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June 29, 2026 — 11:30am
In 1788, the year before he assumed the presidency, George Washington wrote a letter to the radical Dutch Mennonite minister Francis Adrian Van der Kemp, welcoming him to the United States: “I had always hoped that this land might become a safe and agreeable asylum to the virtuous and persecuted part of mankind, to whatever nation they might belong.”
This notion of America as a refuge for the oppressed has waxed and waned over our country’s history, and has obviously never been absolute. (Washington’s concern for the “persecuted part of mankind” coexisted, somehow, with his ownership of slaves.)
But it still represents what is best about the US. The idea expressed in Washington’s letter has, to varying degrees, been woven through America’s culture since its inception. As much as some of the white nationalists in the Republican Party would like to deny it, the US is, as John F. Kennedy put it, a nation of immigrants, and has often been better than any other country in the world at integrating newcomers and benefiting from their energy and talents.
In his two-volume work Democracy in America, published in 1835 and 1840, Alexis de Tocqueville attributed America’s democratic character to its immigrant makeup. “It may be said that on leaving the mother country that emigrants had, in general, no notion of superiority one over another,” he wrote. “The happy and powerful do not go into exile, and there are no surer guarantees of equality among men than poverty and misfortune.”
More than a half-century later, Emma Lazarus’ poem The New Colossus, echoing the aspiration expressed in Washington’s letter, was affixed to the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, welcoming the refugees and fortune seekers landing on America’s shores: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
There has, of course, always been a nativist countertradition to this spirit of openness, one with its own long history. Ten years after Washington’s letter to Van der Kemp, John Adams signed the Alien Enemies Act, which gave the president power to detain and deport non-citizens, and which remains in effect today.
It’s easy to tick through moments when America was seized by xenophobic hostility, from the anti-Catholic Know Nothings in the mid-19th century to Donald Trump today. But Trump’s pinched and cruel conception of America shouldn’t blot out the more generous and cosmopolitan ideas that have long been foundational to the nation.
By the time I was being taught American history in school, Lazarus’ words had become part of America’s civic religion, the catechism of what at the time seemed like a consensus faith. Republicans and Democrats alike were proud that anyone could become an American, and that almost the whole of humanity was represented in our country.
“We lead the world because, unique among nations, we draw our people – our strength – from every country and every corner of the world,” said Ronald Reagan. “And by doing so, we continuously renew and enrich our nation.”
Today, this vision is under siege by a president who dehumanises immigrants in fascist terms and is building a nationwide network of squalid internment camps. But the vision is not dead. In 2025, New York City elected the latest in a succession of immigrant mayors. “New York will remain a city of immigrants, a city built for immigrants, powered by immigrants. And as of tonight, led by an immigrant,” New York mayor Zohran Mamdani said in his victory speech. It’s the American way.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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