French are angry that about 60% of movies their kids watch are American made, and most of the music they listen to is either American or British. Yugoslavs were angry that only 90% of movies that were playing in their theatres were American made. Kids like me took up the American culture and particularly rock and roll as our protective shield against dull, decaying and obstructive system in which we lived. We identified with that culture. More naive, we identified that culture, essentially just a well marketed export product of the corporate America, with the actual American society. Can you imagine my surprise the first time when a bartender in the land of sex, drugs and rock and roll asked me for a picture I.D. when I ordered a beer? And that was not nearly as disappointing as my later experiences.

This country was built by immigrants. It seems that politicians tend to forget that. Even those who sometimes employ some of so-called illegal aliens. America creates an appeal for immigrants, and then rejects them. However, America still needs baby sitters (as Zoe Baird and Pete Wilson may testify), lawn mowers, dishwahsers... So, the strict immigration rules are often easily overlooked (at least so long as the immigrant does not show a desire to make more money doing some "more meaningful" job. But for Christ sake, what could be more meaningful than "pots & pans"? I came here on a student visa, which expired once I completed my exchange program. I applied for a change of non-immigrant status (to journalist), but this application was never solved. Advised by friends informed of my work and problems with political police earlier in Yugoslavia, I requested political asylum. Yugoslavia broke up before I was called for an interview (a year and eight months later). So, the INS claimed it can't grant me an asylum from non-existing country. The case is still in proceedings, now the third year after the interview. INS have hard times finding a country to deport me to: I was born in Germany, but I am not automatically a citizen there, and German authorities specifically said that they would not give me asylum if I'd be coming from the U.S. Slovenia, on which passport I came here, is now and independent state requiring at least 10 years tenure as a resident in order to grant citizenship. I was a resident there for six months or so. I did not have any legal attachments to Croatia in time when I left, and before Croatia became independent and sovereign state. I don't see myself as a Croatian citizen. Yet the INS has a problem with that: they do not yet understand that I actually belong here.

I challenge the constitutionality of deportation itself. In preamble of the great American Constitution it is written that everybody is equal at birth and has inherent rights to freedom, property and pursuit of happiness. Now, what is the difference between me and the average American citizen? We look alike, we talk alike, we work similar jobs and pay taxes, we listen to similar music and enjoy similar movies, we eat similar shit, we pay rent every first in the month, and yet I have less rights than he does. Why? Only because our places of birth are different. Which is a clear example of unconstitutional discrimination against me because I am not born here. I even vote. But I don't have an American birth-certificate. As if I could chose! Well, the good news are that Pro-Lifers are dead wrong: your heart might be beating while you are in the womb, but you aint't alive, since you have no say, you are just another organ of your mother and she is the one who decides when and where to drop you out. My mom dropped me out in Germany, a country that does not recignize citizenship by birth. In her yuppie doctor selfishness she didn't think about the big picture and all the problems I'd have to go through in my life only because she didn't take one month vaccation in September 1964 and spent that month in let's say Tuscon, Arizona. The moment I got out of that dark slimy place (the womb) I heard nurses having troubles to pronounce my Croatian last name in German and I started crying, because I knew that I got screwed over at birth. It is not fair. It is not right. It is not just.