Land of promise

When Abel Carriço first stepped foot in the United States, he started shivering on the airplane gangway. He was just 17 years old at the time, and back in his home country of Brazil it was 90 degrees and sunny. In Washington, D.C., a blanket of snow ­covered the ground.

Later that day, Carriço landed in Knoxville, Tenn. He can’t quite explain it, but somehow, he felt at home right away.

Some family friends picked Carriço up from the airport and drove him straight to an Applebee’s. He felt like he’d stepped into Hollywood. Everything—from the waitress to the menu—looked like a scene from one of the American movies he watched growing up.

Then, Carriço discovered free refills. He decided he never wanted to leave America. “This is it,” he thought. He’d arrived.

Soon, Carriço learned to love and appreciate his host country for more substantive reasons. He realized why people called the United States the land of opportunity. In Brazil, he’d witnessed people working hard but never seeming to reap the fruit of their labors.

Not so in the United States. “In America, hard work pays off,” he said.

Carriço stands in a long line of immigrants who have come to the United States to build a better life for themselves and their children and make good on the enduring promises of life, liberty, and a chance to pursue happiness. According to one Cato Institute analysis, more than 100 million people have come to the United States with plans to settle since the end of the Revolutionary War.

Unlike many nations, which formed around a common ethnicity or heritage, the United States is based on an idea: the notion that God created all men equal and endowed them with certain unalienable rights. And that means people of many different ethnicities, languages, religions, and backgrounds can become truly and fully American by swearing allegiance to our creeds and agreeing to uphold our laws.

Today, the United States is home to more immigrants than anywhere else in the world. Nearly half of them—over 23 million people—are naturalized U.S. citizens. They are people who have willingly chosen to leave behind their past loyalties and become part of We the People and the ongoing experiment in American democracy.

IN 1921, British author G.K. Chesterton visited the United States and later famously wrote: “America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed.”

Gordon S. Wood is a professor emeritus of history at Brown University who’s written extensively on the American Revolution and the early history of the United States. Wood said most countries root their sense of national identity to some degree in a homogeneous ethnicity. Even the word nation comes from the Latin natio, meaning “birth.”

But the United States formed out of a common cause, not a common ancestry. Wood said only 60% of the white population in the colonies in 1790 had English ancestry. Most of the others were Scottish, Scots-Irish, or Irish, but there were also Germans, Dutch, French, Swedes, and Spaniards represented. Another 700,000 people of African descent and tens of thousands of Native Americans also lived there.

Wood said the Founding Fathers themselves didn’t think in terms of being a creedal nation. They were concerned with holding their fledgling country together and worried its diversity threatened its fragile union. But the seed of an idea sown in 1776 took root and blossomed during the 19th century.

By the time Abraham Lincoln took office, Wood said, it was clear where he sourced American identity: “It’s the Declaration of Independence for Lincoln that makes us Americans.”

The Declaration and the U.S. Constitution launched an unprecedented experiment in liberty and democracy—one lots of people wanted to participate in. According to the Pew Research Center, the first significant surge of immigration started in the 1840s and spanned through the 1880s. More than 14 million people arrived on American shores from places like Germany, Ireland, and the United Kingdom.

After that, immigrants continued to come in waves, many arriving before the country had formal visa requirements.

Jennie Murray is CEO of the National Immigration Forum, a nonprofit advocating for increased legal immigration and immigration system reform. Murray’s family tree is filled with the names of people who came to the United States from places like Spain, Ireland, France, and England.

Her great-grandfather, Frank Murray, was an Irish immigrant who settled in San Francisco. He belonged to the lowest level of society and could only find work at the local fire department, she said. But after the 1906 earthquake sparked fires that ravaged the city, Frank Murray and the other firefighters were hailed as heroes. “Because they worked hard and contributed and gave back, they changed their own life and their family’s trajectory,” Murray said.

She noted that opportunity is a big part of what makes America unique.

ABEL CARRIÇO grew up in a coastal Brazilian city, just a few hours outside Rio de Janeiro. Stunning white sand beaches and ocean vistas attracted crowds of tourists, but crime rates were high and locals often struggled to make ends meet. In some parts of town, gangsters and drug traffickers also plagued residents.

Both Carriço’s parents worked, and he rode his bike to and from school each day. By the time he was in his teens, Carriço was also working full time and attending school at night.

Everything Carriço knew about the United States, he learned from American media. He listened to CCM artists like DC Talk and Michael W. Smith. He read American books translated into Portuguese. And he watched tons of American movies. From these, he pieced together a picture of what life there might look like.

But he never expected to come to the United States. Instead, he imagined himself following in the footsteps of other Brazilian athletes and playing for a European soccer team. Then, some family friends came to visit from Tennessee. They encouraged Carriço to consider coming to the United States for college.

He took some time to pray about it and felt God was calling him to pack up everything and move to America.

So, he did.

After visiting several U.S. colleges, Carriço flew back to Brazil and traded his tourist visa for a student one. In the fall of 2010, he started his freshman year at a small Methodist school called Hiwassee College.

Carriço’s first taste of life in the United States was in the town of Englewood, Tenn.—population then just over 1,500. He described it as a one-stoplight town with little more than a Subway, a gas station, and a handful of churches. Life there was vastly different from the city bustle Carriço was used to. But he felt welcomed right away.

Carriço came in wanting to work hard and succeed. And in the United States, those goals felt a lot more achievable. Tasks like getting a driver’s license—which he said would have been expensive and time-consuming in Brazil—came together in just a few weeks. “All of a sudden, voila! I can drive,” he said. “Things just worked.”

Carriço was also amazed to discover that in America, people still talked about how their great-great-grandparents came here to work and secure a brighter future for their families. He started to understand why his Appalachian neighbors held such a fierce dedication to protecting their freedoms and a way of life built on a system of principles—principles that have been the bedrock of the United States for the last 250 years.

WHILE IMMIGRATION has long played a significant role in America’s growth, the country has often had a conflicted relationship with it.

In various eras, Congress passed laws excluding people from citizenship based on ethnicity or national origin—starting with a 1790 law limiting naturalization to “free white persons.” A series of acts passed in the late 19th century specifically targeted Chinese immigrants and later gave way to the 1917 Immigration Act barring immigration from much of Asia and the Middle East.

Later, when the United States established a national origins quota system in 1924, it dramatically restricted immigration from outside Western and Northern Europe and the Western Hemisphere.

But, despite this, America has nonetheless offered freedom and opportunity to millions who did manage to come—receiving the world’s tired and poor, those “yearning to breathe free,” in the acclaimed words of poet Emma Lazarus.

And, as the 20th century unfolded, Congress started to roll back restrictions and expand legal immigration pathways to a wider array of people. In 1965, a new act overhauled the immigration system and exchanged the quota system for an emphasis on family reunification. After that, arrivals from Asian countries like China, India, and the Philippines began to surge.

Latin American immigration also started to explode, and since 1965, nearly half of new arrivals have hailed from this region.

Many, like Carriço, come first to study. Others come to work or join family members already living in the United States.

After Carriço made up his mind to attend school in America, his parents pooled their savings to cover his first year’s tuition. But that was all they could afford. They told him it would take a miracle for him to finish his degree program.

So, Carriço started praying.

Later that year, he received a scholarship that enabled him to complete his studies. He graduated with his bachelor’s degree in December 2013.

Soon after, Carriço married his wife, Nicole, an American classmate. During college, they had both taken a mission trip to Mozambique. They expected to get married and head back overseas as cross-cultural missionaries. But then they felt God leading them to a different mission field: rural Appalachia.

So, the Carriços packed up and moved two hours away to Greeneville, Tenn., where they started working at a local children’s home. Over time, that ministry grew into a community church Carriço now pastors.

After getting married, Carriço applied for his first green card. Then, he got another, and eventually, a 10-year green card. He could have applied for his U.S. citizenship a few years after getting married, but he got so busy pastoring a church, raising kids, and running a rehab program that he didn’t start the process right away.

But, in his heart, Carriço already felt like an American.

As a teenager, he had been dazzled by the trappings of American culture: cowboy boots, biscuits and gravy, country music, and sweet tea. Over the years, Carriço fell in love with the people. His wife and kids are American. So are his neighbors, friends, and church members.

“They have become my people,” he said.

FOR OVER 50 YEARS, the immigration population in the United States grew steadily. According to a Pew Research Center analysis, it hit an all time peak in January 2025 at over 53 million—a more than fivefold increase since 1970.

But, five months later, those same numbers had dropped by over a million people, indicating more left the United States or were deported than arrived. Although Pew admitted some of that change may be due to lower survey response rates, it nonetheless seems to reflect the first decline in the U.S. immigrant population since the 1960s.

Pew pointed to new restrictions on asylum applications and a rapid-fire series of immigration-related executive actions from the incoming Trump administration—including a crackdown on the previously porous Southern border—as drivers of this change.

National Immigration Forum CEO Jennie Murray said no other country has tried to attract the world’s scrappiest and brightest like the United States has. But now, with the immigration debate at fever pitch, she said the nation is at a crossroads: “We’re asking ourselves, ‘Are we going to continue that experiment?’”

Still, the overall number of immigrants in the United States remains high—and many continue to come even as others leave. While a large number come temporarily to work or study, others choose to remain long term. Pew reports about a quarter of immigrants now living in the United States are lawful permanent residents. The largest share of immigrants are naturalized U.S. citizens, people who have voluntarily chosen to leave behind the countries of their birth and embrace American citizenship.

In 2024, Carriço decided it was time to formalize his allegiance to the United States. He submitted his citizenship application online, paid the associated fee, and completed his interview. Then, he waited.

A few months later, Carriço got a letter in the mail notifying him he had passed his citizenship exam. On Sept. 17, 2025, he drove to Tusculum University—a historic institution founded about a decade after the Revolutionary War—to take the Oath of Allegiance.

Altogether, 101 people became U.S. citizens that day. Like Carriço, many hailed from Latin America. But there were also people from Europe, Asia, and Africa. They filed up the stairs to an auditorium where their friends and family members waited.

The electric buzz of excitement filled the room.

Carriço’s wife and kids were there, dressed in their Sunday best. His parents, beaming with pride, had come all the way from Brazil for the ceremony. The judge entered and shared a few words about the meaning of American citizenship. Then, he opened the floor for people to share their stories.

The first man who spoke came from Poland. Tears streaked his cheeks as he shared that ever since he was a boy it had been his dream to come to America. After him, an African man spoke about the blessing of living in a place where he could worship God without fear.

As others shared, Carriço noticed a recurring theme: Many people felt they had been divinely led to the United States.

Carriço knows his new country isn’t perfect. But often the people he hears criticizing America the most bitterly haven’t traveled the globe much. He said the freedom here for people to speak, worship, and build is a rare and remarkable gift.

“This chance of really going after your dreams and making things happen—it’s pretty incredible,” Carriço said. Sometimes, he added, it takes “a room full of foreigners” speaking out for Americans to truly appreciate that.