Immigrant Patriotism

"Zoidberg actually matters for once!"

"Fare thee well going away,
There's nothing left to say.
Farewell to New York City boys,
To Boston and PA,
He took them out,
With a well-aimed clout,
He was often heard to say,
I'm a free born man of the USA!"

— The Pogues, "Body of an American"

When a character expresses a great deal of love and patriotism for their homeland when they're not native (by virtue of ethnicity or place of birth) to said homeland. The immigrant character may even display more fervor for their adopted country than those that were born and bred there. However, how common/acceptable this is varies by culture.

Most countries in the world throughout almost all of recorded history have been what is now called "ethnic nationalist", which is unsurprising given most modern nations developed from tribal groups.^note The very word nation comes from the Latin natio, whose meaning encompasses both race and birth. Meanwhile ethnic comes from ethnos, which in Greek denotes nation/ethnicity, the two concepts being identical, as they are in most cultures. However a few countries that have only been created comparatively recently - primarily Europe's New World colonies - have been argued by some to instead be constituted on the basis of "civic nationalism", a concept invented in the 19th century, in which belonging to a nation is determined by one's feeling of belonging to it, rather than by actual descent.

This is not about immigrants in general, but specifically those who love their new homeland (more than their old one).

Compare Foreign Culture Fetish for immigrants who admire other countries in more of a theme park version sort of way. See also "Rediscovering Roots" Trip, where the descendants of immigrants travel to their family's old country. Contrast Patriot in Exile, where an immigrant loves their old country despite being barred in various circumstances.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Dominura in Simoun has this, in combination with her starving refugee childhood, as a Freudian Excuse for some of her more unethical actions towards her fellow sibyllae on behalf of the Simulacran government.
• Goku develops this after learning he's an alien in Dragon Ball Z. He's horrified that he comes from a race of planet-stripping mercenaries but comes around after hearing how Freeza manipulated them. He nonetheless refers to himself as "a Saiyan raised on Planet Earth", and fights Cell in his classic outfit rather than Saiyan armor to better represent the world he's saving.
• Charlie, of The Four Immigrants Manga comes to America because he's fascinated by American democracy and though he plans to return to Japan eventually, he wants to use what he learns from the Americans to help the country modernize. He also has little patience for his fellow Japanese immigrants still set in their old country ways.
  "And I'll have you know, America is a democratic country. Here, even the president and his wife are simply referred to as "Mr." and "Mrs." I didn't travel 5000 miles from Japan to call my equals "honorable"-anything! For that I may as well have been a rickshaw driver in front of Tokyo Station."
• Gundam:
  • Shinn Asuka of Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny, despite being born on Earth, is a proud soldier of ZAFT and even becomes one of its leader's closest confidantes.
  • In contrast, Ledonia Kisaka from Mobile Suit Gundam SEED is a North African officer in ORB military and a bodyguard to Cagalli.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Joeseph Joestar, originally a native of England, became a proud American after moving to the US, to the point of losing his British accent by the time of Part 3.
• The head of the Ouran High School Host Club, Tamaki Suoh, or rather, Renè Tamaki Richard de Grantaine, spent his early years raised by his French mother, before moving to Japan to live with his Japanese father. Flashback episodes reveal that he is rather more enthusiastic about the trappings of Japanese culture than the fully-Japanese characters are.
• Adolf: Adolf Kamil, a German-Jewish refugee in Japan, struggles to find acceptance in the extremely xenophobic Japanese population. After the war, however, he moves to Israel.

Comic Books

• Superman:
  • "Truth, justice, and the American way." Despite not even being from Earth. It doesn't hurt that Krypton is often shown as having at least as many social problems as Earth before it exploded. He spends much of the New Krypton storyline wrestling with this. In more recent storylines and adaptations, he's more likely to identify as a protector of Earth than of America, but the same things apply.
  • In Superman: Red Son he lands in the USSR rather than Kansas and becomes their (second) Man of Steel. He's still more idealistic than befits a Soviet icon, however, abruptly leaving ceremonies because he hears comrades in danger miles away.
• Judomaster's sidekick Tiger was a Japanese American boy a bit too young to actually join the military, so he stowed away on Rip's plane in order to help America fight Imperial Japan as a costumed special operative instead.

Fan Works

• All-American Girl (Shinzakura): Daisy "DJ" Jo/Sandalwood is a pony raised on Earth by her adopted family and who, despite making contact with her own kind as a teenager, refuses to acknowledge her heritage as being part of herself, and makes it a point that she is an American, right-wing, Catholic woman.
• City of Guilds: The ponies who land on Ravnica seem to adapt fairly quickly such as, ironically, Twilight becoming Niv-Izzet's assistant, to the point of not caring much when Celestia tells them of Scootaloo's murder. This becomes a problem since Celestia is determined to bring them back and is willing to use Brainwashing for the Greater Good to do so.
• Gym Leader Wiki: Lt. Surge was born in Kanto but moved to NY as a teen and joined the US Army as an adult. Since then, he's gained the moniker the "Lightning American".
• The King Nobody Wanted: The Slynt and Deem families view themselves as proudly Westerosi, despite originating in the Free Cities. Since they were slaves in Essos and came to Westeros primarily because the Seven Kingdoms outlaw slavery, this is easy to understand.
  Ilyrio: Janos... Allar... these are Essosi names...
  Allar: They are not.
  Janos: He's right. They are Westerosi names. Because we are Westerosi.
• Pacific: World War II U.S. Navy Shipgirls: A defining trait of U-2513, aka "Lorelei", as she was pretty much forced out of her home country thanks to the Cold War, and is grateful to call the United States her new home.
• Seventh Endmost Vision: Tifa became this for Shinra. While Shinra isn't a country, it's damn close to being one, and in the War with the Western Alliance, Tifa explicitly fought against her former people in Shinra's service. The fact that Shinra didn't make any real distinctions about Tifa's Token Enemy Minority status, and the amazing benefits working for them provided — in particular her fame and wealth — seems to be what initially secured Tifa's loyalty.

Films — Live-Action

• Charlie Wilson's War.
  Gust: But let me ask you. The 3,000 agents Turner fired, was that because they lacked diplomatic skills as well?
  Cravely: You're referring to Admiral Stansfield Turner?
  Gust: Yeah, the 3,000 agents. Each and every goddamn one of them first- or second-generation Americans. Is that because they lacked the proper diplomatic skills? Or did Turner not think it was a good idea to have spies who could speak the same language as the people they're f—king spying on?
  Cravely: Well, I'm sorry, but you can hardly blame the Director for questioning the loyalty to America of people that are just barely Americans.
  Gust: My loyalty! For twenty-four years people have been trying to kill me! People who know how. Now do you think that's because my dad was a Greek soda pop maker? Or do you think that's because I'm an American spy?
• Final Score (1986): The protagonist, Richard, is an American ex-Vietnam vet who married an Indonesian woman, and chose to stay in Jakarta and raise a family there. Partway through the film, there's a scene where his American-Indonesian son asks him why he chose not to go back to the States, only for Richard to express how much he loved Indonesia and never missed life in the States at all. Of course, the fact that the film is produced by an Indonesian company might be a factor...
• Moscow on the Hudson: USSR defector Vlad goes from being gung-ho about America to bitterly cynical to loyal but wiser, ending with him wearing a US stars and spangles outfit on July 4.
• The Presidio: Presumably added in to justify Sean Connery Not Even Bothering with the Accent, Lieutenant Colonel Caldwell (while quite sloshed), talks about how he moved to America with his father when he was ten, and fell in love with the country from the moment he saw the Statue of Liberty. He loved his new homeland so much, he joined the Army in order to protect her.
• Juror #11 in 12 Angry Men adores America's jury system and democratic government, implying that wherever he's from doesn't have either and gets severely offended when Juror #7 just doesn't care and changes his vote purely out of boredom with the proceedings.
• The landlady who tips the Secret Service off to the would-be Presidential assassin's plan in In the Line of Fire shows signs of this, declaring, "Thirty years I'm in this country. I love United States. Only in America can you get to go to President's house. So when I see this, these killing things (the numerous paraphernalia indicating the man's dastardly plan) I get scared. I call police." It's not clear where she's from originally, but her accent is vaguely Eastern European, and her age would indicate that she grew up during a severely repressive communist regime.
• In Eagle Eye the American protagonists are being blackmailed into terrorism by a mysterious voice on a phone with an uncanny ability to arrange accidents. They are ordered to meet a man in a similar position, who yells at them for assuming his Iranian ancestry would make him more likely to betray his country, and refuses to help. The protagonists don't have time to explain the misunderstanding before he is killed by a falling power wire.
• 300: Rise of an Empire: Artemisia rejects her Greek roots after her family is murdered by hoplites and she is sold to slavery as a little girl, only to be found and rescued by a Persian official, who took pity on her and raised her as his own daughter. She grew into a ruthless warrior that embraced Persia as her new home.
  Artemisia: I am Greek by birth, and I have Greek blood running through my veins. But my heart is Persian.
• The 2011 documentary Citizen U.S.A.: A 50-State Road Trip explores how becoming an American citizen is like and why people become citizens. Many of the people interviewed, including the maker's husband, are very patriotic about America.
• In Cadillac Man an immigrant couple who have made good in America protest at the very idea of buying a non-American car (OK, it was in 1990).

Jokes

• Two longtime friends have just moved from Pakistan to the United States. When they arrived, they made a bet: in a year's time, whichever one of them had become more American would win. A year later, they met again. The first man said, "My son is the star of the football team, I had McDonald's for breakfast, I'm a registered Republican, and I fly the American flag in front of my house every day. How about you?" The second man replied, "Fuck off, raghead."

Literature

• Bonasera the funeral parlor owner, from The Godfather believes in America. America has made his fortune.
• Lord Varys, the Master of Whispers in A Song of Ice and Fire / Game of Thrones. He is a eunuch from the eastern Free City of Lys, and the only man on the Small Council who professes loyalty to the kingdom itself, rather than to family, money, or power. That said, as the series continues and more about Varys is revealed it becomes more ambiguous what Varys means by loyalty to the Kingdom. At the end of "A Dance with Dragons" he murders two competent members of the Small Council to plunge the realm into chaos when "Aegon Targaryen" arrives in the Seven Kingdoms to seize control, which was apparently Varys long-term plan. It's widely believed by the fandom Varys is a Blackfyre loyalist (or perhaps even a Blackfyre descendant) who was sowing trouble in Westeros to aid a Blackfyre takeover, and Aegon is the Blackfyre claimant.
  • The Manderlys are one of the main Northern Houses but were originally a Reach House that was driven out centuries ago, they were allowed to settle in the North by its rulers the Starks, in exchange for swearing an oath of loyalty to the Starks. As a result the Manderlys, though still retaining Southron culture such as worship of the Seven in an area that mainly worships the Old Gods, are fiercely loyal to the Starks and North. Their current lord Wyman Manderly is secretly plotting to restore the Starks after they are usurped by the treacherous Boltons.
• The Carol Plum-Ucci novel, Streams of Babel makes a serious point about this.
• In Shanghai Girls, Pearl, who immigrates from China in The '30s, becomes extremely patriotic, even converting to Christianity and frowning on traditional Chinese ancestor worship. Her sister May assimilates even more into American culture, although Pearl's husband and father-in-law never quite fit in.
• In the Honor Harrington series it's noted that many of the most dedicated loyalists to the Star Kingdom of Manticore are refugees (or the descendants of same) who fled the takeover of their home systems by the People's Republic of Haven. When the Star Kingdom becomes the Star Empire, the same sort of thing is seen among the planets who voluntarily join.
  • Similarly, after a prison planet was liberated, freeing many POWs from worlds now conquered by Haven, the Protectorate of Grayson recruited enough of them to form a whole new battle squadron, The Protector's Own.
• Miss Militia of Worm lived in a warzone as a child and was rescued by American soldiers and adopted by an American family. She embraced her new cultural identity by becoming a Captain Patriotic.
• Several characters in Warrior Cats were born kittypets but ran off to join Clans later in life. Most of them do their best to integrate into Clan life and avoid Fantastic Racism, even going as far as to join in on anti-kittypet bias.
• The Emigrants: Karl Oskar is proud to become an American citizen, and volunteers for the Union Army during the Civil War (though he's rejected on medical grounds, to his chagrin); in his old age, he harbors bittersweet feelings about never seeing Sweden and his family there again, but he never regrets his decision to immigrate.

Live-Action TV

• Angel: Lorne. As soon as he heard Aretha Franklin's voice, he knew he was home.
• Played for Laughs by Raj Koothrapali in The Big Bang Theory. He hates Indian food and considers India to be too crowded with Indians for his liking. When he's been questioned by an FBI agent as part of a background check for his best friend, he keeps turning the conversation to his legal status in the United States and refers to himself as "a real Yankee Doodle boy!"
• Game of Thrones: Varys is a Lysene immigrant who professes to be the only man who truly serves the kingdom itself rather than money, power, or any particular faction. His secret meeting with Daenerys' patron Illyrio in "The Wolf and the Lion" makes the truth of this somewhat ambiguous. He later explains to Daenerys Targaryen that his loyalty is not to any monarchs, but the people of Westeros itself and he pledges his allegiance to whoever he feels worthy enough to defend the people.
• Lane Pryce from Mad Men, despite being a stereotypical stiff-ass Brit, takes to America immediately for its outspoken character and relative lack of classism. He emphatically insists that his family put down roots in New York despite his wife's doubts, and decorates his office with a Statue of Liberty and a Mets pennant. That said, he does still defend Jaguar, celebrates England's win in the '66 World Cup, takes an active role in the British expatriate community, and always remains the Quintessential British Gentleman.
• During a late season episode of Law & Order, a young Muslim immigrant helps police stop a Muslim terrorist cell planning a terrorist attack because he loves America and believes in the American Dream. However, when he testifies in court, he lies for the suspected terrorists, because they had information about him that could get him deported for a crime he committed in the past before he legally became a US citizen. In the end, he still testifies against them, knowing he might get deported because he believes it's the right thing to do for the country he loves. The episode ends with prosecuting attorney, Michael Cutter, looking over a loophole case file he can use to keep him from being deported.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
  • Over the course of the series, Sisko comes to love Bajor, even wearing Bajoran clothes on his off-hours and considering moving there after retiring.
  • While Worf is obsessed with Klingon tradition—more even than most Klingons are—he is also completely loyal to the Federation to the point of fighting against the Klingon Empire. He also displays a great fondness for Earth, specifically Minsk, Belarus, where he grew up with his adopted parents. Guinan even notes in one episode that when he looks out Ten-Forward's windows into the stars, he's not looking towards the Klingon Empire, he's looking towards Earth.
• Malcolm Merriweather, a recurring English character on The Andy Griffith Show, displays a detailed knowledge of American history in a scene where Barney tries to lecture him on the subject.
• Dave Nelson on NewsRadio is a veritable encyclopedia on Americana despite being a Canadian immigrant.
• On Doctor Who, the Doctor begins to feel this way about Earth (in this case, Britain) after a bit. He apparently always had something of a Foreign Culture Fetish for the place, and after the Time Lords banished him there as their idea of an ironic punishment he becomes smitten with the planet, happily considering himself an Earth defender. Particularly highlighted in "The Claws of Axos" in which the story's Hate Sink is a right-wing politician with an anti-immigration philosophy who spends much of the story being needlessly suspicious of the Doctor for being what can euphemistically be described as 'foreign'. By "In The Forest of the Night", he openly regards the Earth as his real home.
• Taxi: Latka Gravas (played by Andy Kaufman) is from a deliberately-vague foreign country (he's essentially Kaufman's "Foreign Man" character turned into a full person), is always really happy to be in America, and loves America more than anyone at the company.
• Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Oliver is unabashed about being English (to the point of being a Running Gag), but he firmly identifies himself with his American audience and (both on-air and in his personal life) has made it unstintingly clear that he intends to be naturalized (which he did in 2019), to spend the rest of his life in America, and that he basically considers himself already American. Whenever the US does something good, he clearly shows his pride; whenever he covers the US doing something awful (which, given that the show specializes in investigative journalism on serious problems, is fairly often), he exhibits the same embarrassment and shame that someone born in the US would. It probably helps that he married an American woman, Kate Norley, who happens to be a veteran of the Iraq War.
• Alex Powell (real name Alexi Fayvinov) on Dead of Summer is an immigrant from the USSR who's obsessed with The American Dream, having seen his father get chewed up by it and vowing not to let the same thing happen to him. This has led to him turning into a Jerk Jock with a social Darwinist attitude.
• Deus Salve O Rei: Prince Afonso abandons his position as heir to Montemor's throne and moves to its neighboring kingdom Artena to live with his beloved Amália. He pretty much embraces his new home to the point he chooses to fight on their side against Montemor when the two declare war on each other.
• Sliders: Maximilian Arturo, AKA "The Professor," is an Englishman with an Italian name who lives in California and teaches at an American university. Although proud of certain aspects of his English heritage ("I'm English. We invented fishing.") he demonstrates considerable shame for the British Empire's legacy of brutal suppression and consistently touts the values and merit of American constitutional democracy.
• The Expanse:
  • Fred Johnson is an Earther who is known as "The Butcher of Anderson Station" after he destroyed a space station full of Belters (Including their families) that rebelled against Inner control. What he didn't know at the time, and didn't discover until later, was that the Belters were trying to surrender but his superiors withheld that information because they wanted to make an example of them. Afterwards, Johnson defected to the Outer Planets Alliance and becomes one of the staunchest defenders of the Belt. He considers himself a citizen of the Belt, and always includes himself when talking about "us Belters".
  • Travis was born on Earth, and his family emigrated to Mars when he was 5. When he grew up he joined the Martian Marine Corps. His squadmates often give him shit because he wasn't born on Mars, but he is as loyal to the red planet as any native and points out that his family chose Mars instead of just being born there.
• Played With on The Newsreader. Gerry Carroll is an Irish immigrant and popular comedian on Australian television who has lived in the country for over a decade. He's tasked with helping the News at Six team cover the 1987 Australian election and later the 1988 Australia Day celebrations, and is even called an "adopted Australian" on air. But off-air, he's not particularly patriotic at all, and isn't even registered to vote^note Australia has compulsory voting, which means you are legally obliged to vote if you're a citizen, suggesting he might not have citizenship.
• The Newsroom: MacKenzie Mc Hale, executive producer of the nightly news broadcast the show focuses on, is a British immigrant who is absolutely in love with her adopted nation and wholeheartedly embraces all of its corniest patriotic traditions. Her (American) colleagues all tease her for it.
• The NCIS: Los Angeles episode "Allegiance" revolves around an Arabic immigrant who's eager as hell to become an American citizen. After he helps The Squad foil a terrorist attack, Hetty calls in a judge to personally administer the Oath of Citizenship — which the young man recites from memory without any assistance. When he appears again six years later, he's joined NCIS.
• Recurring character Esteban in The Suite Life of Zack & Cody is an immigrant from Peru who works as a bellboy at the Tipton Hotel in Boston. In "Boston Tea Party", Esteban is enthusiastic to take his citizenship test and become an American citizen, and proves to know more about his adopted country than London Tipton, a born American citizen (though to be fair, London is also The Ditz, so maybe not the best comparison).

Music

• Neil Diamond's song "America" is all about the patriotic fervor new immigrants have, culminating with a reprise of the 19th Century Samuel Smith song "My Country (Tis of Thee)".
  My country tis of thee / Sweet land of liberty / Of thee I sing / Of thee I sing TODAY!

Pro Wrestling

• Croatian wrestler Victor Jovica, who helped found Capitol Sports Promotions, which became the Puerto Rican version of the World Wrestling Council. He loved the island and its people loved him back to the point the NWA thought it would be better to have world heavyweight champion Ric Flair retain his title retroactively rather than let him actually beat "the hometown hero" in a match.
• She may have been born in Italy, but Madusa means Made in USA and it was the USA that she represented wherever she went.
• ECW trainee, the Ecuadoran known as Pablo Márquez, did not achieve a great deal of success in ECW but became a beloved baby face when he took on the "El Puerto Riqueño" gimmick and did end up moving to Puerto Rico and finding success there as a junior heavyweight in WWC. He even used Led Zepplin's "Immigrant Song" as his entrance theme.
• Glamour Boy Shane is Canadian, but he likes to tell people who don't know that he's from Puerto Rico. There have been at least two angles about attempts to deport him from the island but he just couldn't be kept away.
• Most of the foreigners brought in by LLF qualified to some extent, but few more than Dark Angel. When later brought into TNA, Don West couldn't tell if she was Canadian or Mexican(and the company officially decided on the latter, even though she was the former.)
• In WWE this was Japanese wrestler Kenzo Suzuki's gimmick for a time. He once interrupted an interview with Rey Mysterio Jr. (who is actually a native of San Diego, CA) in which he used Gratuitous Spanish by saying "You in America now. You speak English!"
• Kazushige Nozawa achieved far more fame and success in Mexico than Japan, and he showed his appreciation while co-promoting shows with All Japan Pro Wrestling in 2007 by forming a stable of like-minded appreciates called "Los Mexico Amigos", each one taking up a Spanish name(TAKA Michinoku-PEPE Michinoku, Kaz Hayashi-Miguel Hayashi Jr, Nobutaka Araya-El Hijo del Araya Segundo) and wearing the Mexican flag on their gear. Eventually Minoru Suzuki(Ray Suzuki) entered the group for the purpose of kidnapping NOSAWA and putting an end to it(which could be interpreted as The Mole but more commonly was seen as Get A Hold Of Yourself Man)
• Dramatic Dream Team Wrestler Hinkoyan Thunder, later known as Kenny Omega of the "Golden☆Lovers", is really Canadian but doesn't consider himself a foreigner, or at least, not an "outsider" (though he would eventually join the evil Gaijins and Yujiro Takahashi in Bullet Club)
• Shigeo Okumura entered CMLL as part of an anti-Mexican unit and quickly became The Face of said unit, sticking around far longer than every other member in his efforts to prove Mexican inferiority. So long in fact that if seen without his ring gear he basically blends in with the Chilango community. After a Heel–Face Turn CMLL used him to represent their company or Mexico in general in promotions such as UIPW and Ring of Honor (on announcing his departure to the latter on Rudo Vision he sat in front of a sign that read "¡Viva Mexico!").

Theatre

• Parodied in the Holy Musical B@man! song "The American Way". While Superman, the Kryptonian immigrant, sings of idealistic American values of justice, all of the natural-born Americans, including Batman, the Joker expy Sweet Tooth, and the Gotham citizens, project a more jaded view of what being American means.
  Superman: 'Cause it's America
  And we're American
  And in America
  We do what's right.
  Batman: 'Cause it's America
  And I'm American
  And in America
  I do what I like.

Video Games

• Roman Bellic from Grand Theft Auto IV. He cut practically all his ties to his native Serbia and instead spends his time convincing his cousin Niko of the great opportunities awaiting them in America.
• Grand Theft Auto V:
  • Josef is Russian-born, but nevertheless has a very mangled sense of American pride, even joining an anti-immigrant militia.
  • Trevor sees himself as a red-blooded American who embraces the corrupt and decadent ideals of the modern USA and gets very angry if anyone points out he's actually Canadian.
• Talion from Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and Middle-earth: Shadow of War. Talion talks at great length about how Gondor is his people, how Numenoreans were awesome, and how affected he is by seeing the Gondor flag artifact. This is despite the fact Talion is notably a Northman and unrelated to the Numenoreans.
• This is Ashrah's situation in Mortal Kombat 1. She's a former denizen of the Netherrealm who went on a demon-slaying crusade once she discovered how different Outworld and Earthrealm are to her native realm. After the events of Chapter 7 in the Story Mode, she settles on Earthrealm, first training at the Wu Shi Academy, then forming her own clan (the Order of Light), vowing to defend Earthrealm with her own life.
• Star Wars: The Old Republic: Elara Dorne, one of the Trooper's party, was born to a prominent military family of The Empire, but became disgusted with their policies and defected to the Republic. She joined their military, particularly their most elite unit, and can cite the rules and regs better than most Republic generals.
• Word of God is that the very cowboy-inspired Clay from Pokémon Black and White was inspired by Japanese men who move to America. He is Kanto-born but moved to Unova as an adult.

Webcomics

• Avania: Junior Warrant Officer Rhys O'Shaughnassy is very proud to be Avanian.

Western Animation

• Parodied in Bojack Horseman: The Nguyen family are Vietnamese immigrants who've culturally assimilated as American (specifically Bostonians) so hard they've literally forgotten they're immigrants and are even prejudiced against other immigrants. Pa is literally a lecturer of Vietnamese history but is so dedicated to his Boston identity that he refuses to teach his children anything about their heritage even when asked.
• The Futurama episode "A Taste of Freedom" starts on Freedom Day, which is the Fourth of July for the entire planet. Zoidberg eats "Old Freebie" the Earthican flag, which he meant to be a demonstration of the liberties Earth allows but gets put on trial for it. He winds up starting a war between Earth and his home planet of Decapod 10, and in the end picks Earth over the Decapodians because of the death of his human lawyer, one of the very few humans who was willing to stand up for him. At the conclusion, he muses that he wishes that they valued freedom as much on his home planet, before realising that Earth is his home planet now, and he is honoured at the White House by being given a free pass to take a bite of the flag by President Nixon, as he'd earned it.
• King of the Hill:
  • Hank Hill is as proud of a Texan as a Texan can get, I tell you hwat. However, one episode has him discover — to his shock and horror — that he was actually born in New York, specifically in the women's bathroom at Yankee Stadium. His discomfort is put to rest by seeing the flags of other states hanging in the Alamo (none of the men who died at the Alamo, being among the original American settlers, were native Texans).
  • Another episode has Kahn, a Laotian immigrant, note that his American-born neighbors probably couldn't recite all of the presidents, which he learned for his citizenship test.
    "You couldn't do it. That stretch between Polk and Buchanan^note If you're curious: Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce. wipe you out. You ever heard of Garfield? He more than a cartoon cat, you know. He part of history of my country."
• The Simpsons: In "Much Apu About Nothing", Apu studies to become a naturalized American citizen when a new Springfield ordinance threatens to have him deported. He passes the citizenship exam when he gives a detailed explanation of the causes of the Civil War (when he could have just said 'slavery'), showing his devotion to becoming a citizen. After the ordinance passes anyway...
  Homer: When will people learn — democracy doesn't work!
  Apu: Hey, don't knock the land that I love. [opens a piece of mail, then gasps] Jury Duty! I am truly an American citizen now! [tosses it in the trash]

Real Life

• This, combined with many cultural misunderstandings (Played for Laughs) makes up much of Yakov Smirnoff's comedy routine.
• Roland Emmerich, despite being German-born, has a massive amount of love and respect for America. Not only do most of his films center around Americans, but often the American military is portrayed as being highly competent and usually the first country's armed forces to learn how to deal with whatever the situation at hand is.
• Walter Krueger, George Kenney, and John Shalikashvili (born in Germany, Canada, and Poland, respectively), all rose to be four-star Generals in the American army. Similarly, Hyman G. Rickover, born in Russian-controlled Poland, became a four-star Admiral in the US Navy (becoming known as the "father of the nuclear navy" for his campaign to bring nuclear naval propulsion to the fore).
  • Krueger, the German, is notable for being promoted to that rank during World War II, while the United States was fighting Germany.
  • Shalikashvili was ethnically Georgian—i.e., from a country part of the Soviet Union at the time of his birth (his parents were nobility exiled from the country by Red October). He eventually became the chief military commander of NATO shortly after the end of the Cold War, and was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—the highest-ranking member of the US military—from 1993 to 1997.
  • Rickover is something of a borderline case, as he fled with his family to the U.S. at the age of five. You see, the Rickovers were Jewish, and there were a lot of pogroms in those days, so perhaps it's no surprise that Rickover never felt much sympathy for the Russians.
  • A more recent example is Major General Lapthe Flora, commander of U.S. operations against Salafist groups in the Horn of Africa and one of the Vietnamese "boat people" who fled the country after the fall of the western-backed South Vietnamese government. He is believed to be the only member of that group of refugees to become a General Officer in the US armed forces.
• A similar eastern example is Konstantin Rokossovsky, Red Army commander in the World War II and twice-awarded Hero of the USSR. Rokossovsky was only 'technically' born in the Russian Empire (which is not to say it was the same country as the USSR) since Poland was under the Tsar's rule. Poland became independent early in his career, and he was, through no small display of his own tenacity and brilliance, awarded the highest military rank in the Soviet Union, that of Marshal-all after having been a target of the purge of the 1930s. In modern Russia, he is famously remembered for never having lost a battle he fought, was compared to Georgian war hero Bagration by Stalin himself, held the post of Defense Minister after the much more famous Zhukov, and was buried next to the walls of the Kremlin.
  • Depending on perspective, this might be applicable to a long list of Soviet military leaders before and after the Second World War: no less than three highly decorated Marshals and one Admiral of the Fleet came from Armenia alone. However, the simple fact of not being an ethnic Russian would not necessarily label someone a genuine "immigrant" in the Soviet Union, itself an amalgamation of more than a dozen nationalities.
• Arnold Schwarzenegger. "Everything I have, my career, my success, my family, I owe to America."
• The annual Nathan's hotdog-eating competition was started by three immigrants to America arguing over who was most patriotic.
• The late Christopher Hitchens was an English immigrant to America and was very fond of the founding principles of the nation, most notably freedom of speech and freedom of religion.
  • The same is true of his friend Andrew Sullivan, who is actually a lot like Hitch, except gay, conservative, and religious (specifically a faithful-if dissenting-Catholic).
• Philosopher Jurgen Habermas also felt the same, his fondness for the American system reflected in his writings. And given his ideological aversion to most if not all forms of nationalism or patriotism, that says a lot.
• Ayn Rand was born in Russia, where her father's business was confiscated by the Bolsheviks, leading to a hatred of communism and a near-worship of American capitalism. When she moved to America, she cried tears of joy at the sight of the Manhattan skyline, and later called the US "the greatest, the noblest and, in its original founding principles, the only moral country in the history of the world".
• Practically any of the original Zionists. That was after all kind of the point. Even today, new olim (immigrants) frequently change their names to a Hebrew equivalent when they receive citizenship and are among the most enthusiastic flag wavers on Yom Ha'atzmaut (Independence Day). Modern examples include former Soviet political prisoner Natan Sharansky (born Anatoly Shcharansky), who went on to a career in Israeli politics as MK (member of the Knesset) and cabinet member, and current Minister of Aliyah and Immigration Pnina Tamano-Shata, born in Ethiopia and evacuated at the age of three in Operation Moses.
• Truth in Television, at least in Canada. A 2012 poll found that 88% of immigrants considered themselves "very proud" to be Canadian, compared to 81% of Canadians who were born there.
  • Furthermore, the process to become a citizen in many cases can be a very long, very expensive, and very involved process. For someone to try that hard and go through that much effort to become a citizen definitely implies a certain amount of patriotism.
• Go to south Florida around the Fourth of July sometime. Many of the Cuban immigrants who live there are some of the most fiercely patriotic Americans you'll ever meet. It's not an exaggeration to say that a lot of Cuban Americans love their new home country and HATE Fidel Castro and anything related to communism.
• Craig Ferguson shows this from time to time, and titled his autobiography American on Purpose.
• A very dark example comes from the writings of the psychologist Alfred Adler, who pointed out that some of the most destructive political leaders in history were immigrants or minorities who'd become fervent nationalists. Adolf Hitler, the Austrian-born dictator of Nazi Germany, would be the Trope Codifier for immigrants,^note Admittedly, though, many German nationalists, Hitler and the Nazis included, saw Austria as a part of Greater Germany that needed to be brought into the fold. After the Anschluss, there was no distinction between Hitler's country of origin and the country he ruled over. and Joseph Stalin, the Georgian in the multi-ethnic but half-Russian Soviet Union, would be the minority example. Adler also mentions Hendrik Verwoerd, the architect of South Africa's apartheid regime and its most uncompromising prime minister, who was born in the Netherlands. Adler, the man who invented the term "inferiority complex", speculated that these men felt that they had something to prove and proved it with unpleasant thoroughness.
  • One of the nastiest and most mercilessly anti-Semitic Nazi ideologues had the name Alfred Rosenberg. While he wasn't Jewish, he wasn't fully German either; his father was half-Estonian and half-Latvian. Perhaps he felt he had to prove his Party loyalty more than most...
  • Although Geert Wilders — said to be Europe's most anti-Islam politician — was born in the Southern Netherlands, his mother's side of the family came from Indonesia... now and then the country with the most Muslims in the world. And his anti-Islam ideology may be because of that very fact, because his mother's family were indos, the mixed Dutch-Indonesian ethnicity who were the local elite. Oh, and his characteristic blonde hair and blue eyes? Peroxide and contact lenses that hide his Indonesian features.
• Loads of German Russians, like Mikhail Barclay De Tolly and Catherine the Great.
  • Other Russian examples are Boris Repetur and Anton Zaitsev, the two hosts of the first Russian TV show about video games. The former is Jewish, the latter is half-Sudanese. When discussing foreign games about WWII, they always mentioned their disgust at the America Won World War II trope and lack of mention of the Soviet's decisive role in winning the war.
• The saying "more Irish than the Irish themselves," today most often applied to The Irish Diaspora's over-enthusiasm for their ancestry, originally referred to the Normans who invaded Ireland in the 11th and 12th centuries (after the Conquest of England) and their followers (both Norman and English) and thoroughly assimilated. The Normans, or "Old English" as they came to be called after a later wave of immigration from the east, became thoroughly integrated into Irish Gaelic culture, speaking Gaelic as their first language and modelling their behavior after the fashion of the native Irish gentry. When the "New English" came over after the Tudor conquest, these "Old English" were as likely as not to side with the Irish rather than their supposed kinsmen, most notably during the English Civil War/Wars of the Three Kingdoms (as they had remained solidly Catholic like the Irish and unlike the English and Scots who came in Tudor and Stuart times).
  • During The Troubles, some Italian immigrants joined the IRA, most notably Angelo Fusco.
• The Australian Political System zig-zags this trope. Unlike the American president (and vice-president), the only qualification for high or elected office in Australia is Australian citizenship, no matter how acquired. This means that even the highest political office have always been available to naturalised citizens. However, most of said naturalised citizens in high political office were born in the UK.
  • Julia Gillard, former Prime Minister, born in Wales to Welsh parents, moved to Australia as one of the subsidised "Ten-Pound Poms".
  • Tony Abbott, former Prime Minister, born in England to Australian parents (may not count).
  • Chris Watson, Prime Minister, born in Chile to an English mother claiming he was fathered by an English seaman (his real father is now believed to be a German citizen).
  • Canada likewise only has a citizenship rule for the highest public offices; two of the last three Governors-General (the Queen's representative in Canada) were immigrants (born in Hong Kong and Haiti, respectively), and following the 2015 election there were 42 immigrants (out of 338 total members) elected to the House of Commons, with those members having been born in Afghanistan, India, Trinidad, the United States, Hong Kong, China, Poland, Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Argentina, Haiti, Uganda, Germany, Portugal, South Africa, the UK, Poland, and Somalia.
• Let us not forget Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh! He was born a Greek^note and Danish, as the Greek royal house was a junior line of the Danish. (Indeed, by the Danish laws in place right before Philip's family took the Greek throne, the senior line of Philip's branch would be kings of Denmark right now. However, an 1863 treaty and 1953 Danish statute removed Philip's family's claim to the Danish throne.) prince, but was largely raised in the United Kingdom by his mother's relatives, the Mountbattens. In fact, he considered himself British so much that he actually renounced his Greek citizenship, royal titles, and even his membership in the Greek Orthodox Church. Part of that had to do with the fact that his bride was, at the time, Princess (later Queen) Elizabeth, but one gets the sense that he was happy to be rid of his foreign titles for the chance to be a fully British nobleman. Even to his death, the Duke considered himself British.
  • Philip was largely following in the footsteps of the Mountbattens and particularly his maternal grandfather, Louis Mountbatten. Born Prince Ludwig von Battenberg in Austria to a morganatic junior line of the sovereign ducal house of Hesse, Louis was raised in Germany and Italy. Despite that, he decided to join the British Royal Navy at the age of 14, and proudly identified himself with Britain. He rose through the ranks despite considerable opposition based both on his foreign-born status and his royal ancestry (there being a perception at the time that too many princes were embarking on military/naval careers, crowding out the other gentlemen trying to rise through the ranks), eventually reaching the rank of First Sea Lord (the professional head of the Royal Navy). When World War I hit, despite being forced out of his job as First Sea Lord by vicious anti-German sentiment, Louis remained loyal to his adoptive country, renouncing his German princely status and proclaiming himself "Louis Mountbatten" ("Mountbatten" being a part-translation of "Battenberg"). The King (Louis' cousin by marriage), in consultation with the Government, gave Louis a marquessate in the Peerage of the United Kingdom as compensation. The King actually wanted to make his cousin a duke (and the Government agreed), as befitted a man of Louis' royal ancestry and steadfast service to Britain, but Louis—who had little usable property in the UK—was living primarily off his naval salary and asked to be a lower-ranked peer so he could avoid the great expense of living in the manner expected of a duke. The King obliged but insisted on giving Louis the highest possible non-ducal peerage out of respect for the man's ancestry, devotion to Britain, and service in the Navy, creating him 1st Marquess of Milford Haven on 7 November 1917.
• During World War II, Sicilian-born mobster Charles "Lucky" Luciano aided the US government with the complete assistance of his organization in fighting German and Italian spies, and was crushed when his crimes led to him being deported back to Sicily after the war ended.
• Baron Roman von Ungern-Sternberg was a Baltic aristocrat who ended up trying to lead the Mongols into repeating Genghis Khan's conquests during the Russian civil war, adopting many of their customs in the process.
• While Serdar Somuncu is fond of his native İstanbul, he has nothing but scorn for Turkish nationalism (even going so far as making deprecating jokes about Atatürk, a major no-no for patriotic Turks), thinks immigrants who wish to replicate their religious or family life from back in Eastern Anatolia are idiots and gave up his Turkish citizenship as a young man. Part of his comedy is him playing with being "hyper-integrated" and still being perceived as "dangerous" or "foreign".
• Former Talking Heads frontman David Byrne, born in Scotland but living in the U.S. since childhood, became a U.S. citizen in 2012, citing the ability to vote in elections as his primary motivation for doing so.
• Tommy Wiseau loves America, to the point where he actively avoided revealing where he was originally from, only stating that he was from Europe in 2017; it took a lawsuit in order to confirm that he hails from Poland. It doesn't matter to him because he's American now.
• Embattled former NBA star Enes Kanter Freedom embodies this trope to the point that he actually changed his last name to Freedom upon becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen in early 2022.
• Former Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis^note whose campaign adopted the Neil Diamond song "America" mentioned in the Music folder as its theme song emphasized being the son of Greek immigrants during the first Presidential debate between Dukakis, the Democratic nominee for President in 1988, and Republican Vice-President George H. W. Bush when Dukakis - in response to the Bush campaign attempting to paint Dukakis as weak on patriotism due to his having vetoed a bill that would have required Massachusetts schools to begin their day with the Pledge of Allegiance - retorted by saying "Well, I hope this is the first and last time I have to say this. Of course, the vice president is questioning my patriotism. I don’t think there’s any question about that, and I resent it. I resent it. My parents came to this country as immigrants. They taught me that this was the greatest country in the world. I’m in public service because I love this country. I believe in it." Not that this helped Dukakis in the long run. A combination of Bush appealing to those who supported outgoing President Ronald Reagan and hoped to be seen as his heir apparent, attack ads such as the "Willie Horton" and "Tank Ride" ads, and Dukakis' opposition to the death penalty being highlighted by a poorly-received response to CNN anchor Bernard Shaw's opening question in the final debate on whether he would support the death penalty in a hypothetical situation where Dukakis' wife Kitty was raped and murdered contributed to Dukakis losing the election in a blowout.
• Bob Hope, the English-born comedian of The Golden Age of Hollywood who immigrated to the US when he was four, became famous later in his life for his work with the United Service Organizations, touring with 57 USO shows to provide live entertainment for US soldiers. In 1997, Congress even passed a bill making him an honorary veteran.

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