Last semester, I studied abroad at the University of Winchester in England and during this time I spent a month backpacking through most of Western Europe. In my traveling party there were three other women.

One night at dinner we talked about our families and lives back home.

I am a fourth-generation American.

My great-grandparents were farmers from Norway and an area of what is now Austria. They immigrated to the Chicago area at the turn of the last century.

I expected similar stories out of my companions. However, I learned that although all four of us were born in America, only three of us considered ourselves American.

The fourth girl in our party has first generation citizens for parents, they hail from Afghanistan and Uzbekistan.

She has two first languages and speaks only Farsi in her home and was raised according to Muslim law and her family is very close.

She does not consider herself an American first – as her and her family only live in America because they were forced to leave their former homes due to war and a poor economy. She told me she and her family feel sad about the migration and now live in America only because it is safer and they can afford a better life.

This summer when I returned from my trip, I worked at carnivals around the state. While there I learned that some of my fellow “carnies” were born in America, but do not consider themselves American.

Although they were born, live and work in America as I do, they consider themselves the nationality of their illegal immigrant parents.

Financial and educational reasons had motivated their family’s relocation and all said they would rather be back home, Nicaragua and Mexico. I often wonder if the “I just live here” attitude would have shown through in conversations with people like my great-grandparents.

The last “great wave of immigration” I remember from my history books seemed different. The majority of immigrants during that wave carried people from second and first world countries to America – the land of opportunity, to settle and become part of the melting pot.

The United States Census Bureau in a 2006 press release stated the majority of immigrants now are coming from third world countries.

From what I have observed in my relationships, the initial motives are not “to become an American.”

I do not mean to say all immigrants to the United States in this recent wave have come with no dream of assimilation.

And having not lived through the last “great Wave,” I can not directly compare. I can only offer my observations in isolated cases and wonder at what kind of population this situation will create.

A generation of people, born in America, who live with the attitude “I just live here.”