Travel Blog

Last week Monika said that, arriving into Houston from Paris, she had received a warm "welcome back" from the immigration officer.

A few months earlier I had flown into Dallas from Tokyo and received the same friendly greeting. It always delights me. It lends a personal note to an increasingly stringent bureaucracy and, when "back" is replaced by "home" (as it often is in Miami) it evokes a feeling of unity (almost family).

But I was a little surprised to hear that Monika had received the same greeting. Though she travels with an American passport - having lived in the States for over a decade and become a citizen - she was born and currently resides in Warsaw. She and her husband returned to their homeland after the changes in 1990.

And though she loves this country, and hopes to retire here, I think of her as Polish, and assume that other Americans who meet her do too. Which, the more I thought about it, made the immigration officer's welcome all the more impressive. He (or she) accepted Monika as an American - and entitled to the same cordiality that Americans get - because she carried an American passport, regardless of the way she dressed, or spoke, or even chose to live (though this was probably not evident). It was an example, at a busy airport in the middle of the country, of our unfailing propensity to open our doors, and hearts, to the world.

Thinking about it further, I decided that Monika was more deserving of a "welcome back" than I was. I had merely been born an American; she had chosen to become one.