Walking into a chic French restaurant on the Riviera, I discover a crowd singing, quite passionately, to John Denver’s ballad of the Blue Ridge, “Take me Home, Country Roads”: 

“Country roads, take me home
To the place I belong
West Virginia, mountain mama
Take me home, country roads”

To my surprise, tears come quickly beneath my sunglasses. This motley, jet-setting crew of French, Italians, Brits, Germans, Lithuanians, and Russians might not know what they are singing, but this quintessentially American song resonates.

There is something about being in France that seems to fill me with patriotism. Not quite sure what it is, but I’m struck that last year, around this time, in the same area of France, I had a similar moment, a surge of patriotism. 

I am unabashedly patriotic. I may be a swirl of European and South American bloodlines, but I am American. This is a quintessentially American story. We were all originally something else. And for some of us, our American story began so recently that we could choose to identify as something else. But we don’t. We choose to be American.

It is this impulse, this desire to be American, that is the power of our country. I think of the classmates and friends I’ve had through college and multiple graduate schools, the most talented members of their generation, who chose to come to our country for their education. And who desperately want to stay. 

With all the choices in the world, they want to stay here. They want to be part of our country, our culture. They are willing to leave every person they have ever known behind to make a new life in America. For those who I have known, it’s not because they are desperate. They have thrived — and they would thrive wherever they landed. Yet they want to be in America. 

Why? Ask them and they’ll tell you. It’s because of our culture. Because we value individuality. Because they are free, and encouraged to be themselves. To think and act and do for themselves. Because they don’t have to conform. Because our culture values and celebrates success. Because Americans applaud them as they thrive. Because people in America work hard and want to achieve big things. Because in America, people dream big dreams.

I recently sat next to a college classmate at a wedding. He is a Black man born in Africa. He attended our nation’s top undergraduate and graduate schools and then spent a decade working in finance in the United States until the immigration system refused to renew his H1B visa. Forced to leave, he decided to move to Denmark.

Oooo, the others at our table cooed when they heard he lived in Copenhagen. Amazing, right? Best place in the world to live, right? He looked uncomfortable, and then he decided to forge ahead. Actually … no, he said. The Danish are racist. Cold and exclusive. The glass ceiling  there is obvious. The pressure to conform is overwhelming.

He missed America. Here, my friend insisted, it’s different. There are so many different types of people that there is room for everybody. And people here want you to succeed. They encourage you, help you, applaud, celebrate you. 

I take enormous pride from every single person who wants to come to our great country and make a life. It simply fills me with pride. It moves me to tears, just like hearing a crowd of jet-setting internationals singing their hearts out about West Virginia does. 

So this Fourth of July, I will not be joining the crowds of people saying “America doesn’t deserve a birthday party.” Instead, I will be re-reading the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, to myself, to my family, to my friends, and especially to my young daughter.

I will be reflecting on freedom and what it means and meant, to all Americans, old and new. And I will be thinking of the very many who don’t have freedom or rights, and how their deep desire to join our ranks reminds us of who we really are.