The media, academia, and online platforms have increasingly pushed the idea that America is broken, that its systems are unfair, its institutions are not to be trusted, and its values are out of step with the world.
But it’s a harder argument to make when you look beyond our borders.
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While a narrow slice of voices in America debates whether this country still works, women around the world have risked everything to get here.
My mother was one of them.
She took to the ocean during the Mariel boatlift in 1980, risking everything to flee Cuba’s communist regime — with me as a child. More than 100,000 Cubans made that same journey over the course of several months, leaving behind a system that offered them no real freedom or future.
My mother didn’t leave her homeland for an idea. She left because she knew exactly what she was escaping, and what she hoped to find in America. Our lives are better because of that one courageous, life-changing decision.
You can learn a lot about the health of a family, a community, or a country by looking at the lives of its women. In her report, “Women and the West: Liberty, Tyranny, and True Liberal Values,” Meaghan Mobbs explores a simple but important question: where do women actually have the most freedom, and what does that tell us about the countries they choose?
In places where laws don’t hold, where corruption takes over, and power is concentrated, women are usually the first to feel it. Their opportunities shrink. Their safety becomes uncertain. Their independence fades. They are often the clearest signal of whether freedom is real or just promised.
That’s why the direction of migration matters.
In places like Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran, women are not escaping an idea — they’re leaving conditions they’ve lived through. And when they choose where to go, they’re not guessing — they’re drawing from lived experience.
At the same time, many European countries facing population decline are actively attracting newcomers, offering legal status, residency pathways, and even relocation incentives. And yet, millions seeking freedom, particularly those fleeing instability in Latin America, are still trying to reach the United States.
That distinction matters.
Because when people are deciding where to rebuild their lives, where they can work, raise a family, and move forward, they’re not choosing based on rhetoric. They’re choosing what they’ve seen works in real life. And for many, the U.S. still represents a place where opportunity, mobility, and stability are possible.
Too often, the debate turns into talking points. But behind all of that are real people making hard comparisons. They know what it means to live without freedom, and they can recognize it when they find it. And yet, that perspective is often pushed aside in favor of narratives that portray America as inherently oppressive.
Over time, that shift isn’t surprising. As generations become further removed from the realities their families escaped, those experiences fade and are often replaced by narratives that don’t fully reflect them. When those lines blur, it’s not the most privileged who feel it first. It’s the most vulnerable — women and girls.
That is the warning at the center of Mobbs’s report: freedom is not self-sustaining. It depends on having strong laws, functioning institutions, and a shared belief in the system — things that need to be maintained, not undermined.
But the way we’re talking about these issues right now isn’t helping.
We’ve started treating serious issues like content — simplified, stylized, and built for attention instead of understanding. Immigration becomes something to scroll past rather than something to consider seriously. And while that might work online, it often turns off the very people it’s meant to reach.
Many Americans — especially women — don’t want to be talked at or marketed to on issues this consequential. They want clarity. They want honesty. They want a conversation grounded in reality, not rhetoric.
That starts with acknowledging something simple: If America were as oppressive as we sometimes claim, women would not still be risking everything to come here, even as other countries actively try to attract them. The loudest voices in this debate aren’t always the most credible. The clearest ones are often the quietest, the women who have lived without freedom and still recognize it when they see it.
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It’s worth asking why some are looking elsewhere — rather than helping preserve what makes this country worth choosing.
America is not perfect. But it’s still worth choosing — because, though she is imperfect, she is free.
Judy Pino is the national spokeswoman and adviser on Hispanic issues for Independent Women.
