The End of the American Dream?

Is THIS what they meant in there in 1776?

August 2, 2005, was the day I had waited for my entire, not-so-long life. 16 years of age, I went through to the gate at Frankfurt International to get on a one-way flight to California. Sina, the aspiring Hollywood actress, was going to America, like all the other successful people. This was, well, not very long after the Nineties, so while it sounds ridiculous now, this is the perception we grew up with over in Germany: people over there make it to the big bucks from a "dishwasher" and I was going to be one of them. This was before graduating High School, twice, and university, twice, so dreaming was all there really was when making plans for the future. So I tried the American Dream, 12 years before Donald Trump became president.

I haven't seen many accounts, including from my friends who voted for this incapable man, that actually believe his DACA decision was a good one. He took a big, fat nail and rammed it into the coffin that held the American Dream of the Nineties. It's dead! Let's start with the notion that the American dream is only for "Americans" anyways, otherwise, he would not be President today. But now, even Americans are not allowed to dream in his country anymore because their parents came in pursuit of that American Dream. Americans will now lose their homes because their parents tried to make their lives better, but not in the way President Trump would envision it 30 years later. So pathetic and so sad - so much so that one has to wonder who actually still wants to try.

Sure, Americans love America, and they will continue to seek and find opportunities. But then I look at my life and those of the people around me here in the land that isn't hailed as the "land of opportunity" and I got to scratch my head: how is it not? The fact that I once left the continent to pursue opportunities is insane now. What would I be looking for today: working long hours, being exposed to gun crime in any side street of the country, paying s***tloads on a mediocre education (or even more on a decent one)? Yo, it does not sound like the land of opportunity to me. Hard work pays off they say in the States, yet from now on thousands of hard-working young people who were part of DACA could be deported, never mind that they will be evicted from their actual birthplaces. The vast, overwhelming majority of these people are successful employees, potentially paying taxes. It doesn't even make a little sense...

At the same time, I got two Masters degrees by working hard, not because I had money because I most certainly didn't. My country helped me with the funds while covering my insurance throughout the whole process. I had to get surgery twice in the last decade, went to college for four years and traveled the world, and yet now I sit on about 6,000 Euros debt that I can pay off in one go later this year when the government calls it in. All that without a guarantee I will ever pay taxes in Germany, and lookey lookey, I never have. I now work for one of the biggest companies in the world, arguably live a rather decent life considering I can go and do whatever I want, and unless God decides I should be sick and takes me out, I will live a life so much better than anyone would deserve. And all I did for it to be reality is being ridiculously lucky... and German!

Of course, in America, all these things are possible, too. The US is far from a crappy country, and I cant avoid the double standard of realizing I work for Americans, so thank you! However, me, the average, middle-class, ambitious woman, born without parents with a sack of gold, would not have what I do in the land of opportunity. I would never have gotten my opportunities. Sure, I had to go to extensive lengths to get them, but the payout from the insanity of going to Egypt or accepting jobs I didn't even know existed, but in my part of the world, more people are born with the freedom to sacrifice all this than in the US. We are far from achieving equality, even in Berlin I was discriminated against for being a woman, but we work on creating opportunities, even for refugees, rather than deporting our own. And for that alone, we win. The land of opportunity is no longer where we once sought it to be. And so I say as a German, a European: If you are looking for opportunities, try looking here!