Now that I have been living here for two years I am finally starting to have enough distance from the Old Country that I can surf Romanian forums or even (gasp!) contribute to them. I've been spending a lot of time on a couple of immigration forums over the past couple months; the posters are either living here or wanting to come here. There are a lot of very emotional stories. And the people are more different from each other than I would have expected.
Most of the posters either have come here through marriage or are about to do so. They are mostly female. Some of them are very Romanian-housewife-y, complaining about everything that is unlike back home, from credit cards to dishwashers to people smiling as a matter of course (that is actually one of the chief complaints I've heard from Romanians living or visiting abroad; it makes me wonder about the pshychological makeup of a people that is made uneasy by courtesy). Some of them are independent and enterprising, having gotten jobs or gone back to school the first chance they had. Unsurprisingly, the latter group enjoys being here much more than the former.
Another group of posters have come here through employment. They tend to be well-adjusted but somewhat reserved. It is as if their work were their main tie to the US, with Romania predominating in their private life.
Yet another group has come here illegally. Since I think that immigration regulations are bullcrap and I don't find that abiding by the law makes one a decent person, I was surprised to find that most of the illegal immigrants don't seem to be very well-rounded. It is true that the stress of living illegally influences one in negative ways, but most of these posters had bad grammar (the worst of the forum groups), were more likely to use swear words and less likely to have a college degree. This means that 1. people with college degrees are more likely to find (residency-related) jobs andpositions here and 2. people with college degrees have good enough jobs and positions back home and are, therefore, less inclined to leave.
Differences between groups aside, I was surprised by how gracefully some of the posters seem to juggle being both American and Romanian. One of the best exchanges involved discussing the merits of the favorite football teams in great detail, and in Romanian!