I feel American too, but I feel more Polish. I speak Polish because I studied at St Stanislaus Kostka Saturday school. I listen to Polish music: Zenek Martyniuk, Marcin Miller. These are songs that the Polish countryside loves.

First, my grandfather came, then his brother, and then in 1991, my dad. Mo m joined later. Dad was an engine driver in Poland, driving trains, and Mom was studying.

Dad somehow managed to get papers. He did it, I don’t know exactly how, maybe my grandfather helped. Dad became a truck driver and drove all over the country. He would leave on Monday and come back on Thursday. He worked like an ox. Mum worked in a shop, it was a Payless, I think.

My parents lived in poor conditions, cockroaches roamed all over the flat. In 1997 it turned out that mom was pregnant, and things needed to change. Two years later, my parents borrowed money from whoever they could and bought a house. We were very lucky, it’s worth a lot now.

Dad worked hard. Here and then in Poland, where he bought a plot of land. We used to go on vacation to Poland and help him with farming and things. Thanks to these trips, I managed to spend some time with Dad and talk more.

On Christmas Eve in 2016, we went to Pennsylvania to visit my Mom’s sister. We shared an „oplatek” Dad ate his borscht, then said he had a headache, fell over, and died. Heart attack. We went back to Greenpoint without Dad. I was 19 years old. Mom was in shock, but she had to cope and is now living well.

Grandpa loves America and feels very American. He’s 95 years old and is constantly shuttling between Nowa Huta in Krakow and Greenpoint. We tell him: Grandpa, rest already, don’t get tired. And he misses Poland and America. His brother made a career here. First, he married quite a rich girl. Then in the 1970s, he borrowed another 100,000 dollars, with which he bought two houses. He started renting them out, then bought more. Today he has a hundred apartments.

I feel American too, but I feel more Polish. I speak Polish because I studied at St Stanislaus Kostka Saturday school. I listen to Polish music: Zenek Martyniuk, Marcin Miller. These are songs that the Polish countryside loves.

I am proud of who I am, I spend every summer in Poland. I like the Polish diligence. and striving for a goal. Look at Greenpoint and how the living standards have gone up. Poles are prosperous: it’s not just asbestos and cleaning. I like the Polish sense of humor and laid-back attitude.

Do you need an example? Try this: I remember playing basketball with older friends in Kołobrzeg. Someone took out a vodka or beer and treated everyone. I was 14, but the guy handed me a bottle and said: generally, you can’t drink alcohol, but on the court, you can. In the States, no one would allow themselves to do that.

I’ve always dreamed of becoming a pilot, but I want to make money first. I went into accountancy.  I want to buy and rent houses and apartments. I started with the Dominican Republic, which I know because we used to go there on holiday. My plan is to stop working after 45, do a pilot’s course, and start flying.

I have dual citizenship, I vote in America and Poland. I know some people might think I shouldn’t vote in Poland. But I have a flat there and I spend a lot of time there. I feel that I should help Poland. I support the right wing, both in the States and in Poland. I like the idea of a nation. I would like to see more and more real Poles and real Americans in the world.

I know that I am a child of immigrants and that the right wing in America has a problem that there are too many migrants.

I believe that migration has different faces.

There are those who come to take advantage of the system. They don’t learn the American language and culture. There are many like that: they come across the border, have babies and get care right away. Such people should not be in this country. It’s not fair to hard-working Americans. I know the blue states love all migrants, but it’s the red states that have to deal with them because the red states have the most migrants.

The right should win so the country doesn’t collapse. It needs to improve the law. I’ll give an example: in many states, a thief can walk into a shop, take things up to $900, and face no consequences. Maybe only some minimal penalty. This is sick.  You punch a policeman, snatch a woman’s purse, and in an hour, you’re out again.

Or the legalization of weed: it’s sick that it stinks all over New York.

It’s starting to get dangerous. I think everyone should have access to guns in New York. Then the criminals would just be scared. I believe that guns are not a threat to honest people. Millions of people have guns in the United States, you don’t hear them killing each other every day.

The right-wing needs to heal America. I think transgender is a disease, and people need to be cured of it, not affirmed.  It can’t be that you change the gender of five or six-year-old children.  LGBT people are becoming violent: did you hear about the man being taken to the Supreme Court because he refused to bake a cake for an LGBT couple? I wish LGBT people wouldn’t be so aggressive and let people live.

If given the opportunity, I will vote for Trump. This man is needed by America because he says out loud what others are afraid to say. This country needs him like oxygen.