'They want us grateful for merely being allowed': Zohran Mamdani delivers pro-immigration July 4 speech

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani delivered a pro-immigration address on Friday marking the eve of the United States’ 250th Independence Day celebrations, presenting an alternative vision of America to President Donald Trump hours before the president’s scheduled speech at Mount Rushmore.Speaking from New York City Hall while seated behind a desk once used by George Washington and surrounded by recently naturalized US citizens holding American flags, Mamdani framed immigration as central to the country’s identity and criticised what he described as efforts to define America through exclusion. Though he did not mention Trump by name, several remarks appeared aimed at the administration’s immigration policies.“America, if you ask them, becomes less the more people it welcomes,” Mamdani said. “America, they will tell you, belongs only to those with the right accent or the right shade of skin. The rest of us, they insist, should be grateful for merely being allowed to visit.”The mayor, a Uganda-born naturalized US citizen of Indian-origin parents, recalled seeing the Statue of Liberty from an airplane when he first arrived in the United States and said the country has continually been reshaped by immigrants, activists and ordinary citizens striving to uphold the ideals of the Declaration of Independence.Referring to immigration enforcement, Mamdani said, “We see masked agents terrorizing our streets, eating food cooked by our undocumented neighbors before spiriting them away in unmarked vans. We see a nation whose immense wealth has been built by those with calloused, dirt-streaked hands — those who toil on factory floors and chisel into stone — and we see a nation that has allowed so much of that wealth to be held instead in the soft hands of a precious few.“Calling division the “oldest” and “cheapest” trick in politics, Mamdani argued that exclusionary politics had repeatedly been defeated throughout American history.“At every moment in our past, those who led through exclusion and isolation have tried to win power and enrich themselves by turning us against one another,” he said. “Time and again, including 250 years ago, those forces of division have been vanquished by the forces of progress.”Highlighting the role of new Americans, he said, “The work of fulfilling the values first enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, that work endures, and it belongs to us all. It belongs, too, to our newest Americans, those standing here with me today, all of whom were recently naturalized.”Mamdani, who became a US citizen in 2018, added: “Nearly a decade ago, I too felt what you feel, the joy of no longer being just a New Yorker, but an American, too.”Ending his address with a call for unity, the mayor said, “Those ideals upon which our nation was built, they are strong enough to endure any authoritarian regime, but only if we reach for them.”“Ours is a nation working each day towards the perfection in which it was conceived, a nation striving each day to better itself. Therein lies the work of America, the striving, the bettering, the reaching towards perfection,” he added.The speech marked Mamdani’s latest appearance on the national political stage after a series of victories by candidates he endorsed in New York’s Democratic primaries. Under the US Constitution, Mamdani is ineligible to run for president because he is not a natural-born citizen. He has rejected calls to amend the Constitution, saying it “looks good just the way it is.”Trump is scheduled to deliver his own address at Mount Rushmore as part of nationwide celebrations marking the country’s 250th anniversary, with events across the United States including fireworks displays, military flyovers and commemorative ceremonies.