As part of a collaboration between The Fulcrum's NextGen initiative and Made By Us, The Fulcrum is publishing Letters to America, a series created through the Youth250 project that invites Gen Z to reflect on the nation’s past, present, and future as the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary.
``You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany, Turkey, or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk, or a Japanese. But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American.''
Ronald Reagan in a 1989 Presentation Ceremony for the Presidential Medal of Freedom
My family is one of many cultures. My mother’s side, from former Czechoslovakia, my father’s side, from Canada and Ukraine. I am simply the product, a mosaic of Canadian slang and Czech accents, Cossack hats and ice hockey, pierogies and cabbage rolls, and yet I am unapologetically American. I stand proud and perhaps shed a small tear listening to the national anthem at football games, and I give a warm welcome to the troops I see around my rural hometown.
My father, born in Saskatchewan, Canada, is, too, a proud American. He saw the palm trees of Los Angeles, the harsh winters of Wisconsin, and the humid summers of Miami, and fell in love with the United States. He is not just a Canadian in America, but he is an American outright.
My mother was born to a military family in Frankfurt, West Germany, and later moved to the United States, where she has lived her entire life. She, too, is as American as my father is; she’ll never let an American flag touch the ground, and that is why I love my country.
As a newly naturalized American, my father would go on to work at UCLA in HIV research and assist in the revolutionary advancements in our understanding of the disease that ravaged the 1980s. He, in a lab full of Americans from all different backgrounds: Canadian, German, and Japanese, came together and accomplished groundbreaking research.
When Carl Sagan, son of a Ukrainian-born immigrant, said, “For small creatures such as we, the vastness of space is bearable only through love,” it resonated deeply within me. Perhaps because my Great Uncle Frank worked as a computer scientist at JPL on the Voyager alongside Sagan, or because it deeply connects with how we came together as Americans during the Space Race —through love and cooperation. For the first time in modern history, Women, African Americans, Asians, Hispanics, and Whites all came together under the collective goal of reaching the moon. And frankly, there’s nowhere else in the world where this collaboration could have happened - because the foundations we’ve built upon in America permit those of all races to cooperate in the pursuit of technological advancement and the bettering of humanity.
Now, at the hour of my putting pen to paper —the 250th year of our nation’s existence —we are under attack. Not by a foe or terrorist, but by ignorance. Ignorance of the strife of immigrants such as those that came before me, those that crafted revolutionary ideas and carried out unthinkable tasks. And now, the question is, how do we fight a war of ideology? How do we defend ourselves from disinformation, such as how we cannot trust our fellow men and women from other countries?
The answer is simple. We must look to our future generations. Ignorance is a habit, and like all habits, can be nipped in the bud with education and action. The future must be a brighter place for our children. We must show them that they must not fear the immigrants that come through our borders in El Paso or Blaine, that walk off the planes at Dulles or JFK, we must show them that immigrants are truly the backbone of our nation. To do this, we must tell the stories of their ancestors who came on the Mayflower, who came from Italy and Great Britain by ship in the 1900s, and who cross our borders from Mexico even today. I have shared the immigrant stories of my family with you. As an American, you must share yours.
Jack Hnatyszyn, 16, Snohomish, WA
