Why Remigration IS Not the Way

Every time I hear someone talk about “remigration,” I can’t help but ask the obvious question: where exactly are they planning to send us?

A friend of mine put it perfectly the other day. She’s the descendant of Italian immigrants on one side, and on the other, her mom’s family is your classic conservative American lineage that married into Italian heritage.

She asked me, “Where would they even send me?”

And honestly, I’ve got the same question.

I’m a mix of Native, Scotch-Irish, Norwegian-Portuguese, with an African slave ancestor back in the line from the 1800s.

In other words, I’m a "mutt."

So where do I go? Which country claims me? The answer is simple: none.

I was born here. My family has been here for generations. And if history teaches us anything, when regimes start talking about “remigration,” it doesn’t end with orderly flights to ancestral homelands; it ends with camps, statelessness, and persecution.

Here’s why the whole idea collapses under scrutiny:

Mixed heritage IS the norm. Most Americans are woven from multiple lineages. There’s no neat “origin” to send us back to.

Citizenship doesn’t transfer by ancestry. Other countries don’t recognize descendants of emigrants as citizens unless very specific laws apply. Italy, for example, has jus sanguinis citizenship, but it’s limited and bureaucratic.

Most nations would simply say: You’re not ours.

Generational distance matters. Being second, third, or fifth generation means the ancestral homeland sees you as foreign, not native. You don’t belong there any more than you don’t belong here.

Indigenous ancestry flips the script. For those of us with Native roots, this is the homeland. The idea of “remigration” is not only absurd, but it is erasure.

History is clear. Forced relocations have never been about restoration. They’ve been about exclusion, violence, and control.

So when people float “remigration” as if it’s a policy solution, what they’re really saying is: we don’t want you here. It’s not about logistics. It’s about exclusion. It’s about marking people as outsiders even when their families have been here for centuries.

And let’s be real: no other country is waiting with open arms to accept millions of people who aren’t their citizens. The fantasy of “sending people back” is just that: a fantasy. What happens in reality is persecution, camps, and worse.

The deeper truth is that America has always been a place of mixed ancestry, layered identities, and complicated stories.

That’s not a weakness: it’s our defining strength. The idea that you can untangle that and assign people to neat categories of “belonging” or “foreignness” is not only impossible, but it IS dangerous.

When I hear “remigration,” I don’t hear policy. I hear a threat. I hear the echo of history’s darkest chapters.

And I hear the absurdity of trying to tell someone like me: 27% Native, Scotch-Irish, Norwegian-Portuguese, African-descended, that I have a single “homeland” to return to.

The truth is, I already live in my homeland. My ancestors built lives here, endured here, resisted here. Some were displaced from here. Some arrived here under duress. Some came seeking opportunity.

ALL of that is part of the American story.

So the next time someone talks about “remigration,” ask them the same question my friend asked:

Where exactly are we supposed to go?

Because the answer exposes the lie. There is no “back.” There is only here.

And here is where we belong.

Remigration: noun. re·​mi·​gra·​tion (ˌ)rē-mī-ˈgrā-shən (plural - remigrations): the act of migrating again, especially : the act of returning to one's original or previous home after a migration

Remigration is a European far-right concept of ethnic cleansing via the mass deportation of non-white minority populations, especially immigrants and sometimes including those born in Europe and holding European citizenship, to their place of racial ancestry. Originating in Europe, the concept has spread to the United States and other countries, and it is popular especially within the Identitarian movement. Some proponents of remigration suggest excluding some persons with non-European background from such a mass deportation, based on a varyingly defined degree of assimilation into European culture.