Today marks the eighty-sixth anniversary of my father’s arrival in the United States. In our family we treated the date like a small holiday. Maybe it didn’t have the sparkle of Hanukkah, Christmas, or the cluster of December birthdays in our house, but it carried its own quiet reverence. It was a day to pause, acknowledge what this country gave to my father, and—importantly for a family with a serious sweet tooth—to eat cake.

I’m fairly certain this holiday was my mother’s invention. It fit her sensibilities: an excuse to visit Segal’s Stationery for coordinated tableware and, as a lifelong history lover, a chance to remind us of the meaning behind the day. But my father never objected. It gave him an opening to tell his story.

For much of his youth he must have felt like an outsider—first in Austria, where the country of his birth stripped him of dignity, opportunity, and eventually safety. Then again in America, where he was a “stranger in a strange land,” dropped into second grade until he learned English, marked by an accent, viewed by some with suspicion. Yet here, finally, he became part of something. A citizen of a country that said he mattered. A piece of the grand American experiment that once called itself the “greatest nation on earth.”

He was home.

This nation gave him a place to live without fear, to work and dream without persecution, to build a life judged by merit rather than ancestry. He cherished that citizenship in a way those of us born here can’t fully grasp.

One memory captures it. My father always did his own taxes, a process that turned the house tense for days. When he was finally done one year, he asked my mother to sign the forms. She glanced at the total owed and casually remarked what a shame it was that they had to pay so much. He exploded—then launched into a heartfelt lecture about why citizenship here was priceless and why paying taxes was a small offering for the protection and freedom this country gave him.

Immigrants often possess a deeper patriotism than almost anyone else—born not of slogans but of gratitude. And yet, today, they are among the most vilified groups in American political life. The demonization pushed by Donald Trump and his MAGA allies contradicts everything this country claims to value.

Consider his recent attacks on Somali immigrants. Like my father, they came seeking safety—a chance to escape famine, civil war, religious persecution, and to build a future under a Constitution that promised equality and opportunity. They came searching for the same promise that brought him here: a homeland where their children could grow without fear.

Instead, they are met with rhetoric like:

“We’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country.”
“I don’t want them in our country.”
“Their country stinks, and we don’t want them in our country.”

Somalis are hardly alone. Haitians “eat their neighbors’ pets.” Mexicans are “rapists.” Muslims are “terrorists.” The only immigrants consistently praised are those who fit a narrow, preferred profile: white, Christian, and South African. The targeted cruelty echoes the very forces my father fled—a bitter irony that would have pained him deeply.

This moment is not about classic American ideals—the rule of law, equality, checks and balances. It’s about power. It’s about a man willing to wrap himself in the flag while hollowing out its meaning, twisting patriotism into a tool for dividing Americans from one another.

The country that welcomed my father no longer exists in the same form. The freedoms he defended in World War II are strained by a government increasingly flirtatious with authoritarianism, Christian Nationalism, and policies that entrench privilege rather than expand opportunity. The new arrivals—once the lifeblood of the American story—find doors closing.

Today, I’ll still celebrate his arrival. I’ll still have cake—baked from my much younger sister’s new cookbook “The Secret Life of Cookies.” But I’ll also use the day as a reminder of what we’ve lost this year, and what we must fight to restore. The work of renewing America’s promise—and honoring the gratitude my father felt every day he lived in this country—falls to us now.