# Ronald Reagan — "anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can … become an American" > [!quote] "You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk, or a Japanese. But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American." > — Ronald Reagan, Remarks at the Presidential Medal of Freedom Ceremony, January 19, 1989 (his last formal remarks as president) ## Context Reagan delivered this in his final formal address as president, the day before George H.W. Bush's inauguration, quoting a letter he said he had received. It is of a piece with his Oval Office Farewell Address eight days earlier, in which he described his "shining city" as one whose walls had doors "open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here." Reagan — patron saint of the modern conservative movement — closed his presidency by defining American identity as uniquely open and acquirable, not ethnic. ## Why this matters The single most load-bearing receipt for the abandoned-consensus thesis. The right's foundational hero made open immigration a defining national virtue in his closing words — the precise opposite of the blood-and-soil nationalism that now dominates the movement that claims his name. When today's Republicans invoke Reagan, this is the Reagan they have to talk around. He had earlier signed the 1986 amnesty for roughly three million undocumented immigrants; this quote is its rhetorical summation. ## Verification - **Primary source:** [Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, transcript of the passage](https://www.reaganfoundation.org/ronald-reagan/quotes/since-this-is-the-last-speech-that-i-will-give-as-president-i-think-it-s-fitting); [The American Presidency Project, Remarks at the Presentation Ceremony for the Presidential Medal of Freedom, January 19, 1989](https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-the-presentation-ceremony-for-the-presidential-medal-freedom-5). - **Status:** Verbatim. Undisputed. (Sometimes loosely attributed to his January 11 Farewell Address; the "Frenchman" passage is from the January 19 Medal of Freedom remarks.) ## Related quotes - [[Jimmy Carter - a country of refugees]] — the Democratic predecessor making the same welcome a decade earlier. - [[George H.W. Bush - bridge to America's future]] — Reagan's hand-picked successor, continuing the line into the next administration. - Featured in [[Presidents on the Nation of Immigrants]].