I've Something in common with Eric Idle.

• 28 Nov, 2018
• Paisley P. Peinforte
• Hits count 1308

From Eric Idle's biography:

I pay taxes in three countries and I can vote in none of them. I wasn’t even allowed to vote against Brexit. The Russians had more say than I did. And of course, I can’t vote in the States, though they coined the phrase “No taxation without representation.” I was once coming home through LAX when a steely- eyed immigration officer peered suspiciously at me.

“How long have you been a green card holder?”
“Oh, I have had it for ages,” I said. “More than twenty years.”
“Then why aren’t you an American?”
“Erm. Er . . . Well . . .” I hesitated. What should I say? What was the correct thing to say?

“Because, sir, I am an Englishman. Born and raised in England under the bombs of Hitler. A member of one of its most prestigious universities, from a college founded in 1347. A man who watched England win the World Cup at Wembley in 1966 and Manchester United lift the European trophy in 1968. An Englishman, a proud Elizabethan, heir to the traditions of Shakespeare, Chaucer, Wilde, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Dickens, a cricket- loving survivor of the Sixties and a member of one of the most admired comedy groups in the world. Is it not enough I live in your fair country and pay my taxes? Now you wish me to put my hand on my heart and pledge allegiance to a self- righteous, lying, tax- avoiding moron, and his racist, gay- bashing, environmentally dangerous, greedy- bastard, science- denying cronies, who reject evolution and the rights of women, and plunder the planet for profit to please their powerful funders, stealing the very air and clean water of their children, while tweeting insanely and lying through their teeth on propaganda TV channels that would have shamed Joseph Goebbels? No, sir! The French do not shrug at me sardonically and ask me why I am not French. The Norwegians do not stop me on their shores and insist I wear thick knitwear and a large red anorak and retire into the countryside suffering from Ibsen and ennui. The Australians don’t force me into baggy swim pants to stand on planks in orange sunscreen hurtling across their shark- infested waters singing ‘Advance Australia Fair.’ No, sir. Enough, sir. I am a tax payer, a member of your Academy, a Grammy winner, a Tony winner, a father of an American, a lover of America, married to an American wife with an American child, but not, sir, an American!”

I've similar issues. Cross-national residence, taxation, and shame at what America has become, and sadly watching my home country follow right along.

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