Joshua Lawson of the Federalist discusses his new American citizenship.
It was the fulfillment of a decades-long dream and is, so far, my happiest memory apart from my wedding day. But if you listen to the corporate media or watch the majority of entertainment produced today, my decision to leave Canada to become an American makes no sense. According to America’s foes, I should have stayed in a country that leftists threaten to emigrate to whenever a Republican wins the White House.
Much of the present narrative is that America is not just an imperfect country, like all the others, but an evil place. We’re told by ahistorical efforts like The New York Times’s 1619 Project, and by the neo-Marxist Black Lives Matter movement that the United States is an irredeemably unfair and wicked nation. Sadly, many Americans are giving into this corrosive narrative. …
… The most recent figures from the Department of Homeland Security show 761,901 persons from more than 200 countries from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe became naturalized U.S. citizens in 2018. The UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs lists the number of Americans who were first-generation immigrants at more than 50,660,000, the highest of any country on earth. According to Gallup, the United States remains the number one destination for immigrants in the world, with an incredible 158 million expressing the desire to move to America if they could.
So, to those who disparage America: Why do so many risk imprisonment attempting to live illegally in a place so rotten? Or, why do so many spend decades and thousands of dollars to try to legally join an “unfair” or “racist” country? I can’t speak to the exact individual motivations of any immigrant other than myself, by I’m confident millions of people across the globe want a better life in America because it is an exceptional nation built on an idea that has been a beacon of hope for centuries.