Viewpoint - Newly naturalized parents find many opportunities

My parents immigrated to this country in 1997 from Jordan to seek better living and working conditions.

What facilitated their immigration was me being an American citizen.

After living in this country for almost 11 years, they finally became U.S. citizens Feb. 14.

The day they were notified by mail of the date and time of the naturalization ceremony my mother asked me, "So when do I get to vote?"

I explained to her that in Texas she had to be registered to vote 30 days prior to an election, and she got disappointed because she could not vote in the March 4 Texas primary.

Most immigrants from the Middle-East, including my parents and myself, have a view of a morally decayed society prior to coming into this country.

Our views did not change until we assimilated ourselves into the society through work and personal interaction with the population.

The United States is a melting pot for a lot of ethnicities and races, and as diverse as that can be, it is also this country's strength because it has no specific nationality, contrary to Europe for instance, where immigrants have a difficult time assimilating.

I was fortunate to work as an election official in the November election last year, and what I noticed is that the public's participation in the electoral system was quite lax.

In a precinct where more than 6,000 people reside, only 131 voted.

What I also observed was that a third of those who voted were people who were born outside the United States.

Immigrants appreciate the privileges of voting and choosing their governing officials, yet people who were born and lived here all of their lives take that right for granted and become passive over the years and stop exercising that right.

My parents lived most of their life in Kuwait, a country that treats immigrants like bandits.

My mother was born in Kuwait and left that country in 1991 after Iraq's Army invaded it.

She was 35 years old when she left, yet she did not get that country's citizenship despite residing there for 35 years.

On the other hand, it took my mother seven years since she applied in 2001 to become a U.S. citizen.

After Kuwait, my parents moved us to Jordan, in which democracy is practiced on a very limited scale.

The monarch can dismiss the prime minister and his government any time the monarch wishes to do so, and, of course, the monarch inherits the throne from his father.

So when my parents came here and realized that their vote can be influential in determining which candidates make it to government office, they became eager to participate in the political system.

As a matter of fact, as soon as my parents were sworn in as citizens, they registered to vote right after the ceremony.

The idea that for the first time ever there is a woman running for the highest office in this country made my mother excited.

Such excitement is warranted because the Middle East is still a male-dominated region, where the odds of a woman becoming a prime minister or president are slim to none.

Despite the flaws we have in our electoral system today in this country, it definitely offers a much better alternative than the regressive male-dominated regimes of the Middle East that discriminate against their citizens on the basis of gender or religious sect.

A blatant example of such regimes is Saudi Arabia.

It is a country that still does not allow women to drive, let alone vote.