Independence Day is fast approaching and I’ve been thinking about what it means to be an American. I have a somewhat unique perspective. My direct ancestor, an Englishman, settled in Virginia in the 1600s. Over the following generations, his descendants worked their way through North Carolina, Tennessee, and then – before it was even a state – Texas. That makes four-hundred years of my family in America, building a nation.
But my parents took a job in Saudi Arabia so I was raised overseas as an American expatriate. In all our time there, we remained unquestionably American; I was educated in American schools and our explicitly temporary presence was always tied to our employment. The countries of the Arabian Gulf have strict immigration requirements and the vast majority of expat workers do not qualify for citizenship. From a global perspective, this is not that unusual; it is how nations maintain their cohesive cultural identities.
My years as an American abroad have given me a unique vantage point on the varied global norms around nationhood, belonging, and culture - and from that perspective I write the following essay to urge my fellow Americans to remember our nation as the priceless inheritance it truly is.
A Homeland, not a Hypothesis
America was founded by English settlers who saw themselves not as mere revolutionaries but as a people establishing a new homeland rooted in their legal, cultural, and religious traditions. The Founding Fathers were of British descent and they drew from English common law, the Magna Carta, and the parliamentary system to craft a government that reflected their inherited ways of governance and social order. Founding Father John Jay, in Federalist No. 2, described Americans as “a united people” with the same ancestors, the same language, the same religion, and similar manners and customs.
As America grew it remained a product of the Anglo-American world, with the earliest waves of European settlers assimilating into the English-speaking framework rather than dramatically reshaping it. The Founding Fathers were cautious about large-scale immigration and the blending of early European settler groups happened under vastly different circumstances than those we have today. For generations, policymakers understood that America could not absorb unlimited numbers of immigrants without being fundamentally altered. Even this cautious approach of accepting limited amounts of settlers from relatively similar European backgrounds caused problems and at times immigration was halted altogether so assimilation could take place.
Crucially, saying that America requires assimilation to certain ideas (such as the rule of law, constitutional order, individual rights, etc.) does not mean America is merely an idea. Every nation in the world can be described with reference to ideas, but no serious person would claim that France or Japan, for example, are just ideas. They are cultures, peoples, histories, places. The same is true of America. Yes, there are American ideals but they are held by a nation, not in a vacuum.
The 1965 Shift
This gradual and assimilationist paradigm of immigration was dismantled by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which overturned the previous quota-based system in favor of mass immigration from non-European countries. Framed as a corrective for past “discrimination,” this act reshaped the nation in unprecedented ways. From this point on, the idea of America as a homeland for a specific people was replaced by the myth of America as a “proposition nation,” where belonging was defined not by heritage or cultural ties but by an abstract commitment to American values.
This new approach to immigration and identity emerged amidst a post-World War II effort by the Western establishment to undo traditional bonds in the name of preventing future conflict. The ruling class had come to believe that strong national identities and traditional values led to conflict, so they sought to erode them by promoting a new ethos that celebrated cosmopolitan rootlessness over strong national sentiment. This ideological shift taught Americans to see their own displacement as progress and their national inheritance as something to be relinquished rather than defended.
This led to unprecedented rates of immigration to many Western nations, turning immigration into a dehumanizing system that benefits the rich, degrades societies, and exploits human beings. Mass immigration lowers wages, raises rents, overburdens social services, erodes cultural cohesion, and makes people lonelier, more isolated, and less civically engaged. Those who support it under the mistaken belief that it is compassionate are the unwitting cheerleaders of a system that dehumanizes people while impoverishing and destabilizing society.
By the late 20th century, in America the concept of assimilation was largely abandoned, replaced by the enforced celebration of multiculturalism and identity politics. Today, some of the very people entrusted with our nation’s governance no longer see it as a distinct homeland to protect but as a battleground for competing foreign interests. Bureaucrats and judges, often with no ancestral connection to the country they now preside over, wield power to reshape its policies and undermine its founding character. Recently, Eklas Ahmed, a Sudanese immigrant who works for Maine Governor Mills’ Office of New Americans, said in an interview that she fights for Sudan in all her capacity and her advice to new immigrants is to hold on to their culture and that “there is no reason to assimilate.”
And so the institutions meant to serve the American people are bent to the will of those who see the country as an economic zone for personal advancement rather than a homeland to preserve.
What it Means to Belong
Most nations recognize that merely being born on their soil does not automatically confer the bonds necessary for true belonging. Many countries strictly limit immigration, often requiring decades of residence before granting the privilege of naturalization. And even then naturalized citizens often face safeguards, such as not being immediately eligible to hold government office or influence lawmaking.
In all my years living in various countries overseas, it would never occur to me to publicly campaign to change them. It’s just plain tacky - like being invited into someone’s home and then complaining about their decor. The idea that after only a short time in a place someone could be qualified to run for office and claim the insight needed to steer the course of a nation is, frankly, absurd. Safeguards to prevent such a scenario ensure that a nation remains rooted in the people who built it, rather than becoming a hollowed-out economic zone where citizenship is just a bureaucratic formality.
Most nations also recognized that deep cultural bonds cannot be manufactured through education alone. While proper schooling can provide historical knowledge, it cannot replace the inherited sense of identity that comes from generations of shared struggle and tradition, of seeing oneself and one’s forebears woven into the very fabric of a nation. And in a country like America, where much of the current school system teaches that the nation’s history is a litany of oppression and its founding ideals little more than corrosive evils, the possibility is even more remote.
No other country welcomes more immigrants than America does and few do more to celebrate their contributions. The American stance is so radical that we automatically confer citizenship on children born to illegal immigrants. Many Americans have such high esteem for foreigners that we assume they must be innately imbued with our values, like our respect for personal freedom, desire for a high trust society, and our sense of civic duty - but these assumptions are disrespectful to immigrants. True respect means acknowledging that people are shaped by the worldviews of their homelands. As much as we believe in meritocracy, freedom, and fair play, we must acknowledge that not all cultures see these as ideals to strive for. A course on American civics is not going to erase a person’s sense of history or dissolve the natural tendency to prioritize one’s own way of life.
Today, America’s foreign-born population has reached a record 47.8 million people. Immigrants now account for 14.3% of the US population, roughly triple what it was just fifty years ago. When we welcome immigrants at this scale assimilation becomes difficult and we must understand that we are no longer helping people, we are uprooting them. People have a right to feel connected to their own culture and to live within a society that reflects their values and history.
Immigration, if done with genuine national interest in mind, can be a force for good. Throughout America’s history there have been immigrants who have assimilated with pride and gone on to be some of our greatest Americans. This was possible because immigration was at sustainable levels and because America believed in itself and encouraged immigrants to do the same. Without that expectation, immigration is no longer a force for good but a source of division that erodes what made America worth coming to in the first place.
Our Loss or Our Legacy
Americans are awakening to the reality that every political debate is downstream of a fundamental question: is America a nation or a notion?
If it is a nation then we must face the truth that if the people of a nation are replaced, the nation is no more. History shows that when the founding population of a nation dwindles, the institutions, values, and traditions that defined it rarely survive. Those who deny America’s origins as a homeland for a distinct people are attempting to insinuate that Americans today have no right to limit immigration. But Americans must recognize that our current system of immigration is an experiment driven by extremist ideology disguised as moral progress, which ultimately exploits the vulnerable in service of the rich. If we want to preserve America, we must drop the demeaning pretense of seeing people as replaceable units of economic production and start seeing them as the very foundation upon which a nation rises or falls.
Our American ancestors did not discover a nation, they built one. They carved a civilization from a vast wilderness, built institutions that fostered individual liberty, and laid the foundations of a high-trust society where freedom could flourish. These things did not arise by accident, nor are they universal values shared by all people; they are the hard-won result of generations of shared struggle, sacrifice, and a bold vision of a better future.
We cannot allow our foundations to be undermined by those who seek to transform our land into a borderless economic zone where history and heritage are disposable. The greatness of America is not a commodity to be handed over to the world, it is our legacy to defend, cherish, and preserve. America is not a mere notion, it is our inheritance, and it is time we start treating it as such. If we do not stand up for her now we may never have the chance again.
Further Reading:
Love Thy Neighbor: A Christian Response to Mass Immigration
Real Diversity Needs Borders: I Celebrate Cultural Exchange - That’s Why I Oppose Mass Immigration
Toward a Moral Imagination of Home: Everyone is an Expatriate Now