After this election, the words dried up. I didn't know what to say. My heart felt broken.

I've learned that not speaking about the feelings that oppress you, not naming them, can make you small and harden your heart and take away your power.

So I chose to write about the American Dream because these two words have faithfully shown up in every conversation I've had and article I've read this past week. This "open letter" from the American Dream to a hypothetical (or real) immigrant was my first raw, imperfect, small counterattack to all the feelings that assaulted me and many people I love and hold dear around me.

I'm still processing everything that happened, along with my community and the rest of the country—and the world.

Just one big disclaimer here: this is NOT the experience of all immigrants. Every experience and situation and person is different.

This open letter embodies the message I felt many people received from America after the elections and way before that. It also embodied my struggle in trying to make sense of what it means to make a home and grow roots away from your own.

Dear Immigrant,

There has been a misunderstanding in the message you received a hundred years ago. It seems like they don’t have the best technology in your country, so you probably didn’t get the update about me. In case you didn’t, here it is.

There are many versions of me. I have become many things to many people all throughout the decades.

First the Europeans. The Chinese and the Japanese, the Middle Eastern populations. The Latinos. The refugees. I have meant freedom, entrepreneurship, discovery, hope, escape, refuge to many of these groups at different times. I have meant free land, good soil, abundance of food, better wages, more opportunities, booming industries. My skin is a patchwork quilt of all of these, and the faces of all those who arrived at my land are imprinted on it too. I have become a spectrum of myth and reality. The lucky ones who find me use their success to propagate me, and those who never find me don’t spread the word around because their voices usually end up being very, very small anyways.

But what I want you to understand is that although it seems like I’ve changed a lot, I haven’t really. I’ve only become varied permutations of what I always was.

You see, I have always been exclusive. When the first hopeful immigrants came to this country and erected their pillars of government and their constitution, I meant freedom only for white males. When the Emancipation Act came around, the Reconstruction Era after the Civil War made sure I remained elusive to those the constitution excluded in the first place. When the suffragettes began stirring up society for equity, when the Civil Rights Movement gained traction, then the cult of domesticity, the media, the war propaganda, the prison system, and healthcare policies, among other things, made sure I remained unattainable to many.

And yet immigrants, those who came here voluntarily and those who were brought here against their will, somehow never cease to believe in me. They want me to be real, so badly, sometimes because I don’t seem possible in the countries whence they come, other times because they think I’m the way to make this country greater and better. Either way, these immigrants and their children cling to me tenaciously and have come to call me Hope.

This has turned out in as many different ways as there are versions of me. Sometimes their faith in me yields way to success; and they credit me with their success, they propagate my fame, when in reality it was their hard work, the hard work of others, and some good connections that must have done the trick. Others never find what they’re looking for and they lose hope. They either survive here long enough, or else they’re kicked out of this land, often times to countries they aren’t even from.

Others understand very well that I’m elusive to some people, but they misunderstand why. These people, mostly those who have forgotten their ancestors were immigrants themselves, mistake me for their ancestors’ luck, hard work, and the social constructs that led to the success of some at the expense of others—they take all of these things, they disguise them as me, and wear me as a badge of honor that legitimizes their identity as Americans. They use me to somehow prove that those who don’t own me are not legitimate Americans. It sounds very crafty and deliberate, I know. The wonderful thing about me is that it’s not. It’s not deliberate, for the most part. It’s not crafty. When you weave a lie into a habit and a lifestyle, it’s easy to propagate it without dirty consciences. These people are able to sleep at night and wake up and go about their day with clean hands because history has done the dirty work for them. They simply keep benefitting from it.

So you see, all my permutations, meaning different things to different people, have created some pretty deep factions. Some want the version of me inscribed on the Statue of Liberty. Some voted for the version of me that favors white skin over black and brown skin. Either way, I make sure that these irreconcilable differences stay in place.

I can do all of that and still be a hologram, an illusion, a mirage.

And I am still not guilty, Immigrant. Because I am merely a lawyer representing different people at court. I am the voice for their arguments. In the end, they’re the ones who make the choices, write out the laws. I am only the projection of their prejudices, fears, and desires.

So here’s my advice to you, Immigrant, my legal counsel, if you will, the updated version, not the old one inscribed on that rusty old green Lady.

Sure, come to America. Hey, grow roots, even.

But not deep ones. Prove yourself worthy of America. Prove you can bring in revenue, commit yourself to improving our country. Set it in a legal, binding contract and pay dearly for your privilege to sign it. Spend your money, time, energy, and dreams on me.

But I won’t commit anything to you. We’ll see how far you get, draw you out for ten long years. I deliberate a lot, Immigrant. I can’t ever make up my mind.

You will despair at times. Throughout the long years you won’t be able to help but invest yourself emotionally, financially, and physically, in this country. You’ll grow roots deeper than you intended. You will grow heartsick with desire to make this place your home, to participate in it fully. You’ll weave your identity into this place so much that when you go back to your home country, you won’t feel like you belong there.

That’s another price you must pay—becoming an in-between, longing to belong somewhere and never finding a place to land.

But we’re still not making any guarantees that you’ll stay.

You’ll probably fall in love here. You’ll probably get married here, or make your closest friends here, or find the best education you’ve ever experienced here, or find a good job here.

Maybe you won’t find a job, you won’t be able to pay for education, and you won’t be able to vote, and you’ll never find a foothold to stay here longer than a visitor’s visa.

Again, we make no guarantees.

The thing about you is that you are just like the rest of them. You are willing to give up all the things I’ve mentioned to come here.

And I will still make you jump through endless hoops before you are accepted.

My love is conditional, Immigrant. My doors have many keys and bolts you must work your way through. We don’t need a wall to keep you on tenterhooks, forever at the perimeter of me. Even once you are here, those who have appropriated me will make sure you know your place as they question the percentage of American you truly are.

But knowing you, hopeful human, that probably won’t deter you at the moment. Because people like you have always been this way. Your skin color and backgrounds have changed over time, but your determination is the same. You’re always willing to build a home wherever it is that you land.

This is why I have been so variable while you have remained so constant. It is people like you who change me. No matter how hard the way is, you don’t stop trying.

If you remember this, you will have cracked my well-kept secret. People think I favor them, but in reality I don’t have that power.

One day, you might just realize that the walls, the fascist rhetoric, and myself are just smoke and mirrors. When that day comes, you will break your silence. With the disappearance of the myth, a curtain will draw back and you will see the bleeding infrastructure underneath. The racism, exclusion, and pride that hardened like scarred tissue and kept injustice in place.

You will turn the aching despair and longing that you had for me into sleeves that you will roll back, forearms that you will strengthen and set to work. You will find a community of people who will ally with you for this thankless, laborious task, people with whom you determine to carve out a home from a place of hostility and hopelessness.

You will grow up. You will learn that division isn’t just a wall outside of you, but the condition of your own prejudiced heart. You will destroy that division inside you and, with your allies, the one outside. And despite what I propagate, you won’t have the guarantees that you’ll succeed.

Only hope and a commitment to unity will brace you against the countless others who have not understood that their worst enemy is themselves, not those who are different from them. Only love will equip you to destroy division even as the elected powers deepen the wounds of prejudice, dismantling your progress.

The battle will be bitter. If you were to treat hope as an economic analysis of opportunity costs, you would never invest in it in the first place. Hope can be thankless. It can hurt and let you down when it fails.

And yet, you want a place you can grow deep roots, build a home. There is no guarantee for you here. The system, now more than ever, is against you.

What’s enough to make you fight, try, work, stay, hope?

If it’s me, I will probably let you down. Hope is substance, not illusion. I am illusion.

But look around you, look at the people you’ve come to love and the home you’ve come to know. Aren’t they worth fighting for? Fight for them. Fight to stay together. You can’t hold me in your hands because I’ll vanish like smoke.

But you can hold on to them as long as life lets you.

Sincerely,

The American Dream