Sadiq S BhatWashington, DC — More than fifty years ago, an Iranian engineering student landed in New York City carrying little more than a suitcase and an address scribbled onto paper.
He built a life quickly. Suburban house. Small business. Children through university. By the late 1980s, he had become the kind of immigrant success story America likes telling about itself.
His granddaughter, Ava Tavakoli, lives a different version of the same country.
She studied public health in Washington, DC. She rents with roommates in Maryland. Her generation measures stability differently. Carefully. Monthly.
When she speaks about her grandfather’s America, she speaks with warmth, like someone recalling a time of possibility that shaped a family’s path.
“Grandpa believed if you worked hard enough things would eventually settle into place,” Tavakoli says quietly. “I think people my age don’t assume that anymore.”
Still, she insists she does not see herself anywhere else.
“There’s a reason people are still trying to come here. Even now.”
Outside, Washington is already preparing for the celebrations. Barricades near the Mall. Tourists in baseball caps and shorts moving through humid streets. Helicopters overhead. The city is rehearsing patriotism.
Freedom 250
The anniversary arrives at an uneasy moment for the country itself. America remains wealthier and militarily stronger than any rival. It still pulls top global talent, students, workers and migrants from every continent.
Immigrants often notice these changes first because they compare America against somewhere else, against memory itself.
Khalid Akhtar, a retired Pakistani-American postal worker in New York, remembers arriving in the late 1980s after hearing stories from relatives already in Brooklyn. He worked grocery shifts first, then factory work, then the postal service for nearly three decades.
What stayed with him was not simply the money. It was anonymity.
Back home in Karachi, he says, your name often arrives before you do. Family background, class, neighbourhood. America felt different because nobody knew where to place him yet.
“You could become somebody else here,” he says. “That was the attraction.”
His son became a doctor in Texas. The optimism remained.
Akhtar says he still feels a quiet gratitude toward the country that allowed him to build a life from almost nothing.
“I originally hail from Jodia Bazar in Karachi; there were many Makranis, and it was a simpler time, but when I arrived here I thought if I worked hard enough, nobody could stop me,” he says. “Mostly, that turned out to be true.”
He pauses for a moment before adding another thought.
“America is not easy anymore. Maybe it never was. But it still gives people room.”
Admiration, attachment and quiet realism
Across immigrant communities, that sentiment repeats itself in different forms. Admiration mixed with fatigue. Attachment mixed with realism.
For second-generation immigrants, the relationship with America is usually less dramatic and more conditional.
An Indian-American software engineer in Seattle, Jatin Sasun, describes loving the country while understanding it more critically than his parents ever did.
They arrived during the technology boom believing almost entirely in upward mobility. Their son inherited the opportunities alongside the contradictions.
“My parents saw America as escape,” Sasun says. “People my age see the trade-offs too.”
He says his parents still speak about the US with the excitement of newcomers.
“For them, this country opened every door,” he says. “For my generation, some of those doors feel heavier. But they’re still there.”
That shift appears across immigrant communities now.
The first generation often speaks about sacrifice and arrival. Their children speak about precarity, identity and cost. Not because they reject America, but because they grew up inside its systems rather than chasing entry into them.
Still compelling
And still the pull remains extraordinary.
Millions continue to apply for US visas every year despite immigration restrictions and the rising cost of living. The American idea travels well even as the country itself continues to change.
For many abroad, especially across parts of Asia, the Middle East and Africa, the US still represents movement. Reinvention. A place where biography does not trap your destiny.
“When immigrants land here, they are nervous,” Akhtar says. “Then six months later they’re making plans.”
He laughs.
“That belief is very American. The idea that next year can be bigger than this year.”
Not all immigrant stories resolve neatly.
Rising rents, healthcare costs and political division have reshaped the immigrant debate in modern America. Some younger families speak openly about burnout. Others quietly consider leaving for Canada, Europe or the Gulf.
But few describe their relationship with America in simple terms.
Mateo Alvarez was born in Guadalajara and moved to Los Angeles in the late 1990s.
He now runs a small garment supply business in the Fashion District, spending long days moving among wholesalers, delivery vans, and cramped storefronts where multiple languages bounce through the aisles.
He says the cost of staying afloat has changed for many like him, adding that health insurance feels fragile, and even success can feel temporary.
“You can still build a life here,” Alvarez says. “That part is true.”
“But a lot of immigrants now feel like they’re running just to remain in the same place.”
Back in the Washington, DC suburbs, Tavakoli says her grandfather understood the country better than people assume.
“He knew life here was not easy,” she says. “But he thought the struggle would eventually return something.”
She says older immigrants often carried a deeper patience than younger Americans do now.
“My grandfather came from instability,” she says. “So even imperfect stability felt meaningful to him.”
Arguing with America
As dusk settles over Washington, DC, ahead of the July 4 celebrations, flags hang from hotels. Police have blocked most intersections near the Mall. Vendors are selling red, white, and blue souvenirs in the heavy summer heat.
The fireworks this July 4 will celebrate 250 years of the United States.
An anniversary wrapped in spectacle, military symbolism and nostalgia.
Yet the story of modern America is also inseparable from the millions who arrived from somewhere else and helped shape it.
About 51 million immigrants live in the US, roughly 1 in 7 residents, according to recent Census-based estimates.
2025 estimates place the foreign-born population at about 51.9 million, or about 15.4% of the US population, with an overwhelming majority of them legal.
“People still come here believing in a future,” Alvarez says. “They just arrive knowing it won’t be simple.”
For other immigrant families, the country has always been less a finished idea than an ongoing negotiation.
Many are still arguing with America in one form or another.
Most are still staying.
“I think this country gives people the chance to build something meaningful,” Tavakoli says. “That’s why so many of us are still here.”
