I hear friends and acquaintances from the left to the right threatening to leave America if the “Wrong” guy is elected. I hear people complaining about our many problems and challenges. The world seems (as always) to be going to hell, and people think that they can escape this hellscape by running away.

Our impulse to flee is very “First World.” In the Third World, many are risking and often losing their lives trying to get here. Some Americans who are “Comfortable” fantasize about breaking out, while the uncomfortable of the rest of the world fantasize about breaking in.
Oh, the irony is that Americans may want to escape because of immigration and imagine becoming immigrants somewhere else. Even if most will never move, where would they go that is better, fairer, and safer? They might go somewhere that is less free, less democratic, and less safe, but as foreigners, that country’s problems wouldn’t belong to them.

As an American, I’m embarrassed when we act foolishly, brutally, or corruptly. However, when living abroad, as I have, their problems are not really mine. Their lack of equal protection, economic fairness, and systemic corruption may bother me, but they don’t really define me because it isn’t “my country.” I loved my two years in Tunisia, but the heavy hand of its one-party rule and not-so-secret Secret Police were not my problems. I enjoyed two sabbaticals in France, but French political contradictions weren’t my concern. I’ve visited Mexico more than 25 times in the last 25 years, and I love it—particularly Puerto Vallarta. I know of the criminal violence, the political violence, and the cartels. It’s all really a shame, but it isn’t my shame.

Would moving to Canada, Mexico, France, Costa Rica, or Portugal (very trendy right now) solve anything? Maybe the social democratic paradise of Scandinavia? They’ve cut their social safety net and are struggling with violence and immigrants.

Joe Louis said of a quicker boxing opponent “He can run but he can’t hide.” In the 60s when protestors were told “America, love it or leave it,” we responded, “Hell no! If you love it, don’t leave it, fix it.”

Yes, we have problems with corruption and violence. We have political polarization and legislative dysfunction. We have terrible income inequality, and our immigration system is broken. We are very imperfect, but we should ask why we are still a magnet for the tired, the poor, and people who are our fellow human beings and not “wretched refuse?” We mustn’t deny what we are doing wrong, but we should affirm what we’re doing right.

In 1776, people risked “their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor” to create this nation. Today, people worldwide still take these risks to come here. Are they wrong, or are we still what my Yiddish-speaking ancestors called “A Goldena Medina,” a Golden City, a “Shining City on a Hill?”
What do they see that we miss? Most have seen our TV shows and movies. They know we have great cities and great problems. They see our violence, both fictional and real, and still, they dream, they pack, they come. They don’t believe that this is paradise. In some ways, they know better than we because they’re not measuring us against an ideal but their own reality.

We get depressed by our news, by the constant sense of danger, violence, and failure. The news, we know, is the plane that crashes, not the millions that land safely. Violence is real and tragic but pales in comparison with many other nations from which people flee.

What are we doing so right, if still imperfectly? As strange as this may seem, we welcome and assimilate immigrants from all over the world far better than any other nation. Yes, it’s true that every wave of immigrants has been met with suspicion, fear, and discrimination. Each wave has generated racism—even when the idea of race wasn’t germane. Anti-Polish, Irish, and Italian animus weren’t technically racist, but for the immigrants, that was a distinction without a difference. The same has been true for Jews, whether in the 19th Century, 1939, or today. Hispanics still are subject to racist xenophobia, as are Asian and Pacific Islanders. The anti-Black sentiment is a hardy perennial that we barely bother to deny or hide.

And yet…each wave has run this hateful gauntlet of rejection, stereotyping, and persecution, and still, the second generation has started to assimilate and become Americans. Often, their assimilation found more resistance from their own families than from the already Americanized children of earlier immigrants. Their families were often not happy about them giving up the language, customs, and religious associations that they held.

Still, in a generation or two, they spoke English and dated people of whom their parents didn’t approve because of ethnicity, religion, or culture. What was our American magic for making foreigners into Americans? Free Secular Public Education. We put kids together in classrooms where their ethnicities, religions, and cultures were mixed together. Sure, there was resistance to the integration of races, particularly of African Americans. There were ethnically based gangs and tribalism, but that too seemed to even out after another generation of experiencing each other as people and not one-dimensional stereotypes.

No, we have not ended racism or xenophobia. Immigrants from largely “non-WASP” countries still run the traditional gauntlet, but they too will become “real Americans,” as have previous waves.

So, let’s give ourselves some credit for what we do pretty well. Let’s tell the stories of the planes that land. On immigration and assimilation, we have not “stuck the landing” and first contact can be jolting. We often get it wrong at the start of each wave, but eventually, we get it right. We leave our ghettos, our Little Italy, Arabias, Armenias, Japans, and Chinatowns. We mix. We mate. We sometimes marry. We become real Americans.

Ironically, this sometimes means that we look at the next group of immigrants as an invasion. But we’ll get over it because that’s what we do, and that’s why they continue to come. They risk everything to join us, not to invade us but to become us.