Ahead of the United States' 250th birthday, concerns are growing about the future of the American Dream. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing BBC News.

Sixteen years ago, Somali refugee Abdi Nor Iftin was living in one of the roughest slums in Kenya when he found out he had won the lottery of a lifetime. Out of nearly eight million applicants in 2013, he was one of the lucky 50,000 granted a US visa through the diversity visa scheme started in the 1990s. He had long dreamt of moving to America, and his childhood friends nicknamed him "Abdi America". "My whole life I have been in love with America - the best country in the world, the dreamland, the land of opportunity," he told the BBC in 2014.

Now 41, Abdi arrived in the US, settled in a small town in Maine, got a job installing insulation and became a US citizen. But this year, he lost his job at a refugee resettlement agency and consequently his health insurance. "I feel like the American Dream is alive, but not well," he said.

Luke Mullen, a 24-year-old actor from California, told the BBC he's planning to move to Canada due to a lack of film opportunities in Hollywood. "Wealth is getting consolidated in this country and as that happens, the opportunities are dwindling," he said.

A recent poll from the Associated Press-NORC found that only a third of the public believes the American Dream still exists. A Pew Research Center study shows most Americans say the country's best days are behind it.

The concept of the American Dream dates back to the founding of the US, but the phrase was popularized in 1931 by historian James Truslow Adams in his book "The Epic of America". He wrote: "It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable."

According to Cyril Ghosh, author of "The Politics of the American Dream", the dream has always been about doing better in life. For Abdi, freedom was a huge priority: "Living the next day, breathing next day, was a big, big issue, and I really wanted that."

Researchers say first-generation immigrants are often more upbeat about America's potential. However, President Trump has made curbing immigration a cornerstone of his presidency, blocking legal pathways including the diversity visa programme that Abdi used.