Politics & Power Quote by Samuel P. Huntington

Huntington is poking at a national self-portrait that’s grown too flattering to be useful. “Nation of immigrants” is America’s preferred myth because it suggests perpetual moral freshness: newcomers arrive, the country renews itself, and the story stays upbeat. By insisting, almost pedantically, that the U.S. is also “in some part a nation of emigrants,” he’s introducing a crack in that mirror. People don’t only come; they also leave. That fact interrupts the tidy narrative that America is an unquestioned destination and forces a harder question: what conditions, policies, or identities make the country less livable or less welcoming for some of its own?

The phrasing is doing quiet rhetorical work. “Finally” signals a culminating move in a broader argument: this isn’t trivia, it’s a missing piece that changes the frame. “Immigration image of America” treats the “nation of immigrants” line as branding, not just history. “Often gets neglected” is a gentle indictment of selective memory: public discourse prefers stories that justify national pride and sidesteps stories that complicate it.

Context matters: Huntington spent his late career worrying about cohesion, assimilation, and the limits of multicultural celebration, especially in debates over Latino immigration and national identity. Emigration, in his hands, isn’t merely demographic bookkeeping; it’s a diagnostic. It allows him to challenge the assumption that America is a one-way magnet and to re-center the conversation on membership, allegiance, and what a nation owes - and can demand of - those who join or depart.