More about Theodore's notion of being American

Having been taken to task by my friend Ben (see his comment to my post on 2.02.2006 of a quote by Theodore Roosevelt about “being American”), I will endeavour to explicate further what it means to me.
This is a start:

They always said that if we didn’t beat the Communists in Vietnam, there’d be a horde of Vietnamese pouring onto the beaches in California. They were right. As a matter of fact, they’ve made it as far the Delaware River. I have a house full of them right now, laying hardwood flooring. Illegals? Who knows. Phong, the boss and the only one who speaks more than a word or two of English, is 33 and has been here only a few years. But his entire family, with the exception of his father, has been in country since 1995, so he’s probably legal. His father, who trained at US Air Force bases in Pennsylvania and New York, returned to Vietnam just in time to get shot down and killed in 1975. Phong was just three at the time, but by the repatriation date of his family he was in his twenties, and was forced to stay behind and do his national service in the Vietnamese army. Now he lays flooring with a crew of other Viets, and wears two shirts and a sweatshirt because it’s a lot colder here than there, but he’s just as happy to be here rather than there, thank you.
Is he, by Teddy Roosevelt’s definition, an American? Not yet, but he’s working at it, and his kids will be, surely. Given the experiences of every other immigrant wave (the Irish, the Italians, the Russians, whoever), that’s all we can expect.
Did he underbid the ‘all-American’ firms because he hires friends and family at less than union wages, doesn’t provide enough safety equipment, and works like a dog? Sure. Did my landlord contribute to the immigration problem by hiring illegals? Probably. He didn’t ask for a show of green cards, or proof of disability or health insurance. Just like the two-income family next door, who has a nice Brazilian girl minding their child, we get what we want to pay for.
But we have set ourselves up for any number of these postwar immigrations, starting as far back as our intervention in the Phillipines during the Spanish-American War. The list now includes Koreans, Tibetans, Cubans, Guatamalans, Persians, Laotians, Cambodians, Vietnamese, Afghans, Bosnians, Kuwaitis, Somalis, and Iraqis, with more on the way. (Since we’re not liable to stop being the world’s policeman anytime soon, should we be expecting North Koreans or Iranians soon?)
Most arrived broke and speaking any number of languages (many of them more than one) other than English. Most have survived, some have thrived, and all have contributed to the spicy end of the spectrum of American cuisine.
There have been some odd juxtapositions, of course: Hmong tribesmen plunked down amidst Mormons (because someone thought hill people would be happy in the mountains of Utah, maybe?), and Somali boys fresh from the desert getting off the plane in Minnesota and wondering why the sand was so white...
Do I wish for some mythical Northern European-only America where dark skin is only acquired through expensive vacations in Third World countries and foreign languages are something you only hear on the IFC channel? Hell, no. I’ve been to Wyoming. You can’t get decent Thai food there unless you’re Ted Turner and have it flown in. (But I happen to know that the internet story about him and Jane Fonda being turned away from a Montana steak house by its Vietnam-veteran owner is true, and I was happy to have it confirmed by a local.) I’ve been to Utah, where all the help in fast food restaurants are English-speaking white kids; the whole goddamn place (with the exception of an occasional disoriented Hmong) looks like Hitler won. (Plus it’s the closest thing we have to a religious state; if you want to know the joys of dogma-based politics, try living in Salt Lake City for awhile. Try ordering a double whisky with your steak, or buying a magazine showing unclothed women to comfort you on some lonely Saturday night. Then tell me you look forward to a country run by the likes of Pat Robertson...) Monocultures, besides being ecologically unstable, are boring as hell.
But neither do I want a fragmented Ameristan, where everyone cloisters up with ‘their own kind’, sorted by language and culture and religion, and quietly seethes with ancient and festering hatred against them (which, by the way, includes you and me, depending on your point of view). I lived in North Carolina in the late fifties and early sixties, and saw ugly discrimination based on skin color and religion. I lived in Oakland, California in the nineties, and was discriminated against by my neighbors because of the color of my skin. I live near Philadelphia now, where the separation is again by skin color and ethnicity and religion (white, Italian, and Catholic in South Philly; black, African, and Baptist in West Philly; white, Russian, and Orthodox in the Northeast; white, Polish, and Jewish on the Main Line; white, German, and Amish farther west), and the discrimination is just as ugly, if subtler by law.
Being white, English-Welsh-Scots, and Zen Buddhist myself, I don’t fit into any regional slot in Philly, or almost anywhere else, either, outside of university towns like Austin, Santa Cruz, and Berkeley. I like diversity. I like diversity when I walk down the street (especially when I look at the women passing by), when I shop, and when I go out to eat. I like the resulting diversity in cultural events and political dialog. I think we should allow in legal, documented immigrants from as many different countries and cultures as we can, given appropriate growth in the economy and a reasonable rate of population increase.
On the other hand, unlike some of my friends in the People’s Republic of Berkeley, I don’t advocate “open borders”. The last time I did the math, there were approximately five billion people outside the United States. Probably four billion of them would like to be inside the United States, and would do almost anything (including dying in the attempt) to do so. Even if only twenty percent tried and made it (and if you don’t think they’d try, given half a chance, go walk the deserts of California or Arizona or Texas, or swim the waters between Haiti or Cuba and Florida for twenty four hours and count how many people already are willing to die to get in), that would force me to share my rented room with at least two more people. I don’t know about you, but that’s just a mite crowded by my standards...