As we begin a year to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence — known by the klunky name Semiquincentennial — my thoughts are about America. I was fortunate to be at the Mall in Washington, D.C., on the Bicentennial on July 4, 1976. Thousands sat on the grass and celebrated our nation.

This year, I hope you had a nice long weekend, full of what I call the “4Fs” – Family, Friends, Faith and Fun. I sometimes start with sparklers in the backyard with my grandkids. In past years we set off fireworks, but this year we are respecting the ban.

To be honest, I’ve never been a big fireworks fan anyway. I know a hand surgeon who said the Fourth of July was always his busiest day of the year. And once an errant rocket went the wrong way after being lit by a friend of mine, Igor, who happened to be a Russian immigrant. Fortunately, no one was injured that day.

I thought of Igor this year because I now have another neighbor who is also a Russian immigrant. His wife is Ukrainian. They have three young daughters who play with my grandchildren. They are great neighbors.

The street where I live is quite diverse. Houses are owned by a Chinese immigrant, a French immigrant, a couple who visit Ukraine to help women and children there, and a Jewish couple who travel the world extensively. I’m from Oregon and my wife is from Texas, so we’re kind of immigrants.

I used to live in Seattle, where some of my friends and colleagues dissed Mercer Island for not being diverse enough. However, my North Seattle neighborhood was much less diverse than my current one. The town I grew up in, Lake Oswego, Oregon, was not diverse at all. We had no African Americans in my schools, only a few Asian-American or Hispanic students, and a handful of Jewish kids. Neighborhood covenants and red-lining kept the status quo – as they did in my North Seattle neighborhood until we voted to strike that discriminatory language from our covenants.

In high school, after a trip to Washington, D.C., in 1963 — the summer of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech — I tried to get a Black kid I knew to transfer from a downtown Portland school to Lake Oswego. I failed, but it was worth a try. In college, I joined a Jewish fraternity with a diverse mix of members, including more Black brothers than any other house on campus. Later, as a young reporter in Washington, D.C., I chaired a neighborhood association in an extremely diverse section of Capitol Hill. Our members all got along very well, and focused on mutual concerns such as crime, parking, litter and street maintenance. The D.C. government was not very helpful. Mercer Island’s is far better.

My first wife was an immigrant from Germany. Her father, who had been drafted into the German army and sent to the Russian front during World War II, immigrated to Oregon after the war. He and his wife became some of the most patriotic Americans I have ever known. He started working for a logging company, but worked his way up to becoming a top executive of the largest private utility company in the Northwest.

Many immigrants I know have taken similar paths. They are ambitious, hard-working, patriotic and civic-minded. My Mercer Island Rotary Club has brought several immigrant members into our club in recent years. In conversations at the Farmers Market and the Juneteenth event, we have recruited several more. Those who say Mercer Island is not diverse should come visit our club. Rotary used to be all male and mostly white. Not anymore!

All this reflection made me especially interested in watching a new series of online interviews with immigrants that was just begun by the Washington Policy Center (washingtonpolicy.org), a Seattle-based free-market think tank. It’s called “American By Choice.” (Full Disclosure: I was a vice president there for a few years in the 1990s and still support their work.)

The series, hosted by Todd Myers, WPC’s vice president for research, may be viewed online. They will be posting 5 interviews over the next couple of weeks. All are short, 3-5 minutes or so, but well worth watching. The series began with a thoughtful testimonial from Eleanor Baumgartner, an immigrant who is the wife of Rep. Michael Baumgartner, R-Spokane. Others will include immigrants from Russia, Vietnam, India and Mexico. With all of the criticism we hear these days about the U.S.A. – some of it justified – it’s interesting to hear how differently immigrants see things.

Reflecting on America as we observe our 250th year as a nation may stir more debate and discussion, which is fine. We’re going to disagree on many things. After all, we’re Americans. The Founding Fathers disagreed on almost everything but managed to find compromises and devised a truly exceptional and extraordinary system of government. As Churchill said, democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others. With all our faults, we’re still a magnet for immigrants.

Meanwhile, back on my street, a new family recently moved in. They’re from Oklahoma. Hey, more diversity!

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John Hamer (jhamer46@gmail.com) is a former editorial writer/columnist at The Seattle Times and co-founder of the Washington News Council. He has lived on Mercer Island for 25 years.