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Growing up minutes away from Dominguez Hills in Lakewood, the first-generation college student’s main goal was to use basketball to earn an education.

As a first-generation Latina myself, I felt seen in the cultural gap exemplified by Los Dinos, who grew increasingly frustrated with the music their dad taught them to perform.

Like the “Buena Vista” musicians, Ramirez also followed his dream thousands of miles from home, his artistic pursuits carrying the first-generation son of Cuban immigrants from his Hialeah hometown to New York, where he studied playwriting at NYU and Juilliard.

Roisin Comerford is also a first-generation immigrant and spent time in Portland, Oregon, before putting down roots in Washington DC.

Liberal elites don’t seem to know it, but the data show that Black Americans are as proud to be Americans as whites are, and nobody is prouder of being American than first-generation Americans from all over the world.