Being American isn’t a nationality. It’s a state of being.
I am the child of an immigrant. I am a first-generation Mexican-American. My family tree also extends back to the American Revolution, and my grandfather is a World War II veteran. My dad’s side of the family is as American as apple pie.
I was born in the United States, where I lived until elementary school. From 3rd grade until just before high school I lived in Mexico. Long enough for me to feel culturally Mexican, and long enough for me to feel like an immigrant in my own country. For the first couple years after I returned to America, I didn’t understand why Seinfield was so funny.
This is the dichotomy I grew up in.
I also happened to grow up mostly near the border, in communities that were rife with illegal immigration. People may contest this (and they will), but all I saw in those communities were people I saw pursuing the American dream, as those who landed on Plymouth Rock thought they were doing, or the Irish escaping the famines, or the Japanese and Chinese who came to the United States to work. They came to America not because they were looking for the American Spirit; they came to America because they already had it.
I’ve seen many illegal immigrants who I would consider better Americans than some citizens. There has been at least one that wanted to defend America so badly she used her aunt’s identity to enlist after 9/11 so she could defend a country she felt was hers, even if the country didn’t feel she was theirs.
Where you were born does not make you American. Ethnicity does not make you American. Being American makes you American.
We are a nation of immigrants. Immigration and the American Dream have, for many years, been one and the same.
Please stop looking at partisan politics and start looking at people, and start looking at ourselves and asking ourselves what kind of nation we want to be.
I want to be the kind of nation where we recognize Americans, not because they were born here or happened to have U.S.-born parents, but for having the quality of being American. I hope you do, too.
