Representative Delia Ramirez, from Illinois, was in the news recently for standing in front of a group of Hispanics in Mexico City and declaring that she is a proud Guatemalan before she’s an American. Indeed, she’s so proud of Guatemala that her family fled the country, settled here illegally, and have refused to return. They would rather break the law in this country than live in Guatemala. That’s how proud of Guatemala they are.

That’s the inherent contradiction anytime an immigrant claims to be so deeply proud of the homeland that they desperately don’t want to live in. But the greater problem, of course, is that Congresswoman Ramirez has announced that she is more loyal to a foreign country than to her own. Granted, her loyalty to Guatemala seems rather uninspiring and conditional. She’s loyal from a distance. But her loyalty to the United States is clearly even weaker. She puts it second place to the country that her family have spent decades trying to avoid going back to.

It should be uncontroversial to say that any elected representative who declares a greater loyalty to a foreign country than to this country should be removed from office at an absolute minimum.

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In Ramirez’s case, it’s obvious that she, and her entire family, should be deported. If she loves Guatemala so much, she can live there. The fact that Delia Ramirez wasn’t on a boat back to Guatemala five minutes after she made those remarks is a disgrace. In fact, we didn’t even have to put her on a boat. She said all of that in Mexico City. All we had to do was lock the door and not let her back in. That’s what she deserves. This woman is a disloyal, backstabbing, ungrateful Judas who never should have been granted citizenship in the first place. There’s no time like the present to rectify that mistake. Especially after her most recent comments.

Yes, Ms. Ramirez is at it again. This time it was the NetRoots Nation conference in New Orleans. During a sit-down discussion on stage at the conference, Ramirez was asked a very simple question. It’s a question that everyone running for elected office should be asked. It’s a question that every immigrant should be asked before we even think about granting them citizenship. It is the question. The new “What is a Woman?” And the question is: “What is an American?” And just as the Left never figured out how to define the word “woman,” they have just as much trouble — if not more — stringing together an even vaguely coherent definition for the word “American.” 

Here’s Ramirez giving it a shot:

Democrat Rep. Delia Ramirez is asked what it means to be an American: “For me, being an American recognizes the good and the bad of the formation of this country. To reckon with how we used colonialism and to think about what reparations look like. We haven’t always been great.” pic.twitter.com/NxP7KCudZG

— TheBlaze (@theblaze) August 12, 2025

Credit: @theblaze

So Representative Ramirez says that being an American means that we can “dream and love,” and also that we recognize all the evils of colonialism and all the bad stuff America did in the past. That’s her answer.

Now, there are a lot of problems here.

First of all, Ramirez, what is this “we” stuff? You’re an anchor baby. You became an American thanks to a paperwork loophole. You have no ancestral ties to this country. You don’t love it. You don’t respect it. You have made no effort to assimilate into our culture. In fact you hate our culture and our people. Your family showed up here illegally. Their very first act as residents (illegal residents) of this country was to break our laws and violate our sovereignty.

You and your family are squatters. Using the word “we” is like if a junkie broke into your house while you were on vacation, refused to leave, and then started referring to it as “our home.” Now imagine if that was a home that your grandfather had built with his own hands. A home that you had lived in since birth. A home built and maintained by your family’s sweat and blood and sacrifice. And now some random vagrant, who broke in through a downstairs window five seconds ago, has announced that it’s just as much his home as yours. You wouldn’t take very kindly to that. And we don’t take very kindly to it either. There is no “we.” This is not your home.

We know it isn’t because if it was your home, you’d be able to speak at length, and with real depth and feeling, when someone asks you what this home means to you. But instead when you were asked what it means to be an American, you started with third-rate, Hallmark pablum about how being an American means that you can “dream and love.” In fact it’s worse than Hallmark. I wouldn’t accept that answer if it was written on a July 4th greeting card. I wouldn’t accept it on a second grader’s book report. You’re a grown adult and an elected representative and the best you can do — in fact the only positive thing you can say about America — is that Americans can “dream and love.”

Does that mean that people in other countries can’t dream and love? Is dreaming and loving unique to Americans? Do your fellow Guatemalans never experience love, or have dreams, until they sneak across the border into our country? I’m pretty certain you wouldn’t make that claim. Which means your definition of an American is generic and meaningless. “Being an American means that you can dream and love and laugh and look at pretty colors and have tickle fights.” If my five year old daughter said something like that I’d be embarrassed. You’re an adult. You should be deported just for saying that, and for about a dozen other reasons.

But somehow it gets worse. We learn that Americans are people who dream and love, whatever that means, and also — and this is the only other qualification you provide — they are people who feel the requisite amount of scorn and resentment for the alleged evils committed by Americans in the past. Never mind that the United States only had slavery for about 90 years while many countries in the world had it for millennia. Never mind that white people — Americans and Europeans — were among the last to adopt slavery and the first to abolish it. Never mind that if we’re supposed to feel bad about slavery, then literally every other nation, race, and ethnicity on Earth should feel even worse. There were countries in Africa practicing legal slavery as recently as the 1970s. Never mind all that. Also never mind the fact that the “colonialism” you decry is the reason why you currently live in a civilized society where you don’t have to worry about being kidnapped by a raiding part in the middle of the night and having your beating heart cut out of your chest to appease the sun god. If not for “colonialism” in the western hemisphere, there would still be slavery here. The entire hemisphere would still be locked in perpetual wars of conquest. And you, as a woman, would be property to be bought, traded, stolen, used, and discarded. Because that’s how it worked among the “indigenous tribes” whose conquest and subjugation you lament, because you’re a stupid, ungrateful, historically illiterate, spoiled little child.

But as I said, never mind all of that. Even if we pretend that America has all of these unique and terrible sins — which it doesn’t — still, couldn’t anyone, anywhere in the world, recognize those sins? Couldn’t anyone, anywhere in the world, dream and love, and also hate America as you do? If that’s the qualification to be an American, then by your definition, anyone, anywhere, at any time, at any given moment, can be an American. Considering there are a lot of people in the world who hate America — mostly out of envy, like you — and considering that most of those people are presumably capable of dreaming and maybe even loving, that would mean that there are billions of Americans currently living in the world today. And most of these “Americans” have never even been to this country. The Middle East is full of Americans. The entire country of China is American. North Koreans are all Americans. Everyone is American. Which means, of course, that no one is American. It means that being an American actually means nothing.

That’s your real answer, isn’t it, Ramirez? You just don’t want to say it out loud. Being an American means nothing to you. America means nothing. America is nothing. It’s not a country. It’s not a place. It’s not even an idea. It’s nothing. It is, at most, a vague feeling. A fleeting sense of something or other. There is nothing solid that defines it. Now if I were to ask you what it means to be Guatemalan, you would have a lot more to say, wouldn’t you? You would talk about the culture, the people, the pride you feel for Guatemala, the fidelity you have to it. Guatemala is a distinct country to you. In fact every country on the globe that isn’t predominately populated by white people is a distinct country. It’s only white western nations — America principle among them — that is not allowed to have an actual national identity. That’s what you really think. You just won’t say it. Though you’ll come very close.

So let me answer the question, since you can’t, or won’t. America is not a feeling of love, it’s not a dream, and it’s certainly not a set of Marxist claims about the evils of white colonialism or whatever. America is a country. It is a country with borders, and laws, and a language. It is a people. It is a culture, a history, and a tradition. It is also — in addition to those things, not on its own but in addition — a set of values. Values rooted in Christian thought. This land was conquered and this country was established by Christian men who did it for the glory of God and for the sake of spreading the Gospel from sea to shining sea. That’s America. It is a nation. It is a home. My home, not yours. It’s the place where I was born and will die. It’s where my children will have children, and where their children will have children, and all of them will love this country just as I do, and celebrate its history, and fight to preserve its culture and its traditions. Because I’m an American, and I put no country before this one.

You cannot say the same. Because you are not an American. You can’t even convincingly pretend to be one.

So what is an American? Well, to begin with, certainly not you.