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Now, as we wrap up our five-week trip, I invite you to describe what you think it means to be American.
It's a difficult question. "Productive" is a word I've heard from many of the people we've met, but they also said it's more than that. Personally, as a correspondent, I've learned to identify Americans by sight and sound: They tend to talk and laugh louder, tell their stories more freely, and to walk with purpose - even when heading in the wrong direction.

Feel free to highlight a story or observation that clarifies what being American means to you in the comments section of this article. (iPhone and iPad app users can leave comments here.) I will highlight a selection of your responses in our final installment of The Way North.

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Now, as we wrap up our five-week trip, I invite you to describe what you think it means to be American. It's a difficult question. "Productive" is a word I've heard from many of the people we've met, but they also said it's more than that.

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Dr. David J. Skorton: Hello and welcome to Smithsonian's Second Opinion, where we convene conversations of importance to the country. I'm David Skorton, Secretary of the Smithsonian.

One of the defining metaphors of the United States has been that our country is a "melting pot" of immigrants from around the globe. But this powerful ideal also coexists alongside an anti-immigration sentiment that has persisted throughout our nation's history.

Many new populations have come to America over the centuries: Some came in pursuit of a more prosperous life; some came in search of protection from religious, ethnic, or political persecution. Others were brought across the Atlantic against their will. And some Americans' ancestors were here long before the first Europeans arrived.

In spite of these differences in origin, we all grapple with the concept of what being a "nation of immigrants" entails, as each incoming community has contributed its respective heritage and culture to American society. And we celebrate that diversity today in our foods, our arts, our sciences, our entrepreneurship, our politics, and our faiths. But we also cherish the notion of a shared American identity that transcends our individual differences.

Sometime people see these two different perspectives as a source of friction -- but others see these as the core of America's great strength.

In this edition of "Second Opinion" we will discuss the role that immigrants play in 21st century America. How do our country's immigrants contribute to the nation as a whole today? What may be different in these times versus the past? What is gained and what is lost when immigrants come to America and when they shed their heritage and become "American"?

Ultimately, we are grappling with the question of what it means to be an American in the 21st century.

Today I'm thrilled to be joined by a terrific panel of people who bring a lot of expertise, experience, and insights to the question of what it means to be an American. I'm going to introduce them to you starting from my left to your right, beginning with Jeremy Robbins. Jeremy is the executive director of the New American Economy, a bipartisan coalition of more than 500 CEOs and mayors, making the economic case for immigration reform. Jeremy previously worked as a policy advisor and special counsel in the office of New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, a judicial law clerk to the honorable Robert Sack of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, a Robert L. Bernstein international human rights fellow working on prisoners' rights issues in Argentina, and a litigation associate at WilmerHale in Boston.

To Jeremy's right is Ana Rosa Quintana. Ana is a policy analyst for Latin America and the Western Hemisphere at the Heritage Foundation. She leads the foundation's efforts in U.S. policy toward Latin America. The portfolio concentrates largely on Central America, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, and Venezuela. She has authored numerous policy studies and in addition to writing policy papers Quintana's articles have appeared in Fox News, Real Clear World, The National Interest, and The Federalist. Her work has been cited in the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Bloomberg Business, The Guardian, and Deutsche Welle.

To my immediate right is Ali Noorani. Ali is the executive director of the National Immigration Forum, an advocacy organization promoting the value of immigrants and immigration. Growing up in California as the son of Pakistani immigrants, Ali quickly learned how to forge alliances among diverse people, a skill that has served him well in a career of innovative coalition building. Prior to joining the Forum, Ali was executive director of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition and he has served in leadership roles within public health and environmental organizations.

And finally, to Ali's right is Beth Werlin. Beth is the executive director of the American Immigration Council, a D.C. based nonprofit that promotes laws, policies and attitudes that honor our history as a nation of immigrants. Beth leads the council's efforts to ensure that everyone has a fair opportunity to present their immigration claims, that the doors remain open to those seeking safety and protection in the U.S., and that our laws and policies reflect immigrants' economic contributions through their skills, talents and innovation.

Welcome to my panelists, it's really great to be together today. We all very much appreciate all the work that you've done and all the insights that you're about to share. I'd like to kick us off with a general question, and that is, at its root the question really before us today is what does it mean to be American? I'd love to hear your views on that. Anybody want to jump in on this one to start?

Jeremy Robbins: Well I'm happy to. I'll jump on something that Ali says all the time which is great and incredibly on point which is that whenever he talks about this issue, and I think he does it very smartly, he'll say that immigration isn't so much about politics, it's about culture. That's absolutely right. What it means to be American and what it means to be an immigrant in America is different for a lot of different people. There are two strains running through America right now, one is what it means to be America, it's about an idea. The idea of equality of opportunity or equality general, this is a country that welcomes people. Then there's another, it's a lot about history. It's more backward looking to who America was or where America was. I think some of that is situational, about what they identify in their own life, but also about what they look at towards their future. For a lot of Americans now who look ahead and see a darker future than their parents did, there's a reason a lot of people are gravitating towards that second rather than that first view of what this means.

What it means to be American and what it means to be an immigrant in America is different for a lot of different people.

Dr. Skorton: Thanks Jeremy. Anyone else want to comment on this one?

Beth Werlin: I'll second a lot of what you've said. I think for my family I know they were coming to the United States seeking safety and protection, and for a lot of immigrants today that's still the case. People are looking to the United States as a place where they can express themselves as individuals, where they can do that freely and openly. That's very consistent with dreams about what it means to be an American.

Dr. Skorton: Thank you, Beth. Ali, thoughts?

Ali Noorani: Go on, Ana.

Ana Quintana: I'll jump to piggy back off of what you said, my family also came here to seek safety. My family's originally from Cuba. My mother's family came in '81 with the Mariel boatlifts, and my dad was in the military and left the military, lived in Venezuela for a few years and then came over here. So many people's stories mirror that even now, right? Rather it's escaping a Communist regime to escaping crime and violence in Central America and this economic instability that exists down there. People view America as that beacon of hope and opportunity. Everybody always says I want to move northward because that's where the opportunity exists.

Dr. Skorton: Thank you.

Ali Noorani: I have to say that the way that the country is changing, when you look at the globe there are 65 million people who have been forced to leave their home, at this point you see the fastest growth in the foreign-born population in the southeast of the United States. The cultural and demographic change that we're feeling as a country is very visceral to people. When they look at that and they see on the news every night, or they're just in their Facebook feed and they see this Syrian refugee fleeing violence, their assumption is that Syrian refugee's going to be their next-door neighbor tomorrow. How, as a country, how as political leadership, civic leadership, do we help people navigate that tension? That I feel like is our biggest challenge.

Dr. Skorton: Thank you. My father was born in what is now Belarus, it was Russia in those days. When I was a kid at home and we would talk about America he would use the term, melting pot. When I went to school they used the term, melting pot. It's one of those thing that I grew up with. Well in 2014, the University of California listed the term "melting pot" as a microaggression. How do you interpret the phrase, melting pot? Is it something we should still aspire to or should we stay away from that term?

Ali Noorani: As I've been talking to organizations and people across the country, what I've realized is that folks, they love the José or the Mohammed that they know, but they're worried about and afraid of the José or Mohammed they don't know. The term, whether you call it melting pot, assimilation, or integration ...[Clinton Administration head of Immigration and Naturalization Service] Doris Meissner, in a interview I did with her, gave me the best quote, where she said, to paraphrase, Americans cherish immigration in hindsight, in present day they have real fears and anxieties.

Beth Werlin: You know, probably many of you saw new census data that came out very recently showing that the places in the United States where there were the fewest immigrants are actually the places where people are most showing anti-immigrant sentiment. In some ways that's somewhat surprising, you might think that people feeling the immigrants in their community encroaching on their communities, so to say, may be the ones who actually show some anti-immigrant sentiment, but it's the opposite. It goes to what you're saying, it's about knowing these newcomers to our communities and understanding and appreciating the values that they bring.

Ana Quintana: It makes sense that people fear what they don't know. If you've never experienced something you don't want to walk into a room and the lights be off, because you don't know what's there. I guess that kind of makes sense, and kind of going back to the University of California labeling it a microagression ... I mean that is so absurd. I think that a melting pot is something that we want to aspire to. That's the great thing about America, that we're not a balkanized country where everybody's broken up into these different ethnic enclaves. At the end of the day we all are American citizens, regardless if you eat fried pork on Thanksgiving like my family does, we don't eat turkey, I've never eaten turkey on Thanksgiving. That's the most absurd thing. You eat pork, you eat rice and beans.

You still have your American flag, you never have a Cuban flag, because that's just ... You're an American citizen and we all have ... That's kind of like what we share and what binds this country together, and kind of why people are so ... It's easy to assimilate in America.

Dr. Skorton: I'm going to invite myself to that next time.

Ana Quintana.: Oh you should, there is an absurd amount of food, yes.

Dr. Skorton: It sounds really good.

Ali Noorani: We do a mix of chicken curry and turkey.

Ana Quintana: Yeah.

Dr. Skorton: That's great. Jeremy, any thoughts about this?

Jeremy Robbins: Yeah, I agree very strongly with all of this. The one place I'd push back a little bit, and where we struggle as an amnesty organization is that it's more than just being exposed to people and facts, right? I look at places like Lewiston, Maine, which is a great opportunity but also challenge when you think about the immigrant story, that this is a place in the whitest state in the country and now the oldest state in the country, where it's happening what's happening a lot in America. Just depopulating, industries leaving these towns that are very economically depressed.

In Lewiston, where the industry had gone and the main street was largely shuttered, you had a large influx of Somali refugees. They started coming and then when their families were there, more people started coming because they knew people there and there was a community. You start having race riots. Like you said about Doris, that in the moment immigration looks really tough, but in hindsight it looks good. It looked like it was going to be on that trajectory, right? Because they had all these race riots, the mayor went up on national TV and said, "Stop coming." But people kept coming.

Five, ten years later when you look at main street, it's littered with Somali businesses, and when you walk into the Lewiston Sun Journal, the paper of record, and they have the honor roll on the wall, half the names are Somali. That's the great story. People come. Then that Lewiston went overwhelmingly for Trump because the anti-immigrant message really resonated there.

There was some amazing journalism done by the Associated Press and others and going, "Well what's happening here?" Because you go and you talk to the people there and by and large they can all say, "Yeah, that's right. People came in and our town is economically better for it. There are now businesses on main street that we were struggling now they've come back. Still, if the government, really they're helping all the refugees, why aren't they helping us? Why am I still struggling?"

There's a lot that goes into that, that's economic, that's race, there's a lot of things playing into it, but it's not just that people came in, there was a rosy future and then it got better. There's still a huge challenge facing Lewiston and the larger segments of our country, especially in the southeast, that are still new gateways and are experiencing this in a really profound way.

Beth Werlin: Jeremy do you see that as different though than the past? We've gone through the cycles over and over again, we've had that happen where, you know, " no Irish need apply." I think we've seen that with every wave of new immigrants. To me it's the same story that keeps repeating ourselves in the United States.

Jeremy Robbins: I think that's right, and when you look at the dialogue of in each generation, the words are even the same. We haven't even become inventive in the way that we push back on immigrants. I do think that there is a central tension between a part of society that really values pluralism and diversity and thinks that that is a good, and a part of society that is worried that that is taking away from the central tenet of why a melting pot should be a good thing to a lot of Americans because it seems that it is, you are coming here, you're adding to America, but you've got to become American. The idea that you're going to change what it means to be American is threatening to a lot of people.

Ana Quintana: The immigration component in Maine that you speak specifically of, so I travel to Maine quite often, northern Maine, pretty much on the Canadian border, it's where my boyfriend's family is from. I think that one of the reasons why they went to Trump or why this message of this anti-immigrant message, I don't think it's so much just on the immigration component, but it's there's so many other different things that are happening in that main social ecosystem, right? Whether it's economic depression, whether it's the second generation of Mainers who have to leave the state to be able to find any sort of opportunity, the ones who stay there have such an absurdly high drug usage. It's just there's so many things that are happening, I don't necessarily think it's just the Somalis have arrived and people are anti-Somali.

It's there is a lack of economic opportunity, there doesn't seem to be a change in the future. Maine's economic trajectory, particularly in district, it's district two, right? That's on the northern side, is on a downward trajectory. I think that's kind of why it's ... I don't know, I just don't necessarily see it as just the anti-immigrant component though. Certainly not.

Ali Noorani: There's a deep feeling of loss. Last summer as the presidential campaign was reaching a peak, there was an analysis of the Gallup Survey, which was 95,000 person survey per week. What they found is that your typical Trump voter was economically better off than most Republicans, was protected from trade, lived in a culturally isolated community. The determining factor for them to take their vote was that they felt their child would not do better than them. There's this feeling of loss and you kind of mix all these factors up, Trump was able to tap into that anxiety about the other. The question is again, what do you do about that? How do you help people understand that yes, there are tensions as the country is changing, as communities are changing, but I feel like if we don't understand that core sense of loss, that core feeling of loss, we're just talking about microaggressions.

Ana Quintana: Yeah.

Dr. Skorton: Let's drill down a little, tiny bit more on that. The purpose of these discussions is try to enlarge all of our understanding about these very complex issues. Based on polling, Americans who feel economically vulnerable, as you've mentioned, are more likely to see immigrants as an economic threat. Are they justified in feeling this way or is there data behind that? Are immigrants an economic threat to those who are economically vulnerable?

Jeremy Robbins: Certainly I think the reality is the answer is no, immigration is writ large a very good thing for America, but those gains aren't spread equally. I think that immigrants benefit the economy hugely, but they benefit certain segments of the economy hugely. And there are costs that come with immigrants. There are costs that come with anyone. The benefits will outweigh those costs, but when you have costs that are borne locally and disproportionately on a certain population, but benefits that are borne on a different kind of population, more naturally, I think you're going to have struggles.

The reality is this, if you look at immigrants, they are more likely to be of working age, they tend to have a very different skillset than the American born, right? They're much more likely to lack a high school degree, but also much more likely to have a Ph.D. You think about how you compete in a global economy, you want to have diverse talents, you want to have diverse skills. What's happening, there are things happening in our economy that are really scary, right? There are huge riches going to some but it's not being spread. That's happening all over the developed world. Immigration is actually the one thing that we have that a lot of the other countries don't. One of the failures in this debate is that we've allowed immigration to be seen as part and parcel of globalization and automation, all of these things that are changing the economy, instead of being seen as a potential solution to it.

We want to have the skillset in our population that's going to make us adapt to this changing economy, and part of that is home growing it, having a pipeline for STEM and getting people to go to the right things. Part of it's the fact that when people vote with their feet, they want to come here, and that's by and large great for America. Are some people benefiting from that more than others? Absolutely, but that's not a failure from immigration, that's a failure from immigration policy for not being able to spread the gains. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the last time there was a Senate comprehensive bill, found that it added $900 billion to the economy. Now you can have a lot of different views of how you would spend $900 billion to make Americans better off, but that's a lot of money to spend to make Americans better off.

Dr. Skorton: Listen, I'd like to change gears a little bit and take a step away from present day politics and concerns and look in the rear view mirror a little bit about America. Let me ask you what you think history tells us about how immigrants have integrated themselves into American culture. What were the concerns about immigration at the turn of the 20th century, when my dad came over? 19th century? Have the concerns changed? Are things different now or are we really sort of seeing the same things over and over again? What are your points of view on that?

Ali Noorani: We've done a lot of work, for example, with businesses in terms of thinking about immigrant integration or assimilation into the work site. In 1915, Bethlehem Steel was the first company in the United States to provide English classes to their immigrant workforce. You think of 1915, I'm sorry, that's when everybody did it the right way. What we found is that more and more businesses across the country are taking the same steps. We now have a program that works with over 250 businesses to help their staff become citizens. We just finished a second year of a English language program with Publix, Kroger, and Whole Foods in terms of teaching English skills. What we found is that in the second year, almost 40 percent of individuals who completed the program got a promotion because of improved English language skills. They're happy because they have increased opportunities, their managers are happy because they have a more productive workforce. The integration of the immigrant community into the U.S. is happening in incredibly innovative and interesting ways every day.

Dr. Skorton: Very interesting. Others, your thoughts about whether things are different today or whether we're reliving the same things?

Beth Werlin: In many ways, we continue to relive the same things, but I do think there's something different today too. Our world has changed, technology has changed our world, we're much more, I don't know, interdependent upon activities going on in other countries. I look at that, particularly in how we approach the laws and policies around bringing in entrepreneurs and new business to our country, people have other options now. Companies can move from country to country in ways that they couldn't before. To the extent we were a place that people came to brought ideas, there's other places to bring ideas today too, and that's an important thing to remember. We want to continue to be competitive. We value that diversity of opinion, the innovation that newcomers bring to our country. I don't want to see us lose any of that energy. That's something that in this changing technology-driven world is a potential if we're not on top of it.

Dr. Skorton: Just to jump on that for a moment, this is really one of the biggest issues that I've thought about, a lot of people are thinking about, is how attractive America still is to people around the world, from higher education to the workforce. Today, in 2017, is there something exceptional about the U.S. that continues to make us a beacon for immigrants?

Jeremy Robbins: I think undoubtedly, yes. If you look at one really good, easy way to look at that would just be through where people go to start businesses, right? In a global world, you can go anywhere you want. One of the things that's really interesting about us and the immigration law is that, and most Americans don't believe this when you tell them, but there's no visa to come here, start a business, and hire American workers, which is crazy thing that no matter where you are in the political spectrum, if someone wants to come here, start a business, and have some money invested, they're going to create jobs, probably that should be something that we want.

Increasingly countries around the world are realizing that and they're starting entrepreneur's visas in all these countries. Their sell isn't, look how great it is to come to Chile and start a business, or even in Canada, look how great it is in Canada. Their sell essentially, like you can't get to the U.S., so come here. Their underlying assumption of their whole visa program is that this is a way to get people who otherwise would come to the United States because the reality is for now people still do want to come here. It's where the capital is, it's where the market is. Because it's easy to start a business, there's an entrepreneurial culture. I think you see that over and over, but like Beth said, I don't think it's inevitable. We've had that advantage over the rest of the world for 50 to 100 years but the rest of the world's certainly catching up. They're using their immigration laws very much as a sword to do that.

Ali Noorani: I would say that's not only in the job creation or the business creation world, but also in the student visa world. I remember 10, 15 years ago and seeing university start campuses overseas in the Middle East. I remember seeing that, it's like okay, that's a huge change because they're going to where the students are instead of trying to recruit the students to come here. Just recently there's press about students going down more and more into Canada than to the U.S. I just think in the long-term we are really undermining not just our economy on a macro sense, but the American worker and their family. That's a real issue.

Dr. Skorton: I was involved personally in two of those projects in the Middle East. A medical school that Cornell University has to this day in Doha and a coed university in a western part of Saudi Arabia. I think what you say is exactly right.

Beth Werlin: I was just going to add, this is also true in many other ideals that we hold here in the United States. Particularly with welcoming refugees. We have for years been a leader in welcoming refugees. We have been a place that people can come. Our doors are open to those seeking safety and protection. To proposals and ideas that might want to limit I think really threaten who we are as a country and the values that are important as Americans.

Ali Noorani: I want to go back to your question because I feel like we're heading down this very negative and dark place. Is America an exceptional country? Yes. For some reason I've been spending a lot of time in Idaho. Idaho is a very unique place. It's incredibly conservative, it's one of the reddest states in the country now. It is a state that has an unemployment rate of about 3 percent, maybe high as 4 percent. Has a dairy industry that is in the top three in the nation. That dairy industry, by and large, those dairy farmers voted for President Trump. Now they are some of the most outspoken advocates for a refugee resettlement, for immigration reform, and really pushing back on the administration because they know that as dairy farmers who have built a business through their family, that their immigrant workforce or refugee workforce is an extension of their family. To me that is exceptional.

Dr. Skorton: Exceptional as a phenomenon in America?

Ali Noorani: Exceptional from an economic perspective, from a cultural perspective, from a political perspective. When we get it right as a country, those are the three things that mix up in the right way.

Dr. Skorton: Very, very positive perspective. Thoughts about that anybody?

Ali Noorani: Come on, somebody else has got to be positive.

Dr. Skorton: All right, I'll take you in a different direction. You were talking about higher education, we talked a little bit about cultural institutions indirectly. When you look at polls in past years, say in the last decade, where many of the institutions in America have fallen and fallen and fallen in terms of public trust. Libraries, museums, archives the military tend to be toward the higher end of the trust range. Focusing on museums, here we are in the Smithsonian Institution. In a melting pot America, if I can go back to using that term, what does it mean to have cultural institutions such as museums that cater specifically to immigrant or ethnic cultures? Is that a good idea, is that something we should go in that direction? It's something that we're actually thinking about quite a bit at the Smithsonian.

Jeremy Robbins: There's an interesting idea, someone who used to work at the Holocaust Museum for a bunch of years is working now trying to start a museum that's going to be the National Museum for the American people. The way that he is framing it, is essentially this question. That we can have a lot of separate museums representing our own ethnic heritages, and I think to me that's a very valuable thing, it's part of America's story. Or you think but the reality is for Americans that for most Americans who want to make those individual stories part of America's story. What he's trying to do is start a museum that would essentially tell America's story through the four almost founding waves. People who came here 10,000 years ago, people who came up until essentially the Civil War time, the slavery story as well, then sort of the immigration wave of the late-19th century, and then post-1965. I think that's an interesting idea, I'm not sure one's right or wrong.

It goes to your question about do we want to be the melting pot or do we want to value pluralism? I think the answer is how do you do both without cheapening either? Which is a long way of saying I'm not sure I have the right answer as to whether having ethnic-focused or group-focused museums is a good or a bad thing. There's a lot of value of doing it; those are hugely important stories to tell, they get lost in the American narrative. To make it part of a larger America you have to tell them as part of a whole American story.

Dr. Skorton: That's very helpful, and actually the tact we're taking at the Smithsonian is really to try to do both. We do have museums and areas in museums that are focused very much on a particular area, culture, civilization, but we also have for example this very new exhibition in the National Museum of American History, " Many Voices, One Nation," which really tries to do the second of what you were talking about. That's very helpful. In fact, I'm going to say those things and pretend it was my idea.

Ali Noorani: I would say that in this moment in our history, where it feels like our politics are so divisive, the role of institutions is more and more important. I think of an institution as everything from your elementary school, to your university, to your library, to your museum, to your national park. Over the summer my vacation was to drive from Idaho back to D.C. In every town that I stopped in I tried to go to the museum, tried to touch as many parks as I could. I was amazed by the diversity of people in the parks, the diversity of people in the museums, and the diversity of the representation of the exhibits themselves in the museums. That the role of cultural institutions, it's more important than ever.

Dr. Skorton: Glad to hear that because it sounds like full employment for me.

Jeremy Robbins: Right, and the one thing I'd say on that, which sort of goes back to your earlier question, is that politics and culture aren't linear as much as they're cyclical, right? This is a very challenging time in some ways, but also a time of opportunity in others, in that you almost need those moments where institutions are in doubt to be able to galvanize people enough to make progress. I'm actually optimistic that yes, most cultural institutions, if you look at the trust in the media, it's incredibly low, but that doesn't mean that it's going to stay that way. That's also created, if you look at the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, their subscribers have gone up, their investment in high quality journalism has gone up. You're seeing that in institution, after institution, after institution, that's almost refortifying to meet the challenges of a very different age.

Dr. Skorton: Well moving from cultural institutions to culture writ large. Is it fair to have the expectation that we're going to be able to develop a shared common sort of suite or ensemble of customs that help define what it is to be an American? How has the Internet changed the idea of developing this kind of common culture? Because you can imagine two worlds, one in which people really follow the cultural attributes that they were brought up with, and one in which we somehow come together with a common ensemble. Is it fair to have this expectation, that we can come together in a common culture?

Beth Werlin: I think so. I'll take an example we're struggling with in a very different setting, which is in the workplace. The workplace is changing, right? People work remotely now, people work at different hours of the day, but yet we're actually able to use technology to find ways to connect in different ways that are more personalized and customized to the needs of each office, of each community, of each person. The same thing is happening with respect to our country. Yes, it's growing, yes, we're bringing in different people from different places, we're bringing in new customs, but we're also taking advantage of new ways and new technology to be able to enable us to connect in both very personal ways and as a community.

Dr. Skorton: It's a beautifully optimistic way to look at things. I share that so it must be right.

Ali Noorani: Last year I wrote a book called, There Goes the Neighborhood. A number of the interviews that I did were with folks who, are immigrants themselves but their families ... Or their families are immigrants and they were born here. Through these conversations I started to think of this as a, think of a framework through which this common set of values is developed. It's a dynamic set but there's a path that I started to think about where people go from identifying, let's say somebody comes from Mexico. They come and they see themselves as a Mexican. Then they see themselves as a Mexican-American. Then they fit into this larger world of Latino. Then their kids say, "Well I may be a U.S. citizen but I'm going to go back and see myself as a Latino or Latina." There's this changing set of identity.

Then people integrate into the U.S., they become citizens, they vote, they start businesses. Then ultimately, they are influencing systems by serving on boards, by running for office. We are reaching a common set of values through steps of identity, integration and influence, where people are identifying as American, going back and forth between where they came from, integrating into society but then also trying to change the idea of America. I just think that's a good thing.

Dr. Skorton: Other thoughts about that?

Ana Quintana: Change the idea of American in what sense? Because you brought up the issue of Mexicans, when they come to this country and then they identify as Mexican-American and then into this broader scope of Latino, Latina, Hispanic, which I to this day will never understand even though I'm supposedly classified in that, I just don't get how I am. I see myself as an American of Cuban heritage, right? I'm a first generation American, my parents are from Cuba, and I'm from northern Cuba, a.k.a. Miami, because Miami's an incredibly unique place which I will forever call northern Cuba.

I think what's happening, and I say northern Cuba as a joke, but there tends to be kind of within different communities, within the Mexican community, within the Salvadoran, Honduran, just this kind of habit of folks keeping their culture, which is obviously what we should all do, but allowing their culture to define their identity and allowing that to not translate into what it means to be American. American is not eating apple pie because apple pie is disgusting, it's believing in America, believing in the exceptionality of America and the rule of law, and what it means to be an American citizen.

... there tends to be kind of within different communities just this kind of habit of folks keeping their culture, which is obviously what we should all do, but allowing their culture to define their identity and allowing that to not translate into what it means to be American.
- Ana Quintana

Ali Noorani: I think you're right, but I think you also prove my point, because you said you see Miami as northern Cuba, right?

Ana Quintana: Yeah.

Ali Noorani: Miami is a uniquely American city because it's a very diverse city. There are parts of Miami that call it northern Cuba, parts of Miami that call it Miami and part of the U.S. We can react to people affectionately calling Miami northern Cuba in a defensive way, or we can react to it in saying, "Okay, that's great." Miami is this thriving, vibrant city that is the gateway to the southern hemisphere in many ways. That is a beautiful American experience. We're all going to see that differently. We have a tendency to react to those things in a negative fashion, whereas I think it's great if the Cuban community calls it northern Cuba. It's Miami, Florida, in the United States. I think you kind of made my point.

Ana Quintana: What worries me is the idea of that overlap not happening. Of folks saying, "I'm going to keep my culture and that's going to completely define my identity, and I'm going to completely continue identifying with my country of origin," rather than making that step and assimilating.

Ali Noorani: That's why this definition of identity is so fluid. People through their lives, through generations of families, that sense of identity changes but at the end of the day as people are becoming American they're looking to influence America. Running for office, owning businesses, playing that leadership role in whatever way they see fit. When you ask the question of a common set of values or customs, there's an assumption that that is a very static set of values and customs. That has never been the case.

Dr. Skorton: When you say that has never been the case, the argument that you're making, which I resonate with, I think you could have made the same argument 50 or 100 years ago, the different technology and so on. Perhaps in a way things appear to be changing and certainly the rapidity of information dissemination is different, but the process feels the same to me.

Ali Noorani: It does. Then when you look at what's happening in Europe, for example, the role of ethnic media in the U.S. is incredibly important for a couple of reasons. Number one, it helps the immigrant community integrate or assimilate to the U.S. But it also helps people who are born here and been here for generations to understand the immigrant community. There's a locus of information in language that people can say, "Okay, this is who is moving to my neighborhood, and from a policy perspective this is how I engage." Or, "This is what I need to do as an immigrant." In Europe there is no ethnic media infrastructure other than the Internet. The information that refugees or immigrants from Morocco and Belgium, they only get information about Morocco, they don't necessarily get information on Belgium. Your Belgium official doesn't necessarily get information about Moroccans who are new. There's interesting things underneath the surface too.

Dr. Skorton: Very interesting. Social media of course has blown that up a lot and changed things.

Jeremy Robbins: Well I would say on the social media front, it plays both ways. Social media drives you apart in a very profound sense in that I can go on social media and only see people like me. I can only see people who have an exact interest. At the same time that also gives you collective power that makes people more vocal in society and more like Ali's suggesting. Your point about the Hispanic, probably like, "Why are we Hispanic? I'm Guatemalan, I'm Colombian." And we're all different, we're treated the same. There is some notion about how that Hispanic identity actually in some ways probably increases the Americanization as much as it does make people feel separate.

I'll give you one example. Yesterday I did a meeting with Univision, and at Univision they're talking about their corporate sponsors. People in America, businesses in America right now, the American Pepsi and all these other companies, they're huge American companies, they really want to reach the Hispanic audience because they think that there's a huge amount of buying power there and it's a growing audience with a growing club. So they can use social media to target that audience. Those are some of the most American brands, the things that become American culture being directly inputted through social media through other ways to try and be in front of people. As much as you can isolate yourself, there's a way that you find instead of being alone as this single person who feels like an outsider, you have a group. That group then, as Ali's suggesting, does very much become an integral player in society.

Dr. Skorton: That's very interesting. Of course if more people would follow my own Twitter feed, I think a lot of this would be clarified, but I digress. Speaking of social media, let's move just for a moment to traditional media. There's always a part in conversations where you want to take a shot, or some comments, or tell the media how to do their business. How could the media do a better job of covering the topics related to immigration in our country? This is one of the things a lot of us are talking about, maybe more among the most commonly discussed topics. What advice could we give to our colleagues in the traditional media?

Jeremy Robbins: There's been some actual wonderful journalism. A lot of the journalism around immigration tends to focus on law and order, security, terrorism, and things that are sensational and will be clickbait. That's just a reality of the media. There's been some phenomenal journalism of late, of looking at how immigration impacts a town and doing deep dive, longer form journalism. Those are pieces that don't probably get nearly as many clicks, but when they do have a much higher and longer impact. I'm not in the business of media, I'm not going to tell editors what to do, but the extent that those are out there, I think those do change hearts and minds because you can actually see over a longer term how impact happens.

One of the problems with immigration and understanding immigration generally is it's very natural to see our economy as a zero sum game, right? This job either goes to an American or an immigrant. What's much harder to see is how the economy interrelates. That if you can get the right worker, companies grow, they're more dynamic, it creates more jobs. You don't see, unless you're working for an immigrant founded company, you don't see the job that was created at this company because the immigrant on the team had the right idea or played the right support function. You just see the job. There's a role that journalism can play that's very important in telling the larger picture. There's actually been a lot of good work doing that, I just think it's the nature of media right now that the majority of the stories are going to be more sensational and less nuanced.

Ana Quintana: Even when they cover the sensational aspect, it's such kind of like a superficial MS-13 is from El Salvador and they're terrorizing the streets and they're going to terrorize America. It's like all right, let's do a deeper dive here and actually look at what exactly is happening on the ground in the northern triangle of Central America. That's an area that I specifically focus on. I don't think folks are really looking enough at the political crisis and how this is something that's going to continue. How the unaccompanied minor crisis that we had on our border in 2014, that's going to repeat itself because the conditions in these countries have only gotten worse. The only reason we're kind of seeing a decrease is because Mexico is increasing their efforts to guard their southern border with Guatemala. Also, when folks tend to criticize Mexico and the Mexican government, their security translates into our security and Mexico has done an enormous job at helping us out.

I think that's only putting a band aid on the situation. Until we get to a point where policy makers, and this is where the media can play a role, in kind of highlighting, doing a deeper dive, longer-form analysis or just highlighting how MS-13 terrorizes a town specifically in El Salvador, Guatemala. I don't think that we're going to have proper ... I don't think in America, rather, we're going to have a proper understanding of immigration dynamics.

Ali Noorani: I look at the media through my day job as an advocate. I would agree with what both of you have said in terms of the great journalism that's been done and the longer, deeper dives that are happening. There was an article a couple of days ago about Hallmark Television, that is the fastest growing network in the country. They are running shows that are warm and fuzzy, that are speaking to the geographic and figurative middle of America. My question is, okay, how are those shows talking about this issue? Are they talking about it at all? We've done work with Christian radio stations. As advocates we have to understand what are people listening to, reading, or watching? Then being able to engage the media, those media outlets in particular, and being able to put forward a conversation or a strategy around immigration that's based on the culture and values of that audience. Not trying to have the political, the policy conversation that we want The New York Times or the Wall Street Journal to have. That's not a conversation that resonates at all with the majority of Americans.

Dr. Skorton: You know, actually one of the hopes that we have for Second Opinion is that people will utilize a toolkit that we put on the web with each conversation which we're calling Vox Populi, Voice of the People, where you could take some of the questions that we're discussing and some of the good work that you've done and other readings that we'll list, and have a conversation like this around the dinner table or whatever.

I want to switch gears for a minute and talk about something a little more arcane but of great interest in this area, and that's the H-1B program, the visa program. Just curious, at this moment in time there's been debate and discussion about this for a long time. At this point in time how do you see the benefits and the costs of the program? What changes should we be making? How does it help and hurt different parts of our economy? It's an important issue. Anybody want to jump in on this?

Jeremy Robbins: I'll probably have very strong feelings.

Beth Werlin: Our organization, we work with a lot of immigration lawyers, our partner organization is a bar association of immigration lawyers. I hear a lot about the H-1B program from their perspective, and it's gotten to the point where they're challenged, they don't know how to advise their clients who are looking for employees and they're not finding what they need here in the United States, which raises questions about how we can do a better job to be making sure we're training our own U.S. citizens to be qualified for jobs that we're going to need in the future. At the moment they're struggling, they're not sure how to advise their clients because it's become an unpredictable, unreliable system for making sure that companies are getting workers that they desire and that make their company successful.

That's a challenge, the fact that a program has become unreliable. There's a lottery system, you're not sure if it's going to pan out, if you're going to get a visa. From the lawyer's perspective it's an awful lot of work to apply for one of these visas. I mean it's expensive, you put a lot of time into it, it's unreliable, and yet they're still doing it. That signals to me that there's a challenge here that's presented, that companies are not being able to find the workers they need and that the system isn't set up right now to fully assist them and enable them to bring in the employees that would help make their company successful and ultimately help create more jobs, more buying power, and all of that.

Dr. Skorton: Very helpful.

Jeremy Robbins: I'd say on the flip side of that, this goes to the heart of what you'd want an immigration like a work visa to do. That on the one hand you want to bring in talent that can help our economy grow, that can help our country, but on the other hand you want to make sure that you're protecting workers and this visa does nothing. The visa is very much broken in a way that's not working for American workers or for companies. The idea that there should be a limit on the number of smart people that come in is a strange idea to begin with. We want people to come and innovate. There's all sorts of good research showing that if you can bring someone in, they get a degree in science, technology and math, they come and stay and work in our workforce, they're creating American jobs.

There's an idea that on the one hand you want to drive more Americans into STEM. That's where the jobs are, that's where the growth is, that's where innovation is. That's a long-term process. In the meantime you have companies, the Facebooks of the world, the Googles of the world, but also manufacturing companies that are selling our manufacturing goods around the world and creating all these good jobs, that they need those type of workers to design their products. Caterpillar is a great line where their mining equipment has more lines of code in it than a jet airline. Caterpillar sells to 190 or 200 companies around the world, they're creating a lot of jobs in Peoria, Illinois, but they need some designers, and some engineers, to be the people who can help design those products.

Now we have a system, which as you mentioned, there aren't enough visas and so they go every year by lottery which is a very strange way to decide who should come here, by random lottery. At the same time, a lot of visas are used in a way that maybe doesn't benefit American workers, that we have a system of what you should have to pay people that was made in the '90s when being a tech worker in the '90s was a really different thing than today. There's some really obvious fixes. You want to make sure that companies are paying a fair wage, you want to increase the number of visas and make sure they're going to, both for companies that are driving innovation. You want to better protect American workers, you want to incentivize people to take those temporary workers and make them permanent so they're bargaining the same way Americans are. There are a lot of fixes that have a lot of support if you could actually get bills on the floor to vote on them. That's the kind of stuff we're all working on.

Dr. Skorton: Following along your point about innovation in the sense that you're talking about the tech industry for example, because of the coding example, guest worker programs, sort of the darling of the tech industry to some extent. What's your point of view on that, Jeremy or others?

Jeremy Robbins: The H-1B visa, what's interesting is that it's a guest worker program, but it's a one dual-intent visa. By that, the intent is that you can come for it as a guest worker but the idea is that you're going to come to stay. You were president of Cornell, I'm sure the engineers graduating at Cornell, probably half of them are foreign-born. Training the best minds in the world and then sending them abroad to compete against us is a really strange economic strategy. Do I think that you should bring people in if you can, someone's trained at Cornell, if we can get them to stay, and work, and help drive our economy? Absolutely. Should we want to get people who are going to come here and stay? I think it's not going to be the answer for everyone, but absolutely, we want to keep talent here, we want to grow our economy. The H-1B is maybe a temporary way to do that, I think there are a lot of other ways to do it too.

Dr. Skorton: Should we be looking north to the Canadian sort of merit-based point system? Would that be a step forward, or not a good idea for the U.S.?

Ali Noorani: We have to strike a balance. We have to strike a balance where we're acknowledging the fact that our economy needs the skilled engineers as much as it needs the skilled farm worker. We need to make sure that we're recruiting workers into the U.S. that can fill those needs. When we compare, it's in vogue right now to compare our immigration system, our economy, to Canada or Australia because of their merit-based approach. The fact is that our economies could not be more different. Our economy is exponentially larger, exponentially more diverse. Our nation is much larger and more diverse than Australia or Canada. There are elements of the program that can be brought online, if you will, but assume that we go from the broken system that we have now, to all of a sudden saying, "Okay, if you get 100 points you get in." We're just creating more problems. In 2013, the Senate passed legislation that I think created a balanced approach to legal immigration. The problem is that, Jeremy said, we haven't had the political will to get it onto the House floor.

Beth Werlin: I'll just throw in one aspect of our current system which I don't think we ever want to lose is the importance placed on family and family values, family unification. Some of the proposals around point systems lose some of that. Lose the aspects of family, that families help you integrate into societies. Families provide all sorts of benefits that you can't always measure in the same way you can do ... Even economic benefits, that it could be that the mom's taking care of the children or the elderly family members, and how do we quantify all of that? We've always had a strong system that valued family and relationships, and I don't think that's something we want to lose.

Jeremy Robbins: One other thing I just note quickly is that there's a little bit of sleight of hand in the way that the Canadian and Australian systems are used, suggesting that, oh well we're going to move from our system to their system, we're going to do it. The bill that was introduced by Senators Tom Cotton and Sonny Perdue, it's like we're going to move to a merit system, not by adding more visas for STEM workers, but by slashing family based immigration. If you look at Canada and Australia, they do have a hugely higher portion of their visas that go for merit, for people who fulfill needs in the economy, but they also give more visas for family.

The notion that you have to do one or the other, that if you're going to give more work visas therefore you should give more family visas, that's a false conflict, and one that neither Canada or Australia deal with it. They let in two-and-a-half and three-and-a-half times more immigrants than we do. I think, yes absolutely, should we have a system that is more merit based? Yes in the sense of, we can help our economy and leverage one of our greatest competitive advantages which is that whether it's a skilled engineer or the skilled farm worker, that people who want to work hard want to come here. That, at the same time, doesn't mean by any stretch of the imagination that therefore we should do it by shutting down family based immigration and the traditional ways that we've had our system work that have done really well for the U.S.

Ana Quintana: Yeah, no you're totally right. We definitely need to kind of strike that balance. It isn't a black or white issue where it's like all right, we completely slash family migration. Because if that was the case my family would never be here. They would still be in Cuba and they would still be living completely miserable lives. That's another component of as to why this country's great. It's like all right, let's find a way of fixing our immigration system so we can actually bring the people who we need here, not let it be on this absurd lottery system, which just makes no sense. I mean imagine, how do we even explain that to another country or to folks abroad? It's like, well you know, you might be super qualified but it's going to be this lottery and I'm just going to pick your name out of a hat and you might get picked or you might not. That's embarrassing.

I think that the RAISE Act again, it's something that's kind of like, well do we really want to go that far? We got to strike that balance. It appears quite difficult in this political environment to kind of find any sort of balance on anything.

Dr. Skorton: Well one difficult and touchy issue that I feel we need to explore a little bit as a group is that of crime. It's one of those things that we hear a lot about. Multiple studies have shown that immigrants are in fact less likely to commit crime than native born U.S. citizens, although critics of those studies say, "Well, you're lumping those who came in one way versus those who came another way." What's your point of view about the evidentiary base of this? The notion that somehow an increase or change in immigration would affect our crime profile in the country? Anybody have a view of that?

Beth Werlin: As one of those organizations that issued one of those reports, I'll have to say, our researchers feel really confident that this study showed that higher rates of immigration correlate with reduced levels of crime. We're sticking with that. What we see is an individual incident sometimes making the news on the front page when there's an instance of an immigrant who committed a crime. The same can be said of U.S. citizens, a U.S. citizen could commit a crime. We're never going to eliminate crime entirely. The good thing is that crime rates have gone down recently as immigration rates have gone up. I think it's always been a red herring in the conversation. Unfortunately it's scary, crime is scary.

Any association that is made with an immigrant it kind of puts a blight on immigration, but we have to take a step back from the sensationalism at times. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't be upset when there's a crime, we should. We should do what we can to make sure immigration is done in a way that ... Currently we do have laws that might exclude someone who has a criminal record from the United States. We have a lot of laws that protect the United States from people coming in who might try to do danger. We have those laws in place. I think the real question turns to what's the relationship with local police officers and immigration. That's where things get a lot more complicated. There's a lot of good evidence that communities become safer. Local communities are choosing to separate immigration and local law enforcement efforts because they know that communities are safer when those two things are separate. When immigrant communities feel safe to be able to call the police to report on crime, to be able to cooperate with local law enforcement efforts in order to reduce crime in communities and that's where the focus should really be. What kind local initiatives can we put in place to make sure that communities are safe, that the immigrant population is working with local law enforcement when needed?

Dr. Skorton: Thanks Beth. Other thoughts about this?

Ali Noorani: So we do a lot of work with law enforcement. We've gotten to know Republican sheriffs, Democratic sheriffs, chiefs of big cities, small towns and none of them ... and myself in the forum, we don't want to live in a sanctuary city. We want to live in a safe city. A safe city is a place where every cop on the corner is able to fulfill their oath to serve and protect the entirety of their community and the only way for them to do that is to not be seen as taking on an immigration enforcement responsibility. Unfortunately, a lot of press will say if a local cop is not enforcing immigration law, that's a sanctuary city. But if you talk to that local cop they call that public safety.

The politicization of the law enforcement and immigration question has really undermined the role and the job of local law enforcement and again when you talk to chiefs and sheriffs across the country, they want to live in a safe city. They want to serve and protect everybody and they don't want to be in the business of asking people for immigration status.

Dr. Skorton: Other thoughts?

Jeremy Robbins: Well, I just say to Beth's point about it being a little bit of a red herring. The data's there and it makes sense when you look at it, right? That immigrants tend to move to neighborhoods that are the cheapest because they come here without a lot of resources. What ends up happening, and you see this in city after city after city is that they're moving into neighborhoods where there's a lot of abandoned housing, where there's a lot of blight. Because that's the only place they can afford to live and anyone who realizes that when you get people buying up abandoned housing, when you get them coming opening up corner businesses, when you get life on the street, instead of emptiness on the street, places become safer.

The interesting data about immigrants and crime is not just that they reduce crime or have lower rates than American-born, is that they actually draw natives back. That there's a lot of data showing that for every thousand immigrants that are moving into a neighborhood, it draws about 240 native Americans to move back to those neighborhoods.

So you think about community revitalization, how you ... for a lot of communities especially in the rust belt and the Midwest, where you have these places that are depopulating and all the crime and things that go with that. Immigration has a really positive impact, the flip side of that, which I will say, which is the negative part of integration, is that immigrants come and they commit crimes at a way lower rate than native born, but because integration is a very effective tool and happening at a very fast pace, immigrants catch up in crime, too. By second generation, third generation they commit crimes just like every other American.

Dr. Skorton: But then they're Americans.

Jeremy Robbins: But then they're Americans.

Dr. Skorton: Well, we're going to come to the end of our discussion, but before we do I have to get one more piece of wisdom out of each of you. I'd like you to share, with our readers and listeners and those who are watching this ... any one point you would like to make about our general conversation today? What it means to be an American and the role of immigration. One sort of parting point to those who are hopefully in great numbers enjoying Second Opinion. Anybody want to jump in with this one?

Ali Noorani: I will jump in and say I think the majority of Americans live between two poles, and one pole is there's a strong belief that we are a nation of laws, and there's another pole that pulls on people that says we are a compassionate nation. As advocates, we do the American public a disservice and our work a disservice by assuming that people don't live in that tension and we have thought about this as ... particularly in the Southeast, the Midwest, the Mountain West that are experiencing this cultural demographic change, how do we work with that person's pastor, police chief, local business owner to have that conversation?

Because as a D.C.-based advocate, I'm not going to convince that voter, but the person they go and listen to on church every Sunday, the police chief that drives their neighborhood every week, the business owner who they buy groceries from, those are the trusted messengers, where you can start to have this conversation.

Dr. Skorton: Thanks.

Beth Werlin: This conversation is just reminding me again what our motto is, that America is a nation of immigrants and our values, as a nation are really reflected, and we continue to want them to be reflected in our immigration laws and policies. Values about equality, fairness, freedom, safety, family, entrepreneurship, innovation, those are core American values and it doesn't work perfectly right now, but I think there's a will and an interest because our values are really rooted in those issues to continue to find ways to really perfect some of that.

Dr. Skorton: Thank you so much.

Ana Quintana: I would just say as someone who works on foreign policy, I would just hope that folks take the time to kind of look at the situations abroad, because I think prevention is the best medicine, right? We could've prevented what's happening in Syria and we didn't. And now look at what we're dealing with and look at what the Syrian refugees are dealing with. For whatever it is that we are experiencing the brunt of it, that humanitarian catastrophe is heartbreaking, the same thing with Central America and now we're seeing it with Venezuela. That's something that, again, could have been prevented, so I would hope that rather than looking at immigration as just a domestic policy issue, it is undoubtedly a foreign policy issue as well.

Dr. Skorton: Thank you, Ana

Jeremy Robbins: I think that's right, it starts abroad, but then as Ali was suggesting, ultimately, like all politics it's hyper local and that one of the things I'll say about what it means to be American ... like, our country is changing and that there is a lot of opportunity to think about how we meet that change. Immigration is a huge opportunity, but it's also not easy. One of the things that has been inspiring for me, if you think about this ... we're working in 50 communities, almost all in conservative states. Right now that have said all right, we recognize this is a potential, so how do we leverage it? How do we make sure that when people are coming in we're going to minimize sort of this stress and conflict of change and leverage it for growth?

Community after community, whether it's in Utah or it's in Texas, or it's in Iowa or it's in Alaska, are standing up and doing that. I think that's helpful. And the one last plug I'll put for something about understanding what it means as your community ... is that we spent the last two years building this resource and trying to make this a local fight and so at this website called Map the Impact, where for every community in the country ... if you want to understand how many immigrants are there, where are they working, how many businesses they started, how much they pay in taxes, like, that's a resource that's available to people.

I just encourage people to take action and stand up. Understand what's going on in their community and figure out how they can play a role, because it gets very disempowering right now to look around politics and say things are changing, how can I do it? But the reality is that people can have a profound impact, both locally and nationally.

Dr. Skorton: Well, on behalf of the Smithsonian Institution I want to thank Jeremy Robbins, Ana Quintana, Ali Noorani, and Beth Werlin for very, very interesting discussion and I learned a lot from it, and I very much appreciate you sharing your wisdom and experience and insights with us and to those very large number of people who are enjoying this I would hope that you would also take the time, if you can to look at some of the suggested readings, some other interviews that you find on the website related to this, a couple of additional one-on-one interviews that I conducted and I hope that you will take the opportunity to check out smithsoniansecondopinion.org frequently and have a good day, everybody.

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What Does it Mean to Be an American Today?

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Dr. David J. Skorton: Hello and welcome to Smithsonian's Second Opinion, where we convene conversations of importance to the country. I'm David Skorton, Secretary of the Smithsonian. One of the defining metaphors of the United States has been that our country is a "melting pot" of immigrants from around the globe.

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In 2014, New York Times reporter Damien Cave traveled the length of highway I-35, which runs south to north through the middle of the United States, for his "The Way North" project. Along the way, he asked 35 people, "What does it mean to be American?" These are some of their answers.

Becoming American means following the rules. It means respecting your neighbors, in your own neighborhood. -Francine Sharp, 73, retired teacher in Kansas (born in Kansas)

If you work hard, you get good things in life. -José, college student/roofer; immigrant without legal status in Tulsa, Oklahoma (born in Mexico)

Being American is making a change, and making good changes. Being American is being welcoming, being caring about other people, being proud of the country. And it's forgiveness. It's not holding grudges on anything-I mean, where's that going to get you? -Natalie Villafranca, 14, in Texas (born in Dallas)

Being American means protection by the law. Anyone can say whatever they want and, even if I don't agree with them, they're still protected by the law it's my job to enforce. That's their freedom. That's their right. -Sean Larkin, 40, sergeant with Tulsa Police Department's gang unit in Tulsa, Oklahoma (born in Virginia)

Being American is red, white and blue and being free. It doesn't matter what language you speak; if you're born in America, you're still American. No matter what you look like, no matter what. -Sebastien de la Cruz, 12, student who gained attention, and backlash, when he sang the national anthem during the 2013 NBA finals in a mariachi outfit (born and lives in San Antonio)

I want all girls, especially girls of color, to know that they can be a part of science. And more than that, they can be leaders in science. I want them to know that, because I know that I am America. That I am science. I'm just the part that people refuse to recognize. -Taylor R., 13, speaking about her ambitions at the March for Science in April 2017

The following excerpts are from other Americans discussing what they think it means to "be American." Among these voices are historians and writers who think about this topic a lot, as well as individuals from other walks of life who participated in a discussion for the documentary film A More Perfect Union.

Precisely because we are not a people held together by blood, no one knows who an American is except by what they believe. It's important that we do know our history, because our history is the source of our Americanness. -Historian Gordon Wood

When people wrote "All men are created equal," they really meant men; but they didn't mean any other men except white men who owned land. That's what they meant. But because the ideas are powerful, there's no way that they could get away with holding to that. It's not possible when you have an idea that's as powerful and as revolutionary as a country founded on the idea that just because you're in the world, just because you're here, you have a right to certain things that are common to all humanity. That's really what we say in those documents. The idea that we begin the Constitution with, "We, the People" . . . even though they didn't mean me! They had no idea I'd ever want to make a claim on that. And they'd have been horrified if they'd known that any of us would. But you can't let that powerful an idea out into the world without consequences. -Writer Rosemary Bray

The American Dream has no meaning for me. What it was founded on, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, in many ways I feel are used as billy clubs against minorities and cultural minorities, whether they be gay, or different in any way from the norm in this country. I, for example, don't think I'd like to go to California because of what I look like. I could be pulled over and carded, and I would have to prove my ancestry. And look how long my family has been in northern New Mexico. Ten to twelve generations! -Vicente Martinez

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In 2014, New York Times reporter Damien Cave traveled the length of highway I-35, which runs south to north through the middle of the United States, for his "The Way North" project. Along the way, he asked 35 people, "What does it mean to be American?" These are some of their answers.

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an American Indian of North America or South America; a native or inhabitant of North America or South America; a native or inhabitant of the U.S. : a U.S. citizen... See the full definition