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such as “John Brown,” “James Smith,” or “Mary Johnson,” others would still be able to discern that they are not “truly American” and must have some foreign ancestor. In the case of white immigrants, however, it would be harder to tell whether they are foreign-born by looking at appearances.

Samuel Tinsing Mok, a former Deputy Secretary of the US Department of Labor, once asked his audience in an interview, “Who are we, and who do we want to be? Are we Chinese Americans, or American Chinese? Are we Chinese in America with an American address and an American passport, or are we an American with Chinese cultural heritage?” His point was that identity all depends on personal perspective.

Mok describes the U.S. as a salad. Contradictory to popular opinion, America is more of a salad than a melting pot. In a melting pot, the ingredients are mushed together to form one dish – the contents are hardly distinguishable from each other, and the flavors blend into one. An immigrant is mixed and molded in the pot until he or she finally becomes like everyone else in mainstream society.

However, the analogy of the “Great American Melting Pot” was only effective until 1965, when the United States witnessed a boom in immigrants of Asian and other non-Northwestern European descent. In a salad bowl, however, all the contents are vibrant and colorful. Each ingredient provides different flavors and textures which work together to form the salad as a whole. You can easily distinguish one element from another, and each bite is delicious and special. 

Defining oneself as American has much less to do with a piece of paper and much more with one's heart and mind. “American” is not a restrictive term, but a word that encompasses native-born Americans and immigrants, people with easy-to-spell names and people with difficult-to-spell names, people who look alike and people who look different. So, what does "American" mean? Not  an American, just American. Like American football or American determination. I know I'm not American-born, but am I at least still American?

Bibliography:

2021. How the United States Immigration System Works. September 14. https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/how-united-states-immigration-system-works.

2021. Immigration to the United States. December 1.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_States#Charts.

Lei, Serena, and Cary Lou. 2019. Part of Us: A Data-Driven Look at Children of Immigrants. Edited by Liza Hagerman. March 14. https://www.urban.org/features/part-us-data-driven-look-children-immigrants.

National Origins Formula. November 16. Accessed December 10, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Origins_Formula.

n.d. QUICK IMMIGRATION STATISTICS: UNITED STATES.

https://www.ilctr.org/quick-us-immigration-statistics/.