Close those email programs, people. The stinky brown immigrant in question? Moi.

Let me explain.

I'm not from your country. I'm from a strange island nation across the Atlantic, and the issue of how I'm an invisible halfie must wait til a later date. Today is the day for stories of voting.

Today I nearly cried while voting, which is horribly embarassing. In 2000, I almost cried while voting. In 1996 I did not cry while voting. In 1996, I was 21 years old, and two months before the Presidential election, I received a letter from the INS stating that they had lost my application, and that I would need to restart the process from scratch. I would not be voting in the 1996 election, and so I did actually cry while not voting.

In 1996, I lived in California, during the period of time when there was a brief scandal over the fact that several INS employees in the San Jose office had admitted that because they could not make quotas, they would instead throw out large boxes of applications for naturalization. That's right. People would take the time to fill in the application, pay the filing fee ($180 in 1996), go get their fingerprints taken and submitted, and then go home and pray, while underpaid, overworked civil servants threw out all their work. No one told them their applications had been destroyed, and refunds were out of the question.

It is my heartfelt opinion that while I was told only that my application had been "lost", it was among those that were thrown out. At the time, I had just finished putting myself through the University of California, Davis, with a double major and a minor, and had just begun my first fulltime job, one with health insurance. I had at that point been paying taxes for five years, the amount of time I'd been living on my own.

I had to restart the process from scratch, including the fee, which at this point had been raised. I was fingerprinted seven times.

I cannot tell you the next part of the story, because I wound up the lucky recipient of beautiful generosity on the part of folks who wish to remain anonymous. All I can tell you is that it really is all about who you know.

There are stories I read on the Eenterweb from newspapers, about that one dude in Kentucky, and those four dudes in Vermont, who were naturalized one day. At my citizenship ceremony, there were easily 600 people. The people in front of us in line spoke exclusively in Hebrew, and I remember being ashamed because at that point I didn't know enough to even identify the language. My mother told me what it was.

I had to take the day off work. When I came back, everyone at the UC Hellmouth alumni association office filed into the conference room and produced the most beautiful cake I have ever seen in my life. It was red, white and blue and it was for me, to say congratulations. I didn't cry, but I wanted to.

In 2000, my polling place was a nightclub which had gotten all cleaned up for the occasion. I spent easily three times the amount of time anyone else did in the little booth. I could not get over how coool it was--I was voting! In a nightclub! Hipster lifestyle? Immigrant success story? Who can say!

This afternoon, I got to my polling place, the senior center (because my life is pretty much lesbians and the elderly)(that's an inside joke) and I had my driver's license out. I was so terrified that I'd have filed the wrong paperwork, forgotten a page, etc. A friend of mine here is a notary public, and I had her notarize the actual Vermont oath, which I brought with me. Just in case. (She totally didn't laugh at me when I asked her, too, which, was awesome.)

I. Voted. In the 2004 United States Presidential election.

To this date, to the best of my knowledge, no inquiry or outcry has been raised over the destruction of the naturalization applications in San Jose. If you know differently, I implore you, email me. I would love to know. Besides.

I WANT MY ONE-HUNDRED-EIGHTY DOLLLARS!