The First American in My Family: What America at 250 Means to a Son of Immigrants
- Rick Pina
- 7 days ago
- 9 min read
This week, the United States of America turns 250 years old. I am thankful. I am humbled. And I am proud.
I want to tell you why. Not with statistics. With my family.
The story of this country is not an abstraction to me. It is the story of two women who came from nothing, on two different islands, and who shaped everything I am. It is the story of how a boy born in Brooklyn came to love a nation the way I do. Let me walk you through it.
A Village With No Running Water
My mother was born in a small village in the Dominican Republic. No running water. No electricity. My grandparents raised eleven children in that village. One died as a baby, so ten survived. Of those ten, my mother and one of her sisters made it all the way to the eighth grade. The rest finished at the sixth. This was their ceiling of formal education, but it was not their ceiling for life. My mother and her siblings went on to have deeply meaningful and impactful lives.
Going back to that village (Los Corozos), in that time, no one around her was talking about crossing an ocean. The plan for a young woman there was to stay, get married, make do, and to accept the life she was handed. But my mother had a dream. She wanted to come to the United States.
One of her cousins made it here in 1968. My mother looked at that and decided she was coming too. She made it in 1970. She landed in Brooklyn, New York, and two years later, in 1972, I was born.
I was the first person in my entire family to be born in this country.
The first American. My family never let me forget it, and I have never wanted to.
The Cost of the Journey
Nothing about that beginning was easy.
When I was born, my mother was here on a travel visa. By the time I was five months old, that visa expired, and she was told she had to leave. So we went back to the Dominican Republic and stayed until I was about three years old. Two and a half years is a long time to hold a marriage together across a border and an ocean. It did not hold.
My mother came back to Brooklyn and raised me on her own.
That is courage. A woman with an eighth-grade education, a failed marriage behind her, and a small son to feed, in a city and a country that owed her nothing. She had every reason to quit on the dream. She did not quit.
She worked in a factory for $56 a week. Not $56 an hour. $56 for the whole week. That's less than $3k a year, and out of that, she built a life for her son and her daughter (later to be born).
What My Mother Built Into Me
My mother did not have much to give me in the way of money. What she gave me was worth more.
She instilled in me things like honor, integrity, and the value of an honest day's work. She taught me to work hard, to honor God, and to build something with my life.
Those are things a lot of people do not talk about anymore. She did not just talk about them. She lived them in front of me, every single day, for $56 a week.
I learned my work ethic watching a woman who had every excuse to be tired and chose to be faithful instead. I learned about God watching a woman who had almost nothing and still gave thanks. And although she did not have much, SHE GAVE out of her poverty. She gave to those who had less than her.
When people ask me where my drive and my desire to GIVE come from, I do not have to think about it. It comes from an immigrant woman who spent years in Brooklyn working as a laborer, and who clocked in every day so her children could have a better life.
I Was Grateful for the Job
That is the home I grew up in, so I went to work young.
I got my first job at thirteen, tutoring in school. I was so proud of those little paychecks. At 14 years old, I spent the summer working in my uncle's bodega. A lot of kids get a summer to relax. I was just happy to have a job. 12 hours a day, six days a week. 72 hours for a $150.
I was not upset about it. I was grateful for it.
My family made the expectation plain. I was an American. I knew English. This was the land of opportunity, and I had a responsibility to do something with it. That was not pressure. That was a gift. They were handing me a standard to live up to, and I have spent my whole life trying to be worthy of it.
Growing up in Brooklyn, I was surrounded by people born in this country and by a flood of immigrants and children of immigrants. I was too American to be Dominican and too Dominican to be American. I had to find my own way into what it actually meant to be an American. My mother settled the question for me. This was a land of opportunity, she said. She crossed an ocean and gave up everything she knew so her son could have a better life. That was never lost on me. It still is not.
I Married an Immigrant
Then God gave me Isabella.
My wife came to this country when she was 20 years old. Her father brought her and her brother here at the same time, and he was honest with them.
"This is the land of opportunity. I brought you here. This is all I can really give you. You have to do something with it. In this country, you can be anything except a president, because you were not born here."
They took him at his word. She and her brother joined the United States Army. That is where I met my wife.
Now here is something I find remarkable. Isabella was raised in a village with no running water and no electricity, on the island of Dominica. Not the Dominican Republic, where my mother was born. Dominica is a small island nation of its own, in the Caribbean. Two different islands. Two different women. The very same beginning.
I did not go looking for a woman who reminded me of my mother. God simply gave me one. Both of them came from a village with no running water and no electricity. Both of them were handed a small life and refused to accept it. Both of them crossed an ocean on the strength of a dream.
Both of them immigrated to the United States with almost nothing. Both of them raised their right hand and became naturalized citizens of this nation. Both of them worked with their hands, honored God, and outworked every excuse. Both of them are stronger than most men I have ever met.
There are so many similarities between my wife and my mother. That is one of the reasons I love them both the way I do. When I look at Isabella, I see the same determination my mother had. When I look at my mother, I see the same faith Isabella carries. Two women. Two islands. One kind of strength.
Both of them came here with nothing and became citizens of the greatest nation on earth.
And I got to be raised by one and married to the other. That is not just my family's story. That is the story of America.
I do not believe that is a coincidence. I have lived too long and seen too much to believe in coincidence. I believe the hand of God arranged my life so that the two most important women in it would teach me the same lesson. From two different directions. Where you start does not determine where you finish. A village with no electricity can still produce a light that changes a family for generations.
Two Soldiers
Let me tell you what my wife did with the opportunity her father handed her.
Isabella put on the uniform and put her life on the line for this nation before she was even a citizen.
She served this country first, and belonged to it second.
She earned her citizenship later, raised her right hand, and swore an oath to the country she had already been defending with her life. She served for 21 years. I served for 25.
So this is where I stand. I am the son of an immigrant, and I am married to an immigrant. Between the two of us, my wife and I gave this nation 46 years in uniform. This country runs through my family from both sides, and we paid for our place in it the honest way.
What We Built
Isabella and I did not stop when we took off the uniform. This country had given us one more thing to do with our lives, and we went and did it.
Whil we were still in unfiform, back in 2007, we founded a non-profit, RIPMINISTRIES (Rick & Isabella Piña Ministries), to help us share the love of God around the world. In 2015, when we retired from the Army, we became entrepreneurs as well.
Isabella started a company called Inspired Solutions. Now we get to lead a non-profit organzation and a for-profit business every day. Look at the whole road. A girl from a village on Dominica with no electricity. A young man born to a single mother in Brooklyn. Two soldiers who retired. Two servants who seek to positively impact the world every day through a non-profit. Two entrepreneurs running an American company. Nobody handed us that. This country refused to put a ceiling over it, and we went to work.
This is the American Dream!
Between the non-profit and for-profit, we are commited to impacting lives anc communities. The American Dream is not a slogan to me. It is my life. Immigrant, soldier, citizen, entrepreneur, servant of God. Isabella lived it. I lived it. RIPMINISTRIES and Inspired Solutions are proof the American Dream is still alive!
Why I Still Believe
I know what our nation's story sounds like right now. There is a lot of noise about immigrants and a lot of noise about what it even means to be an American. I have heard all of it.
Here is what I know from the inside.
The view I hold is the view a lot of immigrants hold.
The United States of America is still the symbol of hope for most of the free world. It is still the place people cross oceans to reach, the way my mother did, the way my wife's father did. This is still the country where a woman from a village with no running water can raise a son who builds a company. Where another woman from another village with no running water can serve twenty-one years and retire with honor.
I have not read about that promise. I have watched my own family live it. That promise is real.
I am not naive about this nation. No country of 250 years is without its scars. But I have traveled enough of this world to tell you the truth plainly. There is no other nation on earth that opens its doors to a poor girl from a Caribbean village. No other nation that lets her rise as far as her faith and her work will carry her. That is not a small thing. That is a miracle we have started taking for granted.
The Bible says,
"Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD."
I believe the hand of God has been on this nation for 250 years. I believe He is not finished with her yet.
I am proud to be an American. I am deeply thankful for this nation.
I believe it is the greatest nation on the face of the earth. And I am humbled by the goodness and the grace God has shown to me, to my family, and to this country.
Happy Birthday, America
If you made it this far, thank you for letting me share what this nation means to a son of immigrants.
I am the proof of the promise. My mother is the proof. My wife is the proof. Two women, two islands, two villages with no running water. Both of them immigrants. Both of them citizens. One nation that gave them room to become everything God made them to be. That is the story of America, and I have been living in the middle of it my whole life.
As we celebrate 250 years, I pray the Lord will continue to bless these United States of America. I pray she stays strong until Jesus comes. And on this birthday, here is to a greater future, in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
To God be the glory. Greater is coming for our great nation!
Rick Pina is the COO and Chief Revenue Officer of Inspired Solutions, Inc., a veteran-owned federal IT company. He served 25 years in the United States Army. He and his wife, Isabella, co-founded Rick and Isabella Pina Ministries.