Advanced Essay #3: National Identity and My Mother, by Felix Schafroth Doty

As the son of an immigrant, I always feel like a little something special. I don't have the right to; I didn't brave a new world, leave my family behind, and live a new life. I have been settled peacefully in America for my whole life, and I always have felt connected to America, but I've also felt connected to Germany. My mother spent a year abroad, and spent that year in America from Germany. That same year, my father spent his year abroad in Germany from America. They got married and attended college in the US, eventually settling down in sweet, sweet Philadelphia, and raising a family. Now my mother has lived here for more time than she has lived in Germany, and I wanted to investigate how she feels about national identity.

My mother has always seemed like the perfect immigrant (I know this sounds strange, but let me explain). Theodore Roosevelt said “Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or leave the country.” My mother learned English within that time, and after 20+ years of living here, she has barely the whiff of an accent, and can speak English flawlessly and fluently. Often times I will forget a word (in English!) and she will remind me what that word is. She came here legally, got a green card, and kept it, meaning she didn't commit a SINGLE crime. How many Americans can say that much after 20+ years? No DUIs, no pirating music or movies, she's not a rapist or a murderer as Donald Trump would like to suggest. She obtained her citizenship just last month. She has been the model immigrant.

She spoke with me recently to help with this project, and I asked her to describe how she felt about national identity, being someone with multiple nationalities and coming from multiple national backgrounds and experiences. She told me about how she will always be a German, even though she now has both a German citizenship and a US citizenship. She said she was reluctant to get the US citizenship, and would only become a US citizen if she could keep her German citizenship. A quote from Ronald Reagan perfectly applies to this situation: “[A man said] you can go to live in France, but you can’t become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Italy, but you can’t become a German, an Italian. He went through Turkey, Greece, Japan and other countries. But he said anyone, from any corner of the world, can come to live in the United States and become an American.” - Ronald Reagan. She is still, in her heart, a German, and can never give that up or become something or someone else.

I also spoke with her about her “belonging,” meaning how she felt in the new world of America, and whether she felt like she belonged. She immediately snapped back, “Never. I never feel at home, like I belong.” She then went on to talk about her recent trip back to Germany to see her mother one last time, and then to arrange and go to her funeral. She said how, even after all these years of being away from home, she felt at home in her mother’s house. We all feel that way when we come home, like no matter what, we feel welcome. My mother has never really, truly belonged among Americans, but when she went home she felt like she belonged. Her national identity will forever and always be German, and while she feels at home in our house, with us, she really feels at home at her childhood home, in her childhood country, with all of the faces she has known since childhood.