( CNN ) -- Those who live in fear today imagine that America is being overrun by foreign , disease-carrying , tax-sucking criminal hordes . They can not imagine that immigrants , whether documented or not , could ever contribute to our country . They refer to the children and families trying to cross the southern border as `` illegals . '' But to quote John Lewis , who fought 50 years ago for civil rights and fights now for immigration reform , `` There is no such thing as an illegal human being . '' Language matters . Words are expressions of power and identity . And even something as trivial as punctuation can say a lot about what it means to become American . For instance , I never hyphenate . As I explain in my new book `` A Chinaman 's Chance , '' I call myself `` Chinese American '' -- without a hyphen . American is the noun , Chinese the adjective . Or , rather , Chinese is one adjective . I am many kinds of American , after all : a politically active American , a short American , an earnest American , an educated American . This is not a quibble about grammar ; it 's a claim about the very act of claiming this country . The hyphenated form , `` Chinese-American , '' to me signifies a transaction between two parties , as in Chinese-American diplomatic negotiation or Chinese-American commerce and trade . The hyphen implies a state of interchange across nations . It does not name a person , much less a citizen . For the same reason , I never really accepted the label that my immigrant parents attached to me and other second-generation kids : `` ABC , '' or American-born Chinese . I understand why they used it . They had been formed in China . They were deeply culturally Chinese and as they tried to make their way in this country and raise kids , they hoped those kids would think of themselves the same way . We did n't , exactly . The second generation rarely does . While Chineseness was a deep influence on my palate and vocabulary and moral sensibility , I grew up in this land , an American . I went to Chinese school on Sundays , but I counted the minutes until I could get back to playing baseball with my best friend John . I was raised at home with a Chinese belief in family obligation and social propriety , but I was schooled everywhere else in an American spirit of individual invention and reinvention . Actually , my immigrant dad taught me this . He 's the one who introduced me to the noxious phrase , `` a Chinaman 's chance , '' which since the 1850s had meant `` slim to no chance . '' When he came here in the late 1950s , he decided , with his wry sense of humor , to reappropriate this slur . He would apply it playfully to commonplace situations , such as saying that the Yankees had `` a Chinaman 's chance '' of making a ninth-inning comeback . That 's how I grew up . To call me `` American-born Chinese '' is to make my birthplace and upbringing incidental rather than central . It is to imply that wherever a person of Chinese ethnicity may be born , he is not truly of that place ; he is just a sojourner , attached to a vast global web of Chinese . That 's not the way of our nation . In America , immigrants become American -- and by so doing , change America . The change is accelerating . We 've already become heavily Hispanic . Now -- to the surprise of many -- Asians have become America 's fastest-growing group . People who look like me can no longer be presumed foreign until proven otherwise . We are becoming the new face of the United States . In 1914 or 1814 , when Italians or Irish were coming in great waves ( uninvited by government , by the way , and unsanctioned by law ) , `` becoming American '' meant assimilating to a white , WASP way . In 2014 , it means entering a vibrant and more complex omniculture that mixes the styles and memes of the entire world . This should n't be scary . It should be exciting . For what makes America enduringly great is precisely this ability to synthesize the best of the rest of the planet . That 's our edge -- as long as we do n't blow it . Yes , not blowing it includes taking illegal immigration seriously because borders do matter , and so does enforcing borders . But it primarily means keeping our eye on the bigger picture : that we are stronger when we are more inclusive and better when we activate our full diversity . Welcoming and integrating legal immigrants is therefore a necessity . So is creating a pathway to citizenship for our undocumented neighbors , friends and colleagues so that we do n't leave millions of people stuck in second-class limbo . There will never be a simple answer to the eternal American question , `` Who is 'us ' ? '' But in this moment when jobs feel scarcer and life feels more zero-sum , we have to make a conscious choice to be bigger than our fears . That , without hyphens or hyperventilating , is the true American way .
Eric Liu : These are expressions of power and identity , and even political matters . Liu : As I explain in my new book , I call myself ` ` Chinese American '' -- without a hyphen . He says the hyphenated ` ` Chinese - American '' signifies a transaction between two people . Liu : Similarly , ` ` [UNK] , '' or American - born Chinese , is also inadequate in its identity sense .