Roots? We are all immigrants or a product of immigrants. One generation or many. Doesn't matter.
We need more immigrants. We are aging out. Our birth rate is below replacement.
In Florida there are 55 applicants for every 100 job openings.
We need hard working new Americans. And there are thousands applying for the positions.
Not "open borders". But an expanded system of welcoming those displaced by the Climate Crisis and thuggery.
They need a home. We need workers in almost every category. It's win, win.
Roots? Our family is Northern European blended with Ashkenazi and Sephardic - all were immigrants who sought a new life. Grateful and welcoming we should be.
The best system I have found thus far is an "immigration tarrif," of sorts. The idea is that immigration would be much more open than it is now, the only caveat that one would have to pay a fee for entry. This fee would begin from zero for young people and increase as they get older. The idea is that younger people will pay taxes longer and place less strain on pension/healthcare systems.
I hope I may be permitted to change the question slightly to 'how do you define your home' - it is the question which I grappled with years ago, after I had been living in Scotland for a few years. What was my home? Was it Scotland? Or was it the 'other place', the place which I had left behind?
I found this a really difficult question until I realised that I did not have one 'home', I had two. One 'home' in was in the sense of the German phrase 'Heimat', which was the village back home, where my grandparents had been courting and my great-grandparents had been buried in the local cemetery. I still have a connection to that place, it feels to me as if my bones belong there. It is home.
But equally Scotland is home. I live here, I am part of the people of Scotland, I belong here. It is my 'home' in the sense of the French phrase 'chez moi', my place and where I hang up my hat of an evening.
Once I had defined 'home' along those two (!) lines, my sense of identity became clear(er) to me and I have felt settled ever since.
You remind me of a time in my early adulthood when I would travel “home” to New England for Thanksgiving, then after several days of intense family closeness, be equally grateful to return “home” to my independent life. I remember the delight when I realized that on both flights I was homeward bound.
I've traced much of my ancestry. My father's side of the family (from Wales) has been in the U.S. since 1821, my mother's side (from Germany) since the middle of the 18th century. My father's mother's family (from England) settled in Virginia not long after Jamestown. There are of course many branches in anyone's family tree and from tracing my own I find that my roots go back to many countries and cultures. I subscibe to E Pluribus Unum and the idea of an American melting pot. I have been forged in the flame of Liberty's torch.
My parents, sister, and I moved to the US from Sweden in 1975. My sister currently lives in Greece, having moved away from the US in 1990 to marry an Englishman. I have a HUGE and close extended family in Sweden. All of them are wondering what the heck is happening over here. I became a US citizen after I married and had two kids. In 2017 I applied for and got my dual citizenship for Sweden, just in case.
I wish my family had the ability to apply for dual citizenship...somewhere. Sadly, we've all been here since the 19th c. so we don't qualify. I worry about my children and fear that the day may come when they would be safer outside of the US. It breaks my heart.
Steven, my family, the Armistead family has roots in England and Germany centuries ago, and the Armisteads came to America, or what became America, in the early 1600s. The family settled in Virginia, according to records. Armistead men fought in the Revolutionary War, the war of 1812, and various other wars to protect the colonies. They also fought in the Civil War for the South. General Lewis Addison Armistead died in Pickett's Charge in Gettysburg. My very distant relative was Robert E. Lee. Where this is going is: my family owned slaves, were racists, and my grandfather, John Calhoun Armistead, the man for whom I am named, was in the KKK in Alabama. My father was born in Alabama in 1889. The Armistead family moved from Alabama to Texas in the 1890s. My family has been ultra conservative Republicans for many decades...until I and my only living sister (now 85) came along. We reject the bigotry and racism and live as liberals who believe in America, our democracy, and equality for all regardless of skin color. Armistead roots are not very nice roots, but it is what I have. I look forward, not back to the bad roots.
On my mom's side, I am Tlingit-Alaska Native. While I did not have the privilege of growing up in SE Alaska, she did. Klawock, specifically. But conscripted boarding school was also part of her experience-Wrangell Institute. In looking over the records-Federal Census from her family, before she was born and after, "Thlinghet," the old English spelling for my Tribe was listed as my maternal grandparents first language and for her siblings. She is the youngest of 8. My maternal grandfather was of the Naisteidi-Flicker clan. My maternal grandmother-was Gaanaxadi Marten clan. We follow our matralineal line so that Tlingit clan is mine, and my sister's and my sister's children as well.
On my dad's side- Dutch. My paternal grandfather emigrated from the Netherlands with his family when he was a baby from the province Gelderland. My paternal grandmother was 2nd generation Dutch, but her parents were both from the Netherlands. They settled in South Holland Illinois. My parents met in Seattle when my dad was stationed at McChord air force base (Now known as Joint Base Lewis McChord).
It's an interesting experience to be both Indigenous and from European roots. I think Americans in general are committed to disappearing contemporary Tribal experiences and don't actually SEE Native people unless we match their expectations.
Born in the US. Paternal side totally English. Maternal side English and German. I left the US in 1973 to marry my Dutch love. Have lived here now 50 years. Don’t feel like an American anymore. With what has been happening in the US, I don’t even recognize America anymore. I’m now more Dutch and European.
My roots are in the Mayflower Cert I have framed here. They are in the Am Revolution one that says my ancestors fought to make this land free. Some of my ancestors put together a large bound book of pictures and stories of others who came here after and added to this land. I take a lot of p;ride in the fact I am one of the original colonists here. When people ask, will I move to another country if Trump and Republicans take over, I say, NO, I will fight the same way my ancestors did, to get our Democracy, freedom, liberties back. I refuse to give it to a man, whose Grandfather was kicked out of Germany as a coward and cannot go back. His Father and he refusing to rent to blacks and other minorities. A vulgar man who looks down on Minorities, muslims, Mexicans, disabled, women , POWs, Gold star families, etc. NEVER will I relinquish what my ancestors started to men like this. Stay and help me fight.
We didn’t have to search Ancestry. From the same island in Greece back to a 14th century Genoese soldier. All in baptismal records in local churches. Mothers blond and blue eyed family from the same island, folklore says they were exiles from Byzantium. Who knows? Still I’m American. Child and grandchild of immigrants who sought a wider life, who chose to fight as Americans in war, and one who told me when I asked why he chose to raise us here looked taken aback and said, “because this is the greatest country on earth.” I think it is, wounded or not by racism - which it is - but a patient worth saving.
Your experience in Berlin mirrored mine when I went to Germany to find my great grandfather’s school in Koblenz. I couldn’t help but look around me and think about the older people in the streets, wondering what they had done during the war. My own father was born in Fredericksburg, TX, where the entire town was German—he grew up speaking German in a one room school house before heading to the Naval Academy on a congressional appointment. (He took English as a “foreign” language.) My mother’s family migrated south to New England from the french parts of Canada. The sense of displacement and looking for my home country is always in the background, even as I identify as a citizen of the world. As Joyce Vance signs each post, “we are all in this together”.
What a beautiful essay about a quintessentially American story. Thank you. I’m the product of the earliest migrations from England as well as the potato famine of Ireland. I also have a great great great grandmother who was Native American. My America includes all.
I’m an American with roots all over. I’m a Californian with roots back to Vermont, Maine, Quebec, Italy, Ireland, Scotland. I have spent years in Cyprus, Texas, Ohio, Nevada. I’m a citizen of this tiny rock spinning around a big unknown. I am an American whose ancestors fought in the Indian wars (and I carry native dna) revolution, 1812, civil war, the two world wars. I am an American. So be it.
My roots are soooo complicated. Child (English Birth Certificate) of a brutish hillbilly sailor & German Au Pair in London in 1953.
My father's family was traced back to the American Revolution and a German mercenary who took up the offer of land by the colonists to switch sides & fought for the colonies. He settled in the former penal colony of GA where the family became more Scots-Irish than German. They fought for the Union during the Civil War which forced them to move to another part of the GA mountains because the neighbors were no longer friendly.
They now live in Appalachian "hollers" & prance about in red hats claiming victimhood.
My mother's family was a middle-class family owning a "Gasthaus" in south Germany. They were very quiet about the past. My step-grandfather was a panzer driver suffering crippling wounds at Stalingrad.
My real grandfather (the bouncer before the war), I learned at age 16, was an SS sergeant on the Eastern Front. He survived in a gulag for 7 years before he was able to leave following the war. He had been declared dead years before so my grandmother was in the process of remarrying. They divorced to keep it legal I guess. I only met him once when I was 4 and living with my mother in Germany.
I got back to the states thru a kidnapping by my father when he convinced my mother to bring me for a visit. I was taken, naturalized, and raised by his family until my mother rejoined us. He made her suffer psychologically for it the rest of her short life.(1931-1979)
He's gone too but I never forgave him for that.
So, English Birth Certificate, German mother, Scots-Irish father with a German name.
More at home in England than what has become the wild-west shootout country we have become. Europeans are getting travel notices by their governments about coming here and the danger of being shot!
I find it hard to recognize the "shithole country" we became starting with Ronald Reagan and the return of gunboat diplomacy.
Some years ago, not sure when, I started thinking of the UK as my roots rejecting both I was born with. I kinda like that idea.
A totally North-South combination with family going back to Jamestown VA and Genesee Valley of NY with English and Irish migrations to both; some of many earlier family members serving in no doubt each side of the Civil War (or War Between the States) sometimes named. Lived in the DEEP SOUTH until 11 but now live in the Mid-Atlantic and here are my longest roots although I have lived in Central America, Mexico and as a student in Peru. I have worked in several other parts of our country for a year or two and found most places equal in amenities but sometimes the local lack of concern for knowing anyone or anything outside their confines VERY CONCERNING. The mindset that we are not part of a global community of peoples is scary. Because I am comfortable in more than three languages, and wishing to learn the Welsh and the Basque and perhaps the Quechua of the Andes, the lack of any ongoing curiosity about others in the world really bothers me a lot.
It always saddens me to hear of victims of the Nazis. Such a frightening time. I love genealogy and have at times travelled down the rabbit hole of Ancestry to find more. In the late 1600s my family on both sides came to the colonies. Turns out some were the younger brothers of titled families who stood to inherit nothing so the New World was their opportunity. At this point my Mother's Mother's side is over 8 generations Pennsylvanian from just 2 adjoining counties. Life must have been difficult in the "wilderness of Central and western PA in the 1600s as there were no settlements yet. I did a dna test thinking I would be the end product of a melting pot of ethnicities but that did not turn out. I am 55% British, and the rest is German and central European. I traced my Dad's family back to 1200s in Zurich. In the 1300s they left there and moved to the British Isles. My mother's paternal side is still a mystery. I know they were from Germany but have yet to pin down when they came over. It was way before the civil war though. So ok. When I define my roots it is hard to describe how I feel about my family being the usurpers. Yet they fought for this country in every war to preserve it. Well except for a few who sided with the confederacy. When I define my roots lately, it goes only back to my late Dad who was a Marine on Iwo Jima. It has always been a matter of pride and patriotism. His brother fought in the war in Europe. My father in law fought in N. Africa up to Italy. These men were the original antifa if you will. While I may have ugly in my ancestors manifest destiny, I always have people who tried their best to make up for the past and assure our future. This has been a hard time for me to reconcile the patriots of my ancestors with what has become a nation of nationalism and christo fascism. I think I will leave the definitions up to my grandson and his children when they inherit what we are trying to fix.
Roots? We are all immigrants or a product of immigrants. One generation or many. Doesn't matter.
We need more immigrants. We are aging out. Our birth rate is below replacement.
In Florida there are 55 applicants for every 100 job openings.
We need hard working new Americans. And there are thousands applying for the positions.
Not "open borders". But an expanded system of welcoming those displaced by the Climate Crisis and thuggery.
They need a home. We need workers in almost every category. It's win, win.
Roots? Our family is Northern European blended with Ashkenazi and Sephardic - all were immigrants who sought a new life. Grateful and welcoming we should be.
The best system I have found thus far is an "immigration tarrif," of sorts. The idea is that immigration would be much more open than it is now, the only caveat that one would have to pay a fee for entry. This fee would begin from zero for young people and increase as they get older. The idea is that younger people will pay taxes longer and place less strain on pension/healthcare systems.
I hope I may be permitted to change the question slightly to 'how do you define your home' - it is the question which I grappled with years ago, after I had been living in Scotland for a few years. What was my home? Was it Scotland? Or was it the 'other place', the place which I had left behind?
I found this a really difficult question until I realised that I did not have one 'home', I had two. One 'home' in was in the sense of the German phrase 'Heimat', which was the village back home, where my grandparents had been courting and my great-grandparents had been buried in the local cemetery. I still have a connection to that place, it feels to me as if my bones belong there. It is home.
But equally Scotland is home. I live here, I am part of the people of Scotland, I belong here. It is my 'home' in the sense of the French phrase 'chez moi', my place and where I hang up my hat of an evening.
Once I had defined 'home' along those two (!) lines, my sense of identity became clear(er) to me and I have felt settled ever since.
A good revision. Thx.
You remind me of a time in my early adulthood when I would travel “home” to New England for Thanksgiving, then after several days of intense family closeness, be equally grateful to return “home” to my independent life. I remember the delight when I realized that on both flights I was homeward bound.
I've traced much of my ancestry. My father's side of the family (from Wales) has been in the U.S. since 1821, my mother's side (from Germany) since the middle of the 18th century. My father's mother's family (from England) settled in Virginia not long after Jamestown. There are of course many branches in anyone's family tree and from tracing my own I find that my roots go back to many countries and cultures. I subscibe to E Pluribus Unum and the idea of an American melting pot. I have been forged in the flame of Liberty's torch.
My parents, sister, and I moved to the US from Sweden in 1975. My sister currently lives in Greece, having moved away from the US in 1990 to marry an Englishman. I have a HUGE and close extended family in Sweden. All of them are wondering what the heck is happening over here. I became a US citizen after I married and had two kids. In 2017 I applied for and got my dual citizenship for Sweden, just in case.
I wish my family had the ability to apply for dual citizenship...somewhere. Sadly, we've all been here since the 19th c. so we don't qualify. I worry about my children and fear that the day may come when they would be safer outside of the US. It breaks my heart.
Steven, my family, the Armistead family has roots in England and Germany centuries ago, and the Armisteads came to America, or what became America, in the early 1600s. The family settled in Virginia, according to records. Armistead men fought in the Revolutionary War, the war of 1812, and various other wars to protect the colonies. They also fought in the Civil War for the South. General Lewis Addison Armistead died in Pickett's Charge in Gettysburg. My very distant relative was Robert E. Lee. Where this is going is: my family owned slaves, were racists, and my grandfather, John Calhoun Armistead, the man for whom I am named, was in the KKK in Alabama. My father was born in Alabama in 1889. The Armistead family moved from Alabama to Texas in the 1890s. My family has been ultra conservative Republicans for many decades...until I and my only living sister (now 85) came along. We reject the bigotry and racism and live as liberals who believe in America, our democracy, and equality for all regardless of skin color. Armistead roots are not very nice roots, but it is what I have. I look forward, not back to the bad roots.
On my mom's side, I am Tlingit-Alaska Native. While I did not have the privilege of growing up in SE Alaska, she did. Klawock, specifically. But conscripted boarding school was also part of her experience-Wrangell Institute. In looking over the records-Federal Census from her family, before she was born and after, "Thlinghet," the old English spelling for my Tribe was listed as my maternal grandparents first language and for her siblings. She is the youngest of 8. My maternal grandfather was of the Naisteidi-Flicker clan. My maternal grandmother-was Gaanaxadi Marten clan. We follow our matralineal line so that Tlingit clan is mine, and my sister's and my sister's children as well.
On my dad's side- Dutch. My paternal grandfather emigrated from the Netherlands with his family when he was a baby from the province Gelderland. My paternal grandmother was 2nd generation Dutch, but her parents were both from the Netherlands. They settled in South Holland Illinois. My parents met in Seattle when my dad was stationed at McChord air force base (Now known as Joint Base Lewis McChord).
It's an interesting experience to be both Indigenous and from European roots. I think Americans in general are committed to disappearing contemporary Tribal experiences and don't actually SEE Native people unless we match their expectations.
Born in the US. Paternal side totally English. Maternal side English and German. I left the US in 1973 to marry my Dutch love. Have lived here now 50 years. Don’t feel like an American anymore. With what has been happening in the US, I don’t even recognize America anymore. I’m now more Dutch and European.
My roots are in the Mayflower Cert I have framed here. They are in the Am Revolution one that says my ancestors fought to make this land free. Some of my ancestors put together a large bound book of pictures and stories of others who came here after and added to this land. I take a lot of p;ride in the fact I am one of the original colonists here. When people ask, will I move to another country if Trump and Republicans take over, I say, NO, I will fight the same way my ancestors did, to get our Democracy, freedom, liberties back. I refuse to give it to a man, whose Grandfather was kicked out of Germany as a coward and cannot go back. His Father and he refusing to rent to blacks and other minorities. A vulgar man who looks down on Minorities, muslims, Mexicans, disabled, women , POWs, Gold star families, etc. NEVER will I relinquish what my ancestors started to men like this. Stay and help me fight.
I pray that there are MANY like you who will fight for America and not support the vile, amoral tyrant who wants to plunder this nation.
HUMAN:
Homo-Sapian maybe a little Neanderthal
European American
1/2 Sweden 1900
1/4 German 1890
1/4 Protestant Irish 1700 (banished to Virginia colony)
I am angry, ornery, and I can hold a grudge.
We didn’t have to search Ancestry. From the same island in Greece back to a 14th century Genoese soldier. All in baptismal records in local churches. Mothers blond and blue eyed family from the same island, folklore says they were exiles from Byzantium. Who knows? Still I’m American. Child and grandchild of immigrants who sought a wider life, who chose to fight as Americans in war, and one who told me when I asked why he chose to raise us here looked taken aback and said, “because this is the greatest country on earth.” I think it is, wounded or not by racism - which it is - but a patient worth saving.
Your experience in Berlin mirrored mine when I went to Germany to find my great grandfather’s school in Koblenz. I couldn’t help but look around me and think about the older people in the streets, wondering what they had done during the war. My own father was born in Fredericksburg, TX, where the entire town was German—he grew up speaking German in a one room school house before heading to the Naval Academy on a congressional appointment. (He took English as a “foreign” language.) My mother’s family migrated south to New England from the french parts of Canada. The sense of displacement and looking for my home country is always in the background, even as I identify as a citizen of the world. As Joyce Vance signs each post, “we are all in this together”.
What a beautiful essay about a quintessentially American story. Thank you. I’m the product of the earliest migrations from England as well as the potato famine of Ireland. I also have a great great great grandmother who was Native American. My America includes all.
Thank you, Nancy.
I’m an American with roots all over. I’m a Californian with roots back to Vermont, Maine, Quebec, Italy, Ireland, Scotland. I have spent years in Cyprus, Texas, Ohio, Nevada. I’m a citizen of this tiny rock spinning around a big unknown. I am an American whose ancestors fought in the Indian wars (and I carry native dna) revolution, 1812, civil war, the two world wars. I am an American. So be it.
My roots are soooo complicated. Child (English Birth Certificate) of a brutish hillbilly sailor & German Au Pair in London in 1953.
My father's family was traced back to the American Revolution and a German mercenary who took up the offer of land by the colonists to switch sides & fought for the colonies. He settled in the former penal colony of GA where the family became more Scots-Irish than German. They fought for the Union during the Civil War which forced them to move to another part of the GA mountains because the neighbors were no longer friendly.
They now live in Appalachian "hollers" & prance about in red hats claiming victimhood.
My mother's family was a middle-class family owning a "Gasthaus" in south Germany. They were very quiet about the past. My step-grandfather was a panzer driver suffering crippling wounds at Stalingrad.
My real grandfather (the bouncer before the war), I learned at age 16, was an SS sergeant on the Eastern Front. He survived in a gulag for 7 years before he was able to leave following the war. He had been declared dead years before so my grandmother was in the process of remarrying. They divorced to keep it legal I guess. I only met him once when I was 4 and living with my mother in Germany.
I got back to the states thru a kidnapping by my father when he convinced my mother to bring me for a visit. I was taken, naturalized, and raised by his family until my mother rejoined us. He made her suffer psychologically for it the rest of her short life.(1931-1979)
He's gone too but I never forgave him for that.
So, English Birth Certificate, German mother, Scots-Irish father with a German name.
More at home in England than what has become the wild-west shootout country we have become. Europeans are getting travel notices by their governments about coming here and the danger of being shot!
I find it hard to recognize the "shithole country" we became starting with Ronald Reagan and the return of gunboat diplomacy.
Some years ago, not sure when, I started thinking of the UK as my roots rejecting both I was born with. I kinda like that idea.
A totally North-South combination with family going back to Jamestown VA and Genesee Valley of NY with English and Irish migrations to both; some of many earlier family members serving in no doubt each side of the Civil War (or War Between the States) sometimes named. Lived in the DEEP SOUTH until 11 but now live in the Mid-Atlantic and here are my longest roots although I have lived in Central America, Mexico and as a student in Peru. I have worked in several other parts of our country for a year or two and found most places equal in amenities but sometimes the local lack of concern for knowing anyone or anything outside their confines VERY CONCERNING. The mindset that we are not part of a global community of peoples is scary. Because I am comfortable in more than three languages, and wishing to learn the Welsh and the Basque and perhaps the Quechua of the Andes, the lack of any ongoing curiosity about others in the world really bothers me a lot.
It always saddens me to hear of victims of the Nazis. Such a frightening time. I love genealogy and have at times travelled down the rabbit hole of Ancestry to find more. In the late 1600s my family on both sides came to the colonies. Turns out some were the younger brothers of titled families who stood to inherit nothing so the New World was their opportunity. At this point my Mother's Mother's side is over 8 generations Pennsylvanian from just 2 adjoining counties. Life must have been difficult in the "wilderness of Central and western PA in the 1600s as there were no settlements yet. I did a dna test thinking I would be the end product of a melting pot of ethnicities but that did not turn out. I am 55% British, and the rest is German and central European. I traced my Dad's family back to 1200s in Zurich. In the 1300s they left there and moved to the British Isles. My mother's paternal side is still a mystery. I know they were from Germany but have yet to pin down when they came over. It was way before the civil war though. So ok. When I define my roots it is hard to describe how I feel about my family being the usurpers. Yet they fought for this country in every war to preserve it. Well except for a few who sided with the confederacy. When I define my roots lately, it goes only back to my late Dad who was a Marine on Iwo Jima. It has always been a matter of pride and patriotism. His brother fought in the war in Europe. My father in law fought in N. Africa up to Italy. These men were the original antifa if you will. While I may have ugly in my ancestors manifest destiny, I always have people who tried their best to make up for the past and assure our future. This has been a hard time for me to reconcile the patriots of my ancestors with what has become a nation of nationalism and christo fascism. I think I will leave the definitions up to my grandson and his children when they inherit what we are trying to fix.