I barely remember my first day of kindergarten in the United States. It was a day or two before Halloween, and a policeman came to speak to the class about safety while trick-or-treating.  Everyone in the class received a plastic Sheriff Police badge, painted gold with black lettering, that day. After all those years I still have that police badge. I don't remember why I kept it initially, but now I've saved it to remember that first day.

My parents tell me that the first year we were here in America I refused to speak anything, but English. I was five-years-olds, very stubborn about it, and would cover my ears if my parents should attempt to speak to me in our native tongue.

Gerald Rivera in his book, His Panic: Why Americans Fear Hispanics in the U.S., states:

"It's a story that's like so many tens of millions before and after us," he says. "All my Dad ever wanted was for us to grow up and be assimilated, to be Americans, real Americans."

Becoming real Americans, he says, is what motivates immigrants to adapt to their new life.

"America has a way of changing immigrants much more than immigrants change America," he says. "The problem is to teach our children Spanish. That's the problem. English is everywhere. You can't find a second generation immigrant in this country who doesn't speak English."

Just as Rivera has written I, like most DREAMERS, wanted to learn English, so I could speak to my new friends and classmates. No pushing or prodding was needed, I wanted to assimilate, fit in, and become American.  I saw this country as my new home.

I often hear the opposition express that the American way of life is being threatened because of the influx of immigrants in this country. As Rivera has pointed out above, there is no drastic change occurring because the second generation immigrants are more American than not.

The same is true for DREAMERS. Take a closer look at us (read our blogs), and you will see we are as American as our American-born peers; our assimilation occurred easily and naturally just from being enrolled in school and growing up in this country. A birth certificate, a passport, a piece of paper, does not make a person American, and thinking in those terms, I believe, devalues it.

The first Fourth of July I celebrated in the United States was both memorable and exciting. I trotted down to the beach with my family to watch the fireworks. Children ran around with sparklers and glow-in-the-dark bracelets. I was entranced by it all, especially the small American flags neighbors had lined along their lawns.  I wished with all my heart to have a flag of my own. I suppose one of my parents must have spoken to someone because a kind stranger approached handing me my very first American flag. Cringing at the loud booms, watching the splashing of bright colors in the night sky, I proudly clutched the flag in my right hand, delighted to be in the United States.

I've always felt something indescribable when I hear the National Anthem or God Bless America or I'm Proud to be an American. It sounds trite and overly sentimental to me even as I write it, but it is the truth. Nineteen years ago I arrived here in the United States and I am an American.