WHERE NOBODY KNOWS YOUR NAME: The wallpaper on my desktop (and how’s that for a computing mixed metaphor?) is a film still from “A.I.” I haven’t seen the movie, which is probably all for the best; my reaction to the picture comes unconditioned by any Spielbergian annoyances. The still shows a quiet, rippling expanse of water, bounded by dark buildings like broken teeth. Up from the water rises the hand and torch of the Statue of Liberty. The image gets its kick from the fact that Lady Liberty is probably the most recognizable, and emotionally weighted, symbolic buildings in America. More than the White House, more than the Twin Towers were, more than the Pentagon or the Washington Monument, Lady Liberty shapes how we think of our country. (Anyone who’s read Call It Sleep will remember the startling conversation about the statue at the novel’s end.)

We can discuss all kinds of questions related to immigration–everything from, “How would anyone stop it, short of turning the southern border into a war zone?” to, “If you let in refugees, who qualifies? Just political refugees, or men who can’t feed their families if they stay home?” to, “High immigration or multiculturalism–pick one.” That’s not what I’m interested in just now. (I don’t know enough about the details of immigration policy to say much more than: The second question is the most important one to me, and I think the answer is “both”; and the first issue is free trade, so that fewer people will need to wrench themselves from home and hearth to come here.) Right now, I just want to explore the effects on our psychology of this sense that America is an immigrant nation. So here are some scattered thoughts. Feel free to email me, since this won’t be maximally coherent…

The first big effect is a sense of striving, a sense that combines hope with a feeling of incompletion. A restlessness. You can find this everywhere from Rebecca Howe on “Cheers” (who lacks, but desperately wants, all the characteristics that make the other bar regulars who they are–Sam’s suave manner, Carla’s wit, Robin’s money, Norm’s likability and so on) to Saul Bellow’s Henderson the Rain King. Henderson has a voice inside that constantly repeats, “I want, I want!” That anchorless, harborless desire seems very American to me. It even plays into our common sense of moral arrogance: We’re the people who try. We’re the people who do things. The rest of the world just sits on its ass, but not Americans!

And then there’s survivor’s guilt. I honestly am not sure how this affects the American character, but I do know it’s there. Immigrants are also emigrants–they had to choose against their home. Many left relatives and friends behind in terrible conditions. A nation with survivor’s guilt is, again, a nation prone to moral high-horsing, a nation with a sense of moral responsibility that’s sometimes great and sometimes tragically misguided. A nation with survivor’s guilt is a nation prone to multiculturalism–I may not live in [country] anymore, but I can champion it here! I’m still really [nationality]. All this America business is not who I really am.

And then that illusion is shattered in the next generation. No, America is who you really are–because it’s what your kids become. America, like Socrates in The Clouds, sets sons against their fathers.

It’s strange that a nation of immigrants would ever be tempted to engage in the kind of denial of tragedy that America has fallen into. The belief that our interests will never conflict, that there will never need to be tragic choices, is simply untrue to the immigrant experience.