All American Families
- Carrie Stallings
- Feb 26
- 14 min read
Updated: Feb 27
“Your kids are so beautiful! Perfect little Nazis!” an older woman cooed as we sat down for dinner at the country club, noting my well-dressed, blond-headed children.
“Thank you,” I replied. Perfect little Nazis? Is that a good thing?
On another occasion, another nice dinner out, yet another older woman remarked, “You guys are the perfect all-American family!”
I knew she meant well, but her comment troubled me for a reason I couldn’t identify.
A short time later, I saw a Hispanic woman at Pizza Hut wearing a shirt that said, “Cálmate, gringa, I’m legal.” It means, “Relax, white lady, I’m legal.”
Ah. That’s what was bothering me. When the Hispanic woman was doing the same thing I was doing—eating dinner with her kids—she expected comments of a very different nature. People assume, based on how we look, that my family is quintessentially American and her family isn’t American at all.
As Donald Trump ramps up deportation and halts refugee resettlement in the name of putting America first, I find myself asking, what makes someone American? Is it how they look? Their actions and beliefs? Or is it a legal document declaring their citizenship?
Corn and Cotton
If we want to talk about national identity, we need a quick primer on our nation’s history, starting with the people who were here first.
The number of Indigenous populations has been debated over the centuries, but scholars today estimate that between ten and fifty million people lived in the Americas around 1500 CE. That number is close to the combined population of the Western European empires that sent settlers.
Archaeology from that period tells us about the Coahuiltecan people of the Lower Pecos region—modern-day southern Texas and northeastern Mexico. They outsmarted venomous snakes, coaxed food from poisonous plants, and left behind elaborate rock art detailing the depth of their spiritual and social lives.
Across the continent, archeology continues to reveal 2000 more years of native histories as vast and varied as the American terrain itself.
Shortly before Christopher Columbus arrived in the Caribbean islands (where the Ciboney, Arawak, and Carib peoples had lived for millennia) in 1492, many Indigenous groups were coming into increasing contact with one another. Their populations were growing and life was becoming more complex, with large sporting events and trade fairs. Diplomatic alliances were established, such as the Haudenosaunee Confederacy between five tribal nations in the Northeast and Great Lakes regions.
The version of U.S. history I learned as a kid painted colonization as noble pioneers defying all odds to bring civilization to a barren land sprinkled with savages. As more Indigenous voices have contributed to the narrative over the past few decades, the picture looks more like villainous white people ruthlessly destroying harmonious native societies. Which version you prefer depends on your heritage and, increasingly, your political party.
As always, the truth is more complicated.
Native people were innovative and clever yet had less advanced weapons than colonists. They subdued the land yet had a more symbiotic relationship with nature than colonists. Some native tribes were peaceful, some were violent, and most acted peacefully or violently depending on the situation. They made savvy, mutually beneficial deals with colonists yet were also frequently exploited by colonists.
Many were viewed by even the most noble settlers as subhuman. As Laura Ingalls Wilder said in a 1935 version of Little House on the Prairie, “…there were no people. Only Indians lived there.”
To be human means to be white, the Ingallses thought, as they took over land that had been occupied by humans for millennia.
(A reader complained about the offensive language in 1952. Wilder apologized, and subsequent versions changed “people” to “settlers.”)
Although there was conflict between Indigenous people and settlers, the conflict between French, English, and Spanish settlers dominated the scene. Indigenous people fought on all sides. Between 1500 and 1750, native populations were devastated. This devastation was due not only to violence but perhaps even more so to diseases like smallpox, measles, and tuberculosis brought by European settlers and their animals.
By the mid-1700s, European settlers and their descendants—who over nearly three centuries had intermingled with each other, with Inidgenous people, and with African slaves—had become frustrated with British rule. They declared their independence from England in 1776. Colonists resented being forced to fund Britain’s military exploits and wished to continue expanding westward into territory the British had promised to native tribes.
Like their European contemporaries, Africans came to America on ships, facing a perilous voyage and the hazards of an unfamiliar land. Unlike most European colonists, however, they came not of their own volition but under threat of death. It was not a journey toward freedom but toward oppression of the very worst kind.
Africans were first captured from the West African coast and brought as slaves to Puerto Rico in 1513 and eventually to Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619. In all, around 12 million Africans had been brought to the Americas as slaves by the time the slave trade ended in the 1860s. One to two million more died before reaching the Americas due to the inhumane conditions in which they were forced to travel.
The Jamestown slaves were technically indentured servants and worked alongside English indentured servants. But as English servants gained their freedom and were incorporated into society, Africans continued to live as slaves for another century, longer in many areas of the country.
To be human means to be white, thought the English settlers, as they profited from the forced labor of their African brothers and sisters.
The American claim of liberty rang hollow for the hundreds of thousands of African slaves living in the colonies just before the Revolutionary War. Thousands of African slaves sided with the British during the war because the British offered them freedom when the Americans did not.
Potatoes and Poorhouses
After the colonies won the war, British support was gone and America had to start manufacturing its own goods. Manpower was needed to take advantage of the Industrial Revolution and launch America onto the world economic stage.
Answering this call and fleeing poverty, famine, and hardship in their own lands, waves of Irish, Germans, British, and French began arriving in the 1830s. My great-great-great-great grandmother, Mary Rooney, left her home in Ireland at 30 years old and arrived in New York on the Brig Hibernia on June 27, 1836, about ten years before the devastating Irish Potato Famine.
By this time, people new to America were no longer called “settlers” but “immigrants.” Immigrant numbers skyrocketed into the millions during this period. New arrivals to the West Coast also took off around 1850, with immigrants coming from Asia, Latin America, Australia, and Europe.
In the north, many immigrants, like my family, headed to the Midwest to become farm laborers and work toward owning land.
The census records from this period fascinate me for many reasons, but one in particular: in the Race column, my ancestors always put “White.” They had come from places where nearly everyone was white and thus whiteness had no meaning. But they quickly figured out that without that “W,” they stood little chance of moving out of the boarding houses and poorhouses and into that coveted “Head of Household” status.
To be American means to be white, my ancestors thought, scrambling to make sure there was someone below them in the pecking order.
Whiteness was not a guarantee of success any more than it is today. But it was a prerequisite for becoming part of mainstream American society. Within a decade, these poor immigrants were naturalized citizens. Within a generation, they owned businesses and were respected members of their communities.
They often had live-in family members, servants, and boarders—family or friends who were a step behind them in the immigration process. Today, we call that “chain migration.”
In the turbulent period around the Civil War, “immigrant” defined not only those coming to America from other countries but also those moving westward from the original U.S. colonies. In the south, many Americans immigrated to northern Mexico, where indigenous people like the Olmecs and Mayans had blended with Spanish colonists to form the people group we think of today as Mexicans.
A memorable troupe of these “Texian” immigrants—William B. Travis, James Bowie, and Davy Crockett—lost to Mexican general Santa Anna at the Alamo. They were avenged two months later at the Battle of San Jacinto, and the Republic of Texas officially gained its independence from Mexico.
When Travis wrote his famous letter from the Alamo recruiting people to the Texian cause, he asked them to join “in the name of liberty, of patriotism & everything dear to the American character.” By this, he meant the freedom to settle the land, own slaves, and operate under a federalist rather than a centralized government.
Another wave of mass immigration to the United States occurred between 1890 and World War I. In addition to Germans, Irish, and British, people came from Sweden, Norway, Italy, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Lebanon, and Syria. It was during this wave that my paternal grandmother’s family began to arrive from Denmark and Norway.
The past century has seen waves of immigrants from all over the world, with the greatest numbers coming from Latin America and Asia in the post-World War II era.
Throughout the last several centuries, Americans and would-be Americans have continually wrestled with their identity as individuals, ethnic groups, and Americans.
Legal Citizenship
Rewind to 1776. Freshly minted Americans were trying to define what made someone an American without the long history of land-dwelling that had defined identity in Europe. In the shadow of the Revolutionary War, citizenship was primarily based on loyalty to the new American colonies.
The Naturalization Law, passed in 1798, stated that to become a citizen, one had to live in the United States for five years; give two years’ advance notice that he wished to become a citizen; swear to have lived in America for five years; renounce any foreign allegiances and titles; take an oath of loyalty; and prove to a court that he was “of good character, believed in the principles of the American Constitution, and [was] disposed to make positive contributions to the community.”
It all sounds very egalitarian and merit-based. Indeed it was, compared to many places. But it sounds less fair when you consider that this option was extended only to free-born white males and that “good character” was often directly tied to land ownership.
To be American means to be white and male, thought George Washington, as he presided over a population that was twenty percent Black and fifty percent female.
As America's ethnic makeup evolved dramatically between the early 1800s and today, people continuously tried to position themselves on the “in” side of American identity. For centuries, immigrants have done this by downplaying characteristics that call attention to their country of origin.
My Norwegian great-great-great grandfather, Baerenth Jensen, changed his name to Berns. It’s no John, but it’s more subtle than Baerenth.
Catholicism, with its emphasis on authority and hierarchy, was considered by many to be antithetical to American ideals about individual freedom. Thus, Catholic immigrants who arrived in large numbers between 1840 and 1860, primarily from Ireland, were unwelcome, distrusted, and despised by the Protestant American population.
The self-proclaimed “American Party” arose during this period, preaching the idea of nativism—that native-born people were more fit to be Americans than immigrants. Ironically, they did not include actual Native Americans in the native-born category. Party leaders wanted to extend the waiting period for citizenship to twenty-one years so that immigrants would have more time to develop the “character” necessary to become “real Americans.”
A few years later, as more Asian immigrants were arriving on the West Coast, Irish Americans found in them a fresh target to redirect popular vitriol away from themselves. Many did so mercilessly.
Denis Kearney was an Irish-born politician in California who rallied white citizens, particularly working-class, recently immigrated citizens, to his newly founded Workingmen’s Party in the late 1870s. Rather than appealing to broader working-class interests, he leaned into racial tensions, ending every speech with, “And whatever happens, the Chinese must go!”
To be American means to be white, Denis Kearney thought, hoping people would forget about his Irish heritage.
After the Civil War, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments established a new standard for what makes someone American: being born in America.
Birthright citizenship was great news for those who weren’t land-owning free-born white males. People tend to disregard politics when having sex, and little baby Americans began cropping up everywhere, often of African, Asian, or other non-Northern-European heritage.
These children were regarded by many as un-American for racial reasons or because their parents weren’t citizens or both. This tension has continued to play out over the last century and a half. Today, it’s the children of illegal immigrants from Latin America whose birthright citizenship is being questioned.
Through the turn of the century and World War I, race and country of origin continued to play a major role in who was allowed into the country. The Immigration Act of 1924 expressly limited immigrants from Asia and Southern and Eastern Europe. The not-so-secret intent of this act was to ensure that America remained a mostly white (Northern European) country.
To be American means to be white, Calvin Coolidge thought. But we’ll let the Mexicans work for us.
The 1924 act did not limit immigration from Latin America, as these immigrants met the massive labor needs of the agricultural sector during World War I and the 1920s. But when the Great Depression hit, many Americans blamed Mexican immigrants for taking American jobs. The federal government raised the head tax on Mexican immigrants and denied them visas, forcibly returning between 400,000 and 2,000,000 Mexicans and Mexican Americans to Mexico.
For most of the twentieth century, legal status was a moving target for immigrants. Immigration policies, both de jure and de facto, changed constantly. Ask any immigrant today about their experience trying to jump through the hoops of living and working in America legally, and you’ll find this is still true.
Like today, many Americans in the mid-1900s viewed immigrants as dangerous. Thus, they were willing to grant the government almost limitless power to keep what they viewed as bad people from bad countries out of the United States.
After World War I, Americans feared that the communist ideas that had fostered the Bolshevik Revolution were seeping into the U.S. via immigrants like Emma Goldman. Unable (or unwilling) to distinguish the real danger of anarchist bomb threats from the imagined danger of Russian ethnicity, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer organized raids in which thousands of Russian immigrants were unconstitutionally arrested and deported.
To be American means to be not Russian, thought A. Mitchell Palmer.
This phenomenon would play itself out again in Japanese internment camps during World War II. In the fever pitch of the Palmer Raids and Japanese internment camps, legal citizenship became less important than public perception about which people were “safe” and which people were “dangerous.” In the absence of accurate data and due legal process, that perception was often based almost entirely on ethnicity.
To be American means to be not Asian, thought Harry Truman.
During World War II, the U.S. began recruiting Mexican braceros (“those who work with their arms”) to fill American labor shortages. In exchange for their work, the U.S. provided the braceros with wages, food, and housing. The U.S. also tightened border security. This measure was welcomed by the Mexican government, which wanted to curb the flow of workers leaving Mexico.
However, American farms had more demand for labor than could be met by the braceros, and Mexicans continued to enter illegally to meet that demand. Following the Korean War in 1953, U.S. and Mexican authorities concerned about immigrant workers crossing the border illegally conceived a solution: Operation Wetback.
Operation Wetback forcibly deported hundreds of thousands of Mexican immigrants, many of whom were legal U.S. citizens. Its clumsy implementation constituted severe human rights violations, along with civil rights violations for the many who were legal U.S. citizens yet were deported anyway because of their Mexican ethnicity.
With the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act (or Hart-Cellar Act) in 1965, race and country of origin finally began to take a back seat in determining who was eligible for American citizenship. The new system prioritized relatives of current U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents.
Maybe ethnicity is a silly way to determine citizenship, thought Congress.
There were still per-country numerical caps, including, for the first time, caps on Latin American countries. Refugees were given preference. Finally, a labor certification requirement was established. If a U.S. employer wanted to hire an immigrant worker, he had to get official certification that no qualified native-born workers were available for the position.
The Hart-Cellar act launched the modern era of immigration. For the next two decades, many people continued to come to the U.S. from Mexico and other Latin American countries. Most did not plan to stay permanently. They moved with the agricultural cycles, staying long enough to save up money, then returning home to their families until the next working season.
Tightened border control in the 1970s had the unintended effect of motivating Mexican laborers to stay in the U.S. permanently, as it made it more difficult for them to re-enter the country once they had left. Net migration—the number of people entering the U.S. and staying—increased.
By the mid-1980s, U.S. officials decided something more must be done to curb illegal immigration. Recognizing that immigration was mainly fueled by labor demands from U.S. employers, Congress (under Ronald Reagan) passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) in 1986.
This act established consequences for employers who knowingly hired illegal immigrants. It also gave legal status to most immigrants living illegally in the country at the time.
Despite the IRCA, numbers of illegal immigrants continued to rise, growing from 5 million in 1986 to around 12 million today. (This number peaked at 12.2 million in 2007, near the end of George W. Bush’s presidency.)
When Donald Trump began his presidential campaign in 2015, he tapped into old attitudes of race-based immigration policy that had lain somewhat dormant for fifty years. His campaign promises for his first term included a ban on immigrants from majority Muslim countries and a border wall to protect Americans from an “invasion” of Latin American immigrants.
Good Americans
American history does not give us a definitive path for what makes someone American, let alone how to handle immigration policy. Each generation has had to decide how to balance their economic, safety, social, and moral interests to determine who can become an American.
Our country has never been formed by people respecting borders, but by people pushing across them in search of better lives.
We want neat categories: Legal or illegal. Citizen or visitor. American or foreigner. But the practical realities of geography, genetics, policymaking, and law enforcement have always defied these categories.
There is a popular saying in the bi-national community of El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico: “I didn’t cross the border; the border crossed me.”
In the Southwest, our history is firmly intertwined with Mexico’s. Indigenous people, Spanish settlers, English settlers, and German settlers have all contributed to making Texas what it is.
To live in Texas is to know that Texan culture is just as much Hispanic as it is white. My city is half-white, half-Hispanic. Eighteen percent of the population is biracial. We have Mexican carnicerias (butcher shops) and paleterias (ice cream shops). We know that Dia de los Muertos is sweet, not creepy.
Hispanic people are our friends, our neighbors, our teachers, our students, our co-workers, our doctors, our nurses, our librarians, our DPS agents, our cashiers, our in-laws, and our pastors.
If we look to history, you know who makes good Americans? People who really want to be Americans. Those people will break laws, change laws, move to land that doesn’t belong to them, defend the land they live on, have babies with people their parents hate, and then work their fingers to the bone making a good life for those babies. They’ll also harvest each other’s crops, march for each other’s right to vote, and drive their fishing boats down flooded streets to rescue each other off of rooftops.
The story that immigrants are the enemy has always been told and has never been true.
If you deny that that story is still being told today, I’d love to share with you stories of my Hispanic friends—who have legal status—who are justifiably terrified that they are going to be unjustly deported.
Claiming that “the rule of law” requires hamfisted border control and internal enforcement policies is not a wise approach to immigration—especially when those enforcing the law refuse to abide by it themselves. It is a political ploy designed to appeal to our basest fears.
The rule of law regarding immigration and citizenship in the U.S. has always shifted like the tides. At times, it has been fair and effective. More often, it has been staggeringly unjust and incompetent.
Borders are important. Laws are vital. The idea that wanting secure borders and orderly immigration means we have to deport 12 million people, stop letting vetted refugees in, and foster a general distrust of immigrants is entirely false. We don't have to let politicians bait us with this nonsense.
In my next article, we will discuss how immigration laws and enforcement affected our country during the Bush, Obama, Trump 1.0, and Biden administrations, specifically regarding the economy and crime. We’ll also take a look at the changes Trump 2.0 has proposed and begun. I hope this will help us become thoughtful, well-informed, compassionate leaders in the immigration conversation.
More importantly, I hope it will help America become more strong, free, and fabulous for all American families, not just “all-American families” with perfect little Nazi children.
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