What is an American?

Thanks to Owen Benjamin (and to Vox Day for amplifying the signal) I've become aware that there is a very clear and concise and relatively precise definition of AMERICAN in the 1828 Webster's Dictionary, which is available online.

American 

AMER'ICAN, adjective Pertaining to America. 

AMER'ICAN, noun A native of America; originally applied to the aboriginals, or copper-colored races, found here by the Europeans; but now applied to the descendants of Europeans born in America.
The name American must always exalt the pride of patriotism. - Washington

The only thing substantial that's missing is the composition of the descendants of Europeans born in America, which is not, of course, just anybody.  It lacks a certain precision that I'd have preferred to see without having to go get it "offline" by looking at census data from the early stages of the United States (as opposed to the American Colonies.)  Curiously, it doesn't even refer to citizenship.  It certainly doesn't refer to "people looking for opportunity" or "neo-Palestinians looking for another country to establish themselves as rentiers skimming money from the general populace" or anything like that.

Let me quote Vox's comments on this, actually.

Notice there is nothing said about propositions, ideas, citizenship, or Judeo-Christian values. Those ideas are Fake History concocted as 20th-century immigrant propaganda. This is why the falsifiers and revisionists always attack history. This is why liars attack the truth and those who tell it. This is why evil always attempts to claim that whatever year it actually is, today is always Year Zero. 

And to those who might be inclined to argue that the definition has simply changed again, I encourage you to think all the way through exactly what that implies.

Here's another interesting definition or two:

Foreigner 

FOR'EIGNER, noun for'aner. A person born in a foreign country, or without the country or jurisdiction of which one speaks. A Spaniard is a foreigner in France and England. All men not born in the United States are to them foreigners, and they are aliens till naturalized. A naturalized person is a citizen; but we still call him a foreigner by birth. 

Alien 

A'LIEN, adjective alyen, [Latin alienus, from alius, another. Latin alieno, to alienate; alter, another, to altercate.]
1. Foreign; not belonging to the same country, land or government.
2. Belonging to one who is not a citizen.
3. Estranged; foreign; not allied; adverse to; as, principles alien from our religion. 

A'LIEN, noun alyen.
1. A foreigner; one born in, or belonging to, another country; one who is not a denizen, or entitled to the privileges of a citizen.
2. In scripture, one who is a stranger to the church of Christ, or to the covenant of grace. 

At that time, ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel. Ephesians 2:12. 

In France, a child born of residents who are not citizens, is an alien. In Great Britain, the children of aliens born in that country, are mostly natural born subjects; and the children of British subjects, owing allegiance to the crown of England, though born in other countries, are natural subjects, and entitled to the privileges or resident citizens. 

Alien-duty, a tax upon goods imported by aliens, beyond the duty on the like goods imported by citizens; a discriminating duty on the tonnage of ships belonging to aliens, or any extra duties imposed by laws or edicts on aliens.

It used to be that aliens knew that they were aliens and accepted their lot.  They could become citizens, and were usually happy to do so, but they were then interested in integrating.  Let's look, for example, at the only line of my own ancestors that were aliens; the Henriques who came in the 1850s or so from Madeira by way of Trinidad and Tobago.  My great-great grandfather, Moses Henriques was born to immigrants and his wife, Antonia Pereira da Silva was herself an immigrant born in the Caribbean (but both of their parents were born on Madeira).  They didn't think that they were American except in citizenship, because they were very aware of the obvious fact that they were Portuguese.  But they did their best to act American.  They didn't even claim Portuguese descent, because they didn't want to identify as Portuguese.  Their son, Harry, married a very classically American girl, of Anglo-Scottish descent who had lived for generations in the South (Kentucky, specifically) and his half-American daughter, my grandmother, herself married another classically American man, also of Anglo-Scottish descent, and also originally from the South (although at the time, they were living in southern California), mainly Georgia and South Carolina.  Their three-quarters-American son, my dad, married another classically American girl, my mom, descended from typical rural Utah Yankees who had originally come from the Massachusetts colony many generations ago.  And me, the seven-eighths-American descendant of these Portuguese aliens, married another classically American girl who is Anglo-Danish post pioneer LDS on one side, and Anglo-Welsh mixed Southern and Yankee on the other side.

At what point does one "become" an American in this process?  Again, I suppose that's a small lack of precision in the definition.  I don't know.  My dad was three-quarters American by blood, but grew up not even knowing that he had any Portuguese ancestry (they didn't figure that out until my uncle went on his mission to Brazil when my dad was in college.)  Does that make him American?  I certainly think so.  But it could depend on the individual.  Is someone who identifies more with the portion of their genetics that isn't American, even if it's a small portion, an American, or no?

On the other hand, when my grandmother found out that her dad had been ethnically Portuguese, she became pretty rah-rah Portuguese and talked about having this Portuguese descent all the time.  Part of this is because she was involved when it was discovered and spent a fair bit of time, talent and resources on opening up the geneological work for Portuguese people in the Church, but it does sometimes make me wonder if the Portuguese identity subsumed her American identity.  My dad, on the other hand, thought that the Portuguese portion of his ancestry was interesting, but identified with the Anglo-Scottish Southern ancestry on his dad's side (and for that matter, that half from his mom's side) much more than the half-Portuguese identity of his mother.  By the time we got to my generation, the Portuguese portion of our ancestry is, at best, a minor curiosity.  It doesn't even have a significant effect on our phenotype, much less our identity—I'm six feet tall with brown hair and green eyes; none of us have the black hair my dad used to have, and only one of my four siblings has brown eyes; the rest all have blue eyes and very white skin... although admittedly, I (and even most of my kids) tan more easily than my wife does, who has very pale, freckly skin.  That's probably a lingering remnant of Mediterranean genetics, although there are, of course, Anglo-Scottish people with similar features, which may come from the Neolithic farmers, which the Mediterranean people are the primary descendants of and which settled in varying degrees all throughout Europe and are one of the main founder populations of modern Europeans.  (Much moreso in the South of Europe than the North, however.)

I know, I know—anecdotes are not data per se.  But this anecdote suggests that it takes a few generations of integration and intermarriage before someone's descendants are really part of the host nation.