What makes America special is that people come here, assimilate and become American with all the rights and responsibilities citizenship bestows.
I enjoy helping green card holders with their quest for citizenship. America is a great melting pot of races, creeds and nationalities which form the citizenry of these United States. We are unique in the way we can assimilate immigrants and make them feel they are Americans.
In Japan for example, a person who is not Japanese can never become Japanese even though their ancestors have lived in Japan for hundreds of years. President Ronald Reagan related the story of a man who wrote to him regarding citizenship: “You can go to live in France, but you can’t become a Frenchman, you can go live in Germany or Italy, but you can’t become a German or an Italian. He went through Turkey, Greece, Japan and other countries. But he said anyone from any corner of the world, can come to live in the United States and become an American.”
We are indeed a special country.