A friend from Echmiadzin explained why he is attempting to obtain a Green Card: “Injustice, and corruption,” he said. “Seeing what’s going on here has me really disappointed. Bribery is on the increase, in spite of their preaching that they’re battling it. Imagine, the president telling the police they should battle harder against bribery and corruption in general. A normal policeman should be doing that anyway. If I told you about the court cases I’ve heard about recently, the buying off of judges, you’d be in shock. Why is it like that here? I blame the Soviet Union and what it did to our people. Armenians changed from a hardworking people to one who tries to get by doing as little as possible. The Soviet system encouraged this. If one was a Communist party member, he could go places, whether in politics or the arts. Party member or not, people tried to get by doing as little as possible. The hardworking individual saw that his neighbor did nothing but lived as well as he did or better. And this mentality lives on today. I don’t know if it will ever change. I’m not worried so much about myself, but I don’t want my children to grow up here. You know about the tens of thousands of Hayastantsis in prison in Los Angeles and across Europe. Why is this? They want everything now, on the spot, without working or struggling. They want to live as well as their friends and neighbors, not in the future, but right now. So what do they do, steal credit cards, print credit cards, simple thievery, drugs, gangs, you name it, any way to avoid work…like working for a living is something to be ashamed of. Remember this: you were brought up in the US, thinking that by your work, your sweat, you could get ahead. We weren’t brought up that way.”