I Wouldn't Have Believed Things Like This Do Happen...Until I Witnessed It Myself.
I have an older sister who has lived in Spain ever since meeting and marrying a Spanish national during her time at university there, and she flew into town last week for a visit that will last until after the holidays.
She is staying with my parents, and her son, my nephew, flew down from Syracuse University where he teaches to see his mother and visit with the rest of the family.
When I was over my folks having dinner with everyone on Saturday and catching up on things, I mentioned that I was going to go shopping on Sunday at Costco, and my sister asked if she could tag along, as she had never been to one, and would like to see what they have and see if she get some early holiday shopping done.
I said, sure, the more the merrier, and my nephew said that he wanted to go, too.
Anyway, we did some shopping, my sister and her son bought a bunch of stuff, I spent way more than I intended to (I do that every damn time I go to Costco!) and we proceeded to the checkout.
Now, when my sister and her son converse together, they automatically revert to speaking Catalan, which is the dialect of Valencia, where they live. As we were standing in line, my nephew asked his mother a question, and she answered in Catalan, discussing an item that he had picked out for his father back in Spain.
A woman standing in front of us in line turned briefly to look at us, then turned away. I thought nothing of it.
Until...
My sister asked me if I had any problems when I voted this past week, and I told her no, as I always either vote early or absentee, as I never know if my schedule would allow me to be home for voting day.
My nephew said that he was excited to get to vote for Barack Obama yet again, as he was very popular back in Spain, and this was the first time he did so on American soil. My sister said the same thing, she was so happy that she got to vote for someone that is making a difference in this country.
That made the woman standing in front of us whip her head around and ask, "What are you foreigners doing voting in our elections? Who gives people from Spain the right to vote in this country?"
I started to laugh. She glared at me. I asked my sister if she wanted to tell our new friend what the deal was, or should I?
My sister said to the woman, "Ma'am, no that it's any of your business, but I am an American citizen, and have been so longer than you've been alive. My son is also an American citizen, and as citizens living overseas we vote in every national election held in this country. And we vote Democratic every election, just as we vote the Socialist Party back home in Spain."
If looks were knives, we would have been sliced to ribbons.
It was a good thing her husband wasn't there with us, he was educated at Oxford and taught at Cambridge for a year or two, and speaks English with a notable British accent.
The poor woman would have blown a fuse.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Only commies and fellow-travelers learn other languages. 
I'm fluent in English ( 
) and American Sign Language. Being very visual and kinesthetic, ASL was easy to learn.
Spoken languages not so much!
wish I could have seen the circuits blow!!!! 
oh yeah, I forgot. I speak Greek too, but I can't demonstrate it right now--- cuz I am speechless!
I consider myself pretty smart, but I think I'll just go dig some ditches now.........
.. when you have nothing worth saying and there's nobody who wants to hear anyway.
After "schooling" the rude woman, your sister and nephew should have started talking about her in Spanish or the Catalan dialect (?).
I just love it. People like her are rude (she butt in your conversation!), ignorant (no knowledge of Americans abroad, probably a birther too since Hawaii is foreign!) and mean (her tone).
They deserve in-your-face-comeuppance. It was almost like: "Proceed, Governor!"
Your post doesn't make any sense. If you don't live in Wisconsin, you don't get to vote there. You register to vote wherever it is that you live; states don't offer citizenship. Citizenship is at the Federal level.
And U.S. citizenship doesn't expire, like milk left out on the counter. If you don't renounce your citizenship, or have it revoked through treasonous acts, then you possess it for life. I don't care how long she lives in Spain; if she is a U.S. citizen, she gets to vote in U.S. elections.
And no American is "shielded" from the consequences of their vote. Wherever in the world we live, we want to know that our country is in steady hands.
.... 
Unless an American citizen expressly renounces his/her citizenship or commits treasonous acts against the US, said citizenship can never be arbitrarily revoked. Permanent overseas residency does not constitute such a renunciation.
Holding dual nationality (because of parentage, marriage, naturalization, etc.) does not constitute even a tacit renunciation of said citizenship. Only serving in the military of a foreign entity could possibly entail the revocation of American citizenship.
Nowadays, property ownership has nothing to do with retaining one's citizenship or one's right to vote, as opposed to the early decades of the nation.
That said, it is undeniably much easier and faster for wealthy and landed foreigners to accede to US citizenship than for dirt-poor Latinos.
In order to vote legally in US federal elections, ex-patriot Americans need only contact the nearest American consulate in the country where they reside.
There, they will be provided with documentation and information on legally registering and voting by mail in the state of their last US residency or as a "citizen-at-large" in no particular state.
Several million US ex-patriots vote in US federal elections through this simple and expeditious process.
I am one of them. 
That statement is worthy of one of Mitt's most notorious pronouncements:
"I don't know what I said, but whatever I said, I stand by it!"
take for example, something else that I know almost nothing about - NASCAR racing. Yet because it is on the local news I know something about what happened yesterday. One racer deliberately crashed into another, and then after than there were various brawls between the racers and pit crews and such.
Now I am of the opinion that a racer should face an extra penalty for deliberately causing a crash. I don't believe I really need to know the rules of NASCAR in order to have that opinion. It is also nothing even close to a rebuttal of my opinon if somebody "argues" with me by saying
"you apparently do not know anything about the rules of NASCAR" and proceeds to explain that under the rules of NASCAR it is perfectly legal to cause a crash, etc., etc., etc.
You see - what the rule actually says is kinda irrelevant in a discussion of "what the rule SHOULD say".
And unfortunately, what seems to be stereotypically liberal is feeling the need to insult people who disagree with you. And also thinking that this represents either a rational argument or a civil discussion.
whose CEO supports Obama!
Some part of her money will likely end up going to elect Democrats in 2014 and 2016.
is NOT a stretch to presume this ignorant, ugly american was part of the 'new' minority.
Thank you very much.SATAN???? whatever.
the friendly ghost, lol. My response, depending on my mood, is 'vampire' or 'tired/bored', that sort of thing. 
ugly, ignorant american. Will we never be rid of this stupidity in the human race? I fear not unless we have a paradigm shift of massive proportions.
English was good enough for Jesus, it ought to be good enough for the rest of us."
OK, I've been told that Jesse Helms never actually said that. But he may as well have 
He didn't.
It was a Texas Governor in the 1920's.
Jesse Helms was not as bad as he became toward the end. He even voted for the NC School of the Arts... the "tippy-toe school".... the 1st state supported school for performing arts.... in the 1960's. NC used to be known as "the state of the arts". Now we are trying to be Mississippi! 
I speak Catalan, having lived in Barcelona with Catalans for a while, and it's different enough from Spanish so as not to be immediately intelligible to someone who only speaks Castilian ("Spanish"
. My Madrid friends who have no connection to Catalunya cannot follow conversations held only in Catalan without help.The right-wing woman must have either spent time in Catalunya herself, or else was rather well educated--rare enough with teabagger types.
who got sliced to ribbions . not your daughter at least but the intended victom
ps: for most of us , we are a ignorant country, present company excepted though
I get that as a citizen she and her son are entitled to everything that citizenship implies... but voting is administered by the state. Does an expat vote for school levies in a town in which (s)he hasn't lived for 30 years?
Although I've never lived in Canada, I am a Canadian citizen by birth (my mom was a Canadian citizen). Nevertheless, I would not expect to be able to vote for "their" prime minister without demonstrating residency.
Catalan is basically the same regional language, with minor more localized differences, inflection, emphasis, common slang usages, for instance.
My understanding is it can compare to the regional English dialects spoken in this country, with mostly geographical differences.
