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.

The Kinetic Barrier to Change

I'm not sure if I mentioned in a previous post how it came to be that I became trans-located from the UK across the pond into the US.

It started fairly easily... I wanted to live in the US!

The previous five or so years, I had become quite enamored with the American culture, I had studied American history in high school as an optional course as a change from science and it was fascinating. I had become a huge fan of football* thanks in part to happenstance and to an obsession with playing Madden with my younger brother.

Just for a bit of personal history, the first game I ever saw was Super Bowl XLI by pure chance. I was bored at home on a cold February night and randomly flipped onto the opening ceremony of the Super Bowl on C4. I watched the whole thing intently; the half time show with Prince, the endless Rex Grossman bumbling, and that was where my love started. I wanted to know more... watch more videos, play more games. 

For whatever reason, my brother also started to love football around the same time, a few years of Madden and following the NFL network later, and I was a mega fan. There is no off season to me. I watch the draft. I watch the scouting combine. I don't just blindly follow the Giants either because that was the first place I lived when I moved to America. I am a huge Giants fan, but I can talk with any fan about any team. Although I'd rather not talk to certain team fans...

The point is that I have grown closer and closer to the US culture for several years before I left. My love of football was just part of that...

In the meantime I was moving into the final year of a Ph.D. program in chemistry and wondering what I would do afterward. Most people look for a Post-Doc but I was far more interested in getting out of the lab and moving into a career.

Then one day someone, knowing how much I love America, I was asked why I don't move there...

It seemed obvious but my first thoughts were..

"How can I do that?!"

"I don't know where to start."

"It sounds expensive."

"I don't know anyone there."

But then I realized...

These were just excuses! I loved the idea of moving to the country that I loved, albeit in theory at this point. Sure, I'd visited a few times but Hawaii, Florida and New York City hardly seem like the real America. I didn't know what it would really be like.

So the next day I started looking into how I could get to America...

One solution was to do a Post-Doc... not my first choice. but by far the easiest way to get a Visa and a Post-Doc at Princeton would get my foot in the American door, and it would be great for my CV.

I began planning, found a flight, a place to stay, got my visa, and prepared. It didn't really dawn on me that I was really leaving my whole life behind until I was on the plane. My life was literally packed into two suitcases and I could barely breathe with anxiety and the worst heartburn of my life.

I landed into JFK airport that evening and made the huge mistake of deciding to stay in a cheap hotel in Queens before moving on to Princeton the next day. An even bigger mistake was foregoing the taxi service from JFK, and instead opting for the AirTrain to Jamaica Station followed by a five block walk... at night. This whole plan had me wondering if I'd made a HUGE mistake by coming here at all... and if I would even live to regret it.

The next day, I headed to Princeton, lugging two packed suitcases through the busy New York City and the architectural black hole that is Pennsylvania Station. I figured, how hard could it be to change trains from the Long Island Railroad to the NJ Transit... Boy was I naive!

Finally I made it to Princeton, this time opting to take a taxi to the place I'd call home for the next month, a rental house just North of the University. The family I was renting a room from was welcoming, but all I really wanted to do was decompress, so I went for a walk before even packing away my clothes.

The first time I saw Princeton town, my heartburn and anxiety evaporated immediately.

I felt like I was home, finally...

And I've felt like that ever since.

True, I've since moved to Pittsburgh, which I much prefer to Princeton, but I knew for the first time that I was on the right track. America was my home, and I knew it.

So if you've read this far, congratulations! I don't pretend that my story is exciting, or even interesting, but it is unique to me and it does hold a lesson.

You can be one of those people who just talks about "one day I'm going to do this", or "I want to do this". The word "but" usually completes the second part of those sentences. I used to do it too.

"I want to live in America, but..."

Until someone I trusted asked me why don't I? I really didn't think it was real. 

It doesn't matter what your dream is. Talk is cheap, as they say, not in money though, it's cheap in time and effort. Achieving any dream, however small, requires overcoming some barrier to happiness.

I realized while writing this story that this barrier is much like the barrier towards a chemical reaction. It's the reason why paper dreams of bursting into flames, but instead it just sits there, as a piece of paper, until it catches a spark. That spark helps the paper overcome the reaction barrier and the paper burns just as it always wanted to.

Let me explain what I mean using the diagram...

In Chemistry reactions lower energy just means something is more stable but if you trace the energy pathway from Y to X there is a high energy peak between the two. Much like life, there is always an uphill struggle if you want to make a life change to a happier state.

But notice the red line! That looks MUCH easier, I want to take the easy path to happiness!

Well you can, but that requires a catalyst. A catalyst makes that effort less and the change easier. My catalyst was my friend who basically sat me down and told me to get my head out of my ass and start doing something toward my goal or stop talking about it! 

My goal was to live in America, my barrier was the torturous journey, expenses and effort of finding a job in another country, and my catalyst was a trusted (albeit abrasive) friend... and now I'm at point X and looking for my next low energy state!

So stop reading this and figure out what you want and start working toward it!

And most importantly, find your catalyst...

*For the purposes of this and ALL future posts, 'football' refers to American football! If I mean 'soccer' I will say soccer, which I probably won't because it sucks and is boring. Very few things annoy me more than being questioned every time I say football as to whether I in fact mean 'American football' as if it is that surprising that a British person would prefer football to soccer. Just for the record, it is Americans who decided to use the same bloody word for a completely different, all be it superior sport, and thus create the confusion.

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.