In the never-ending debate over whether America is a people with an idea or an idea with a people, it is worth considering an important measure of a people: the diaspora. Any nation that is fundamentally built around a people and its shared history has a diaspora: the people who are blood of the blood of the nation and once shared the same homeland but have since dispersed. Some nations built upon shared blood, soil, and faith have important traditions and connections to the people who share those things but no longer live on the same soil. In Ireland, Israel, Mexico, China, and other nations, the status of the diaspora is important and carries great symbolic weight, even if each of those polities and cultures has its own set of attitudes and policies toward their diaspora. We Americans all came from somewhere, so if your great-great grandparents came from Ireland, or Italy, or China, you might have some ties to that nation and its people, however ancestral and attenuated.
But America is different. Sure, we have emigrants and expatriates. But in light of our prosperity and our free society, the number of Americans who leave the country with no intention or plan to return is not that large. And our laws have recognized from the very beginning of the republic that we are not bound by law or ligeance to the soil: a free citizen can always renounce his or her country. If an American goes abroad and has children and renounces U.S. citizenship, or his or her children never return to claim their birthright, it’s over: they’re not Americans anymore. We don’t even have a popular concept, as we would if we were primarily a people, that our descendants around the world are part of our people. There are descendants abroad of American servicemen, but if the family stayed where they were, they are in no way Americans; they’re just people whose families once involved an American.
The absence of even a popular concept of an American diaspora indicates what sort of nation we are. You can check out any time you like, and you are free to leave.