SAN DIEGO — Dear America, I don't mean to sound ungrateful. Really, I don't. Uncle Sam and I have always been on good terms.

But I must ask: Can migrants to the United States get a do-over?

More than a century ago, my Mexican grandfather and his parents chose the United States over Mexico. Unable to make a living in their own country — which was splitting apart due to the Mexican Revolution — the family left Chihuahua and crossed the Rio Grande.

By the way, they came legally. They arrived around 1915; for the most part, one couldn't migrate illegally to the United States until after the Immigration Act of 1924.

Now I have to wonder: If my grandfather had to make that same choice today, might he choose differently?

According to the World Happiness Report 2025, Mexico ranks significantly higher in happiness than the United States. In fact, our country is at its lowest ranking in more than a dozen years.

In July, a survey by the Pew Research Group found that 69% of Mexicans have an unfavorable view of the United States while just 29% had a favorable opinion.

This could be the Trump effect. The U.S. president treats Mexicans with disrespect, and they reciprocate.

Meanwhile, a lot of Mexicans are exciting and hopeful about the future being forged by their own leader. Claudia Sheinbaum — a climate change scientist with a Ph.D. — is the country's first woman president. Unlike many of the men who came before her, she seems guided more by reason than by a need to settle scores.

As a Mexican American, I've always been more partial to the second half of that label. My family and I owe everything to this land of second chances. I bleed red, white and blue.

That's true even today. Sept. 16 is Mexican Independence Day.

No, it's not Cinco de Mayo, May 5.

The former refers to the day in 1810 when Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, a Catholic priest, belted out a "grito" (shout) calling for Mexico's liberation from Spain. The latter was created by U.S. beer companies as a marketing gimmick to liberate dollars from wallets.

El diez y seis de septiembre is a good time for an estimated 25 to 30 million Mexican Americans to take stock of what it means to be an American of Mexican descent.

In Trump 2.0, it means that life is a lot harder and a lot more unfair that it used to be. And, mind you, it was never all that easy or fair to begin with.

Martyred conservative activist Charlie Kirk warned that America was becoming a "Third World hellhole" due to "foreigner hordes." He also believed that white privilege was a myth created to encourage discrimination against white people.

Seriously? You have to be white and privileged to be that blind.

In the aftermath of Kirk's murder, this country — my country — has become more dark, more depressing and more dangerous.

Growing up, I spent a lot of time with my Spanish-speaking grandmother. I know a bad telenovela when I see one.

Neither camp knows what to believe anymore.

Conservatives were against victimhood and cancel culture before they weren't. They were also skeptical of censorship and the idea that words cause violence before they came around to adopt that view.

Meanwhile, liberals have decided that not all forms of speech should be protected and that tolerance has its limits, since some views should be silenced.

Each half of the nation detests and fears the other half.

For more than 30 years, angry readers on both the right and the left have admonished me to "go back to Mexico."

Now that the Supreme Court says we need to carry our passports when we go to the grocery store, some of my fellow Mexican Americans are eager to get away from the nastiness and the noise.

From Puerto Vallarta to San Miguel de Allende, the Yankees are invading Mexico. Again. This time, they don't want to grab land in the name of Manifest Destiny. Instead, tired of being attacked and scapegoated, they just want peace and normalcy. They want out.

But does Mexico want them? Mexican officials have tightened the requirements to immigrate, in a bid to keep out Americans.

In geopolitics, what goes around comes around. In 2015, when Trump declared his first White House bid, he warned against letting in Mexicans because they were "people that have lots of problems."

Well, now it seems some Mexicans are thinking the same thing.

To find out more about Ruben Navarrette and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: Jorge Aguilar at Unsplash