God Bless America

Letter to Editor

By Michael Strogov

In response to the anti-Russian stuff written on the Staten Island Advance web site:

http://www.silive.com/news/index.ssf/2010/12/many_russians_on_staten_island.html

I see liberals are once again showing their tolerance by personally attacking people they disagree with, so let me correct a few points.

1. I've never even heard of any plans for the Russian Community Center until reading the comments here.

2. I've been volunteering for Republican candidates since the first George Bush was President in the 80s.

3. My business is eligible to get government contracts, and yet I never received them, and operate strictly as a free market enterprise.

4. While it was true that many Russians received financial aid in the 90s, today the Russians are LESS likely to get government aid, MORE likely to own a business and pay MORE taxes on average than the general population. The stereotype of Russians getting food stamps en masse is outdated. Among young people - those in their 20s, 30s and 40s - it is almost unheard of. There are some exceptions, but these people today are just that - exceptions. Almost everyone who gets government help are retirees or (very) recent immigrants.

5. No fault scams are a Russian shame, but again most of those involved in these scams have been arrested. Let's keep in mind that the percentage of Russians who owned these no-fault mills has always been tiny, and none of them are involved in the Citizens Club.

At the same time, according to Wikipedia's section on "Russian-Americans", a 2002 Microsoft study found that Russian software engineers were responsible for 30% of the company's products. Even cursory knowledge of the Russian-American community would make you understand that we are thousands of times more likely to make to make money as computer programmers and other professionals than as scammers.

One of the founders of Google (Sergei Brin) is Russian, as is one of the founder of Yelp (Max Levchin).

To view some rare career welfare bum or no-fault scammer as representative of the Russian community is just as ridiculous as viewing Snooki and John Gotti as representative of the Italian community. Both communities, just as others, succeeded largely through hard work and education, and not because of an occasional criminal who stole money.

6. The reason Russian-Americans are leaning Republican is that they are not interested in Barack Obama's socialism-lite. We've seen policies like his, we know where they will lead and we are here to help stop the collapse of the adopted country we love, to prevent the outcome that we saw in the Soviet Union, and are presently seeing in Greece and every other deficit-spending, tax-wasting country.

Yes, believe it or not, we want to be involved in politics because we love this country as Americans, not because we are looking for some special benefit as Russians.

7. You might also be interested to learn that when Russian-language press, as well as most Russian-Americans, is using the word "we", they mean Americans, and not Russians. A couple generations ago, Russian immigrant Irving Berlin wrote the song "God Bless America." While some people in any community may be ungrateful, the overwhelming sentiment among Russian-Americans is very much in line with Irving Berlin's song.