I have been thinking lately about a letter that I received from President Barack Obama in the fall of 2011. In it, he offered me his congratulations and praised my determination, in terms that were deeply gratifying, if a little over the top—he told me that I “represent the promise of the American Dream.” Of course, it wasn’t a personal letter; the signature at the bottom was a facsimile. It was addressed to me with a salutation that I hadn’t received before: “Dear Fellow American.” That year, I was one of roughly six hundred and ninety thousand people to get this letter, along with Certificates of Naturalization from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service confirming that, as the President put it, “this great Nation is now your Nation.” Knowing that I was one of a huge, heterogeneous number of recipients—all of us from different places of origin, all of us making the same commitment—somehow made the letter feel more meaningful still.

The letter, which I keep in a black file box, along with such other precious family documents as birth certificates and hand-drawn Mother’s Day cards, reminded me that I had sworn an oath to the United States, and that I now shared in its privileges and responsibilities. America’s democratic principles and liberties were mine to uphold. The letter also enumerated the country’s core values: “Hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism.” It spoke of the sacrifices made by generations of immigrants who had come to the U.S. in the pursuit of a better future. Obama called it “the price and the promise of citizenship,” and concluded, “We embrace you as a new citizen of our land, and we welcome you to the American family.”

Seven years later, I can’t read this letter without getting emotional. This is partly because of the unabashedly stirring language, but it’s also because, in the past two years, I and many other Americans—whether naturalized or native-born—have felt that the price and the promise of citizenship are being upended. Tolerance? A conviction that America’s strength lies in its openness to those seeking a better life and their belief that they will find one here? The current President was elected on a platform of taking the country back, of shutting its doors, and in office he has made every effort to fulfill that pledge.

The goals and policies of President Trump—from the “Muslim ban” to the zero-tolerance policy at the country’s southern border—are intended to stigmatize foreigners, documented or otherwise. Students, tech engineers, and asylum seekers are all under the same suspicion of insidiously undermining the country—of taking rather than giving, of harming rather than helping. The President tweets about undocumented immigrants ready to “infest” or “invade” the nation, and anyone who takes offense at the suggestion that his words echo Nazi propaganda hasn’t looked at Nazi propaganda of late. Most recently, the Administration has established a task force charged with “denaturalizing” citizens who may have lied on their immigration applications, thereby undercutting every naturalized citizen’s expectation of permanence. It has also sought to require respondents to the 2020 census to note whether they are citizens; if this change is implemented, it will likely result in an undercount of immigrants, because many will be too frightened to declare their status.

Trump has yet to issue his own letter to new citizens, but he has recorded a welcome video that is played at naturalization ceremonies. When he speaks of the rights and responsibilities of joining the American family, he stresses that newcomers must assimilate to “our way of life” and do their part to keep the nation “safe, strong, and free.” He notes, “America is our home. We have no other.” The video was released a few days after Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced their intention to rescind daca, the protections put in place by Obama for “dreamers”—young people who, having been brought to the U.S. as minors by undocumented parents, have grown up here, knowing no other home.

The Trump Administration is plainly seeking to stoke hostility against immigrants pursuing the “promise of the American Dream”: to deter those who might seek to come to the U.S. and to instill disquiet and fear in those who are already here. Under this government, small children have been torn from their parents and placed in shelters or tent camps, and treating immigrants with cynical cruelty has become official policy. On the day that I mumbled my allegiance to the United States in a Brooklyn courthouse—surrounded by hundreds of other new citizens, all of us dressed in our best clothes—I never imagined that I might soon see such atrocities committed in my name.

Why did I, a native of Britain, become a U.S. citizen? I used to say that it was so that my son, who was born in this country thirteen years ago, wouldn’t easily be able to put an ocean between us. But my joke about being an overbearing mother now rings hollow, given the recent stories about desperate families being forcibly separated by the Trump Administration. I was lucky: I got to choose, and, ultimately, I elected to join the country I’d been living in for decades.

Before my naturalization, I would have thought it an affectation to call myself an immigrant, even though, according to a strict dictionary definition, I do qualify. I came to the United States thirty years ago, at the age of twenty-one, to work on a master’s degree. At the time, I thought that I would return to the United Kingdom when I graduated, a year and a half later. But I was offered an entry-level position at New York, and I took it. Except for a brief interlude working in London when I was in my mid-twenties, I have been in America ever since: an immigrant if not in original intention, then in accomplished fact.

Although I did not initially seek permanent residence, I didn’t think of myself as belonging to that other, unappealing category of resident foreigner: the expat. I wasn’t here to socialize with other Brits, to regard the locals with amused disdain, then scram when it suited me. I avoided the company of my countrymen and immersed myself in new friendships with New Yorkers. I found being away from England and the English liberating: an escape from low gray skies, clenched politeness, and the omnipresent consciousness of social class. My own background—lower-middle class, with an Oxford education—would get me only so far in Britain, or so the famous second-generation bylines in the London newspapers suggested to me at the time.

I loved New York City, with its aggression and its warmth and its volatility. It didn’t take me long to discover that it was entirely possible to become a New Yorker without also having to become an American: you just needed to cultivate a sense of direction and an attitude. When friends from England visited—envious of my adventure and my good fortune in having escaped—I took them downtown to see my favorite landmark, on the waterfront near the World Trade Center: a quotation from Walt Whitman’s poem “City of Ships” embedded, in gilded letters, in iron railings overlooking the marina. “City of the world! (for all races are here; / All the lands of the earth make contributions here;)” it read. “Proud and passionate city! Mettlesome, mad, extravagant city!” Whitman was an American discovery for me: I knew the British Victorians, with their fine-grained depictions of status and tradition, but not the New World idealism of their American counterparts. I felt included in Whitman’s ebullient embrace, and was cheered by the hope that I, too, could make my contribution.