We immigrants know the America-bashers are ridiculously wrong

There’s irony in the fact that the party which considers itself “pro-immigrant” is also the one that wants to destroy our country’s rich and complicated heritage. If Democrats believe ­immigrants come to America to be anything but American, they are kidding themselves. My family and millions of others came here longing to be free, to say what we want, to worship how we want and to raise American children who will know nothing but freedom.

On the day my mother and I ­became citizens and said the Pledge of Allegiance in a room full of new Americans, there were few dry eyes in the house. Don’t end our patriotic displays because an influential fringe has decided they are somehow evil.

We are in a difficult moment in our nation’s history. But if an immigrant family — arriving in a new country in the tumultuous late 1970s — could believe in the goodness of America and have hope for a better day, so could we all. America’s best days are ahead, if we remember what made us great in the first place.