The oldest american "citizens" are merely 250yo. Like the country.
My point being, everyone in America is more or less an "immigrant" if you go back enough on their family tree, but the Native Americans.
My point being, everyone in America is more or less an "immigrant" if you go back enough on their family tree, but the Native Americans.
There was the German ethnicity, and a mosaic of Germanic languages.
People often laugh about the Holy Roman Empire (mostly people who have not studied it) but it did actually serve as a distinct legal and cultural tradition for much the area that is now Germany (and more).
The language are different but not that different, with some effort you could understand each other. Many Germans from different parts fought together in mercenary bands or for Holy Roman Empire armies.
During the Revolution in the 1850 they tried to establish a unified Germany, so clearly the idea had wide recognition by then. You don't have movement like that spring up out of nowhere. After the Napoleonic war, German Confederation was a very recognized and understood fact.
Sure if was not fully 'unified' but neither is French or Spanish culture.
- Peter H. Wilson, The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europe’s History
- Helmut Walser Smith, Germany: A Nation in Its Time
But again you can continue with trying to make it seem as if everything is equal to everything else.
I'll leave you with this little thought experiment. If we put a northen German, a Swiss German and a Spaniard in a room, how long will it take for the two germans to realize they have more in common with each other than the spaniard?
Switzerland is actually quite different from Germany.
In the end Prussia ate Germany
And by that logic even many native Americans are immigrants. The Apache and Sioux people were living up in canada by the Great lakes near the time Spaniards were on the continent and then started migrating south westward. Not to even mention all of the natives who were forcibly moved out of their original places or fled due to war/famine/etc
American culture is undeniably real. American values and beliefs likewise.
Is the only thing that decides an ethnicity how far back your ancestors have been procreating within a country’s current borders?
Culture and values is a better delineator, and it is pretty undeniable that America has a distinct culture and value set.
Personally I think it's one of the strengths of this country that a first generation immigrant can come here and become an American. I don't think this is very common around the world.
Large numbers of people report their ancestry simply as "American."
I would actually argue this is the origin of a lot of political divisiveness in the US. It also sort of boils down to the "America as an immigrant/proposition nation" vs "America as a settler nation" debate. The former seems to be ascendant in the past few decades but it's definitely not consensus.
I don't think you are disagreeing with the parent commenter as much as you think. The clear belief statement you are making and not considering your ancestry is a pretty core value of Americans (and one I like) that is not seen in other countries.
Most countries in the world automatically default to "my ancestors were X so I am X, if someone else's ancestors were Y then they are Y, no matter how many generations or how illogical this is". Example: people keep commenting how many players of African descent there are on the French men's soccer team. No one cares or talks about the ancestry of the players on the USMNT.
Well, except for the people who didn’t have any choice.
Your data and percentage, is very wrong. America has significant Black and Indigenous (usually referred to as Indian or Native) populations. Around 15% Black and 3% Indigenous. Combined, they make up around 18% of the US population, with wild and vigorous arguments they are even a greater percentage than that (20% or so).
1.4% of the U.S. population is "American Indian and Alaska Native alone". 2.9% is "alone or in combination with another race" per the 2020 census.
I have no idea what you're going on about.
Being multiracial, and of indigenous ancestry, does not necessarily mean or always count as immigrant. It is nebulous. No definitive conclusions, in regards to immigration, is made about those of mixed and indigenous ancestry. Speaking of mixed ancestry, the US has a very significant percentage in that category, from both the census and DNA testing.
There are also Canadian and Mexican indigenous people, who refute or argue about immigrant status, regardless of their present citizenship. Making the argument that their people were already in America or pushed out of their lands.
Immigrants go through a set immigration process, where they make a voluntary move to a new country. A huge portion of the American population were not immigrants, but were rather subject to involuntary migration (aka slavery), going as far back as 1526 (hundreds of years before the USA was created). Thus a better term would arguably be "migrants" (without distinguishing between voluntary and involuntary).
> And that is what binds them together... they all seperated from the old world... The us is a phyle of choice and you must have made that choice...
It is a false dichotomy or representation, that America is about those who are indigenous or not, or old world choice for the new.
[1]: https://lithub.com/dont-call-slaves-immigrants/ (Don't Call Slaves "Immigrants")
[2]: https://www.thewitnessinc.org/blog/african-slaves-not-immigr... (African Slaves Were Not 'Immigrants')
[3]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/03/09/... (Slaves weren’t immigrants. They were property.)
Also what's the point of making "immigrant" and "migrant" apply to different groups of people? This seems like the worst way to make the distinction.
Edit: This article has a pull quote of the definitions of 'immigrant' and 'slave' and both of them apply. This is not convincing.
Edit 2: You added "Slaves weren’t immigrants. They were property." The article isn't loading but I can respond to the title. Even by the logic of them not being people at the time of the slave trade, what, the idea is that when they became people again that resets their history and we act like they just appeared in the southern US? That seems far more disrespectful to me.
Also can you explain why "involuntary migrant" is fine but "involuntary immigrant" isn't? (I mean I'd probably default to stronger language than "involuntary" but let's stick with that for now.)