Coming to America? In 2025, the US to some looks less like a dream and more like a place to avoid

Boston Globe

5 hours ago

There has long been a romanticized notion about immigration and America. The reality has always been different, with race and ethnicity playing undeniable roles in the tension over who can be an American. The US still beckons to the 'huddled masses' from the pedestal of the
Early clues across industries — like
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Polling by Pew Research Center from January through April found that opinions of the US have worsened over the past year in 15 of the 24 countries it surveyed.
Trump and many of his supporters maintain that migrants in the country illegally threaten American safety, jobs, and culture. But people in the country legally also have been caught in Trump's dragnet. And that makes prospective visitors to the US, even as
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Trump's global tariff war and his campaign against
'The chances of something truly horrific happening are almost certainly tiny,' Duncan Greaves, 62, of Queensland, Australia, advised a Reddit user asking whether to risk a vacation to the land of barbeques, big sky country, and July 4 fireworks. 'Basically it's like the Dirty Harry quote: 'Do you feel lucky?''
For much of its history, America had encouraged immigration as the country sought intellectual and economic fuel to spur its growth.
But from the beginning, the United States has wrestled with the question of who is allowed to be an American. The new country was built on land brutally swiped from Native Americans. It was later populated by millions of enslaved Africans.
The
Still, the United States has always been a nation of immigrants, steered by the 'American Creed' developed by Thomas Jefferson, which posits that the tenets of equality, hard work, and freedom are inherently American.
Everyone, after all, comes from somewhere — a fact underscored on-camera in the Oval Office this month when German Chancellor Friedrich Merz gave the president the framed birth certificate of Trump's grandfather, also named Friedrich, who emigrated from Germany in 1885. He was one of millions of Germans who fled war and economic strife to move to the United States in the late 19th Century.
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There's a story there, too, that suggests the Trump family knows both the triumphs of immigration and the struggle and shame of being expelled.
After marrying and making a fortune in America, the elder Trump attained US citizenship and tried to return to Germany. He was expelled for failing to complete his military service — and
'Why should we be deported? This is very, very hard for a family,' Friedrich Trump wrote to Luitpold, prince regent of Bavaria in 1905, according to a translation in Harper's magazine. 'What will our fellow citizens think if honest subjects are faced with such a decree — not to mention the great material losses it would incur.'
Trump himself has married two immigrant women: the late Ivana Zelníčková Trump, of what's now the Czech Republic, and his current wife, Melania Knauss Trump of Slovenia.
It's hard to overstate the degree to which immigration has changed the face and culture of America — and divided it.
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Immigration accounted for all of the growth in 16 states that otherwise would have lost population, according to the Brookings Institution.
But where some Americans see immigration largely as an influx of workers and brain power, Trump sees an 'invasion,' a longstanding view.
Since returning to the White House,
In his second term, unlike his first,
A June survey from
The US is still viewed as an economic powerhouse, though people in more countries consider China to be the world's top economy, according to the Pew poll, and it's unclear whether Trump's policies could cause a meaningful drain of
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Netherlands-based Studyportals, which analyzes the searches for international schools by millions of students worldwide, reported that weekly pageviews for degrees in the US, collapsed by half between Jan. 5, and the end of April. It predicted that if the trend continues, the demand for programs in the US could plummet further, with US programs losing ground to countries like the United Kingdom and Australia.
'International students and their families seek predictability and security when choosing which country to trust with their future,' said Fanta Aw, CEO of NAFSA, which represents international educators. 'The US government's recent actions have naturally shaken their confidence in the United States.'