What Does “Being American” Mean?

After hearing damning talk about immigration from Trump and his allies, it’s somewhat consoling to learn that we’ll be joined by 250 new citizens on Saturday, July 4. The event – the city’s 41^st annual July Fourth swearing-in – takes place at noon that day at the Seattle Center’s Fisher Pavilion. Judge David G. Estudillo, chief U.S. District Judge for Western Washington, will preside.

The 250 who will be pledging allegiance this year is a smaller number than in past years. Last year’s July 4^th event welcomed more than 500 new citizens from 79 countries. It is lamentably obvious that President Trump’s anti-immigrant policies have exacted a heavy toll. This is a price that, in the long run, all of us will end up paying.

As a nation, we actually profit from immigration in various ways. For starters, take the fiscal effects of immigration. The CATO Institute, a libertarian think tank, looked at immigration over three recent decades – a period from 1994-2023.  The institute discovered immigrants, both documented and undocumented, contributed far more in taxes (local and national) than they received. 

The study found that the economic benefit derived totaled $14.5 trillion dollars. Without that gain, the nation’s public debt would be twice the size of our Gross National Product (GNP). Fact is, one could conclude that immigrants have been subsidizing the U.S. government. This counters Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief staff, who claims “immigrants are sucking us dry.”

In addition to fiscal gains, immigrants bring us other benefits as well: from innovative ideas to new energy and values. Studies undertaken by the Economic Policy Institute and George Bush Institute found that immigration has been a net source of strength. They cited studies showing that 44 percent of this nation’s medical scientists and 42 percent of our software developers are foreign born. It’s astonishing how many of this nation’s Nobel Prize winners came here from other countries. 

Take the 2023 Nobel Prize for Medicine won by Dr. Katalin Kariko, who was born in Hungary and is credited with discoveries enabling development of effective, mRNA vaccine against COVID19. Or consider Dr. Omar Yaghi who won the 2025 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his development of metal-organic frameworks. The University of California Berkeley professor grew up in a Palestinian family in Amman, Jordan. Over the years, one-third of all U.S. Nobelists have been foreign born.

Although immigrants have many different reasons for coming here, most are in search of independence and opportunity; most are seeking to be able to participate in political and civic life unencumbered.

What they’re looking for in American political culture can be found in such texts as the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, the values found in Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

Looking back, we would be remiss not to acknowledge that, when the U.S. was founded 250 years ago, many Americans were excluded from the new nation’s political life. Among them were women, Native Americans, Blacks and Asia Americans. They have had to push and win their right to vote and to fully participate. 

This leaves us looking at a puzzling question: What does “being American” mean? And has the definition been changing over time? When researching that question, it seems that “being American” means something unique to each of the millions of people who call this nation home.

A Stanford University study looked at that very question through a program that polled dozens of students from ethnically mixed backgrounds about what “being American” means to them. Their answers covered a broad number of viewpoints. One California student took a long view, saying, “America is a land of opportunity; in this country, we’re not guaranteed success, but we’re provided the opportunity to try.” 

A student from Hawaii proclaimed, “Being American means being free. I’m free to learn and celebrate other cultures, I am free to express myself through my physical appearance and my words.  I’m free to speak another language and free to take advantage of opportunities.”

Another California student said that “being American means we must embrace our differences and make America a safe and ideal place for everyone now and in the future.”

The students varied widely in their approach to the issue of being American. Some had positive views; but others were concerned about forces that separate us. One student said, “America is not perfect” but added that “we’re at a crossroads and it’s necessary to band together and work to make progress, not regress to a narrower view.” 

As I watched the June 19 opening of the Obama presidential library in Chicago, I kept thinking about the Stanford students’ views of “being American.”  Speeches marking the Obama library opening also helped answer the question of what being American means and so do the words carved atop the library building, words taken from President Obama’s speech spoken at the 50^th anniversary of the Selma-Montgomery marches:

“You are America, unrestrained by habit and convention, unencumbered by what is, ready to seize what ought to be. For everywhere in this country, there are steps to be taken, there is new ground to cover, there are more bridges to be crossed. America is not the project of any one person. The single most powerful word in our democracy is the word ‘We.’ ‘We the people.’ ‘We shall overcome.’ ‘Yes we can.’ That word is owned by no one. It belongs to everyone. Oh what a glorious task we are given to continually try to improve this great nation of ours.”