right. It's unsettling.