I’m a CBCA — a Canadian Born Chinese American

No, I don’t like maple syrup. No, I don’t enjoy watching ice hockey. No, I’m not the nicest person you’ll ever meet. But yes, I am Canadian.

I’m a Canadian citizen who has been living in the U.S. for 12 years. (Under perfectly legal conditions, thank you for asking, Mr. Trump!) I watch fireworks every July 4th, I (sometimes) listen to country music, and I even have a favorite president (Abraham Lincoln).

Yet, despite my patriotic customs, I cannot be considered “fully American.” This is because I was born in Toronto, Canada, and only moved to the United States when I was 3.

You would think that after all these years, I would be an American citizen by now. But getting a U.S. citizenship is not as easy as it sounds.

It all started when my family applied for green cards.

Green cards are, like the name suggests, small, credit-card-shaped objects that hold a lot of power in many immigrants’ lives, allowing foreigners to live and work permanently in the U.S.

In order for us to receive green cards, my dad couldn’t change jobs during the waiting process. But in 2007, he did, so we started the process all over again.

Now you want to ask, “Wait, 2007? That was nine years ago! How does she STILL not have a citizenship?”

Well, the waiting process took a little while. And by a little, I mean seven whole years.

Family and employment quotas, extensive background checks and too many cases for too few judges all may have contributed to the wait.

But when we finally received those green cards in the mail in 2014, it marked a pretty significant moment in my life.

See, even though my family had applied for a green card, that didn’t mean we would be guaranteed them. In fact, according to the American Immigration Center, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services receives and process almost 6 million immigration applications from individuals. Every year, the USCIS only approves roughly 1 million of the applications — only 17 percent of the total applications.

So when the green cards were mailed to my family, it meant that we, out of the 6 million applicants that year, had received the privilege to wait another five years until we could officially be naturalized as American citizens. And that is where I am today, with three more years to go — whew!

By the time I become an American citizen, I will have graduated from high school, gone on to college and spent a total of 15 years in America.

So now, I want to take a few extra moments to appreciate the culture, the environment and the people I’m surrounded by. Because if my parents hadn’t been so determined, maybe I would like maple syrup. Maybe I would like watching ice hockey. Maybe I would be living back in Canada and not here in sunny California, drinking boba, eating In-n-Out, watching football games and being an American in every way except true citizenship.