Earlier this month, I achieved something I’ve been dreaming of since I was a little girl: I became an American citizen. It was one of the best moments of my life. But what moved me wasn’t only the formalization of something I had long felt in my heart and my mind; it was how my fellow Americans reacted to the news of my naturalization.
Upon learning about my new citizenship, every American I encountered welcomed me to America. It reminded me that, despite the collectivistic rhetoric around immigration and the anti-immigrant policies that abound, many Americans remain welcoming of immigrants at an individual level.
In my eight years living here, my dealings with Americans have always been positive and I’ve always felt welcome—despite having to navigate a tortuous immigration system (which I don’t think reflects the values of most Americans). This came into sharper focus for me in the hours after my naturalization.
I flew to Boston after my oath ceremony to give a talk at a conference. Over that weekend, I received countless congratulations, even from strangers who learned about my naturalization through casual conversation. From the cashier at the airport to TSA agents to fellow passengers, each person was genuinely glad to hear that I, a stranger, had become an American earlier that day. Two days later, when I mentioned my fresh citizenship onstage during my talk, the room broke into applause. By Sunday night I’d shaken more hands than I could count, all of them welcoming me home. I’m still answering online messages three weeks later.
I’ve been warmly greeted by hundreds of Americans in the last three weeks, and I know that to be the case for other newcomers too. But headlines of crackdowns, mass deportations and terminations of status for legal immigrants try to send the message that Americans don’t want immigration. Donald Trump ran on a platform of “mass deportations” that admittedly included peaceful immigrants, and that vowed to reduce legal immigration as well.
How come Americans simultaneously welcome immigrants and elect politicians who want to kick them out or stop them from coming?
Part of the reason is that the Biden administration created truly chaotic conditions at the border, which many Americans rejected. But, importantly, many Americans have historically turned against immigration when they’ve fallen prey to collectivistic discourses that villainize and scapegoat immigrants—such as in the 1800s with the Irish and the Chinese, and the early 1900s with Eastern Europeans. When immigrants are painted as a homogenous group that is criminal, savage, and irredeemably unassimilable, instead of individuals who make their own choices, many Americans accept that collectivization and respond with tribalism. They begin thinking of immigration as “us vs. them,” as if every single newcomer were determined to be a threat. Donald Trump largely succeeded in collectivizing immigrants and stoking fear by accusing them of being rapists, criminals, and barbarians.
On the other hand, when Americans actually meet an immigrant, their perspective changes. They often see a person who came here to build a life in freedom (as most do), and don’t pretend like they have a right to stop them, nor want to. They see someone who doesn’t fit the description of a criminal or a savage that politicians have pushed. They are largely accepting of anyone coming here to work and be free. They rightly treat a person’s place of origin as non-essential—they simply see an individual who they can associate with, trade with, or even love.
I won’t collectivize Americans myself and claim that all of them, invariably, succumb to collectivism. Many of them do not. Nor is every American friendly to foreigners. Still, virtually everyone I’ve met has been so to me and others I know.
This is partly because Americans tend to have the view that America is an idea that many people can adopt, regardless of where they were born. This is distinctive to America and it’s part of what has led to it becoming the greatest nation on Earth. As Ronald Reagan put it once: “You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk, or a Japanese. But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American.”
To keep this idea alive, politicians across the ideological spectrum should stop playing to the worst in Americans and quit the tribalistic fearmongering. And Americans should stop embracing that rhetoric. Recent polls suggest that many Americans may be already doing this work—despite the Trump administration’s crackdown, almost 79% of Americans in the polls consider immigration to be “a good thing for the country.”
I am eternally grateful to my fellow Americans for providing such a warm welcome for me. I hope they’ll join me in advocating for a system that welcomes more peaceful people who, like me, are here to build a life in the freedom that only America can afford.
Agustina Vergara Cid is a Young Voices Contributor. You can follow her on X at @agustinavcid