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Originally Posted by rs232c
This phrase has confused me for years. I had always believed that we were a nation of citizens not of immigrants.
As for myself I am a sixth generation American and my siblings children the seventh. At what point do we become citizens and no longer immigrants?
I can't see it to mean 'America is a nation built by immigrants' because I recall the study that said 83% of our country was built by citizens and 14% non-citizens.
I have a problem understanding that 'America is a nation that was born of immigrants, therefore we have always come from immigrants, and will always be of immigrants', because the same would be true for the Indian population, which I understand still have soverign nations and are all citizens at birth now anyway.
And last it certainly doesn't make any sense to me to be a citizen in a nation of immigrants, that just doesn't seem to mean anything at all. In my understanding it is valid to be a citizen and 'used to be an immigrant' in a nation of citizens, but not both concurrently.
In my pea-sized brain the only thing that does make sense to me is that it is a policitally correct phrase that defines the status of immigrant and the status of citizenship to be one in the same and indistingusihable.
Are they?
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You pose an interesting question. The beginnings of every nation do not obligate that nation to forever remain as it was in its inception. Austrialia was a penal colony. It began as a nation of criminals. Should Australia now be obligated to remain a penal colony for the world's worst criminals? Of course not. To even think such a thing is absurd.
The United States was NEVER a nation of immigrants. It was always a nation of AMERICANS. Americans who came here from all nations and all walks of life but who shared one thing in common, to be an AMERICAN. When those Americans came here it was with one mind. To shed old loyalties and embrace fully the American condition. It was easy for them to put aside their own nationality. They came intending to do just that.