Sunday, January 28, 2018

We are All Children of Immigrants

NOTE: The only people this doesn't apply to are full-blooded descendants of Native Americans / First Nations / indigenous peoples of the Americas. All the rest of you, listen up.

Jennifer Mendelsohn got tired of hearing Americans speaking out against immigration. So she took the names of some of the loudest opponents, did some genealogical research, and handed them a copy of their family tree — with immigrants at the roots.

My favorite part of this article about Mendelsohn's #resistancegenealogy research was when she told Tomi Lahren, who said Dreamers were not "law-abiding Americans", that her great-great-grandfather had been indicted by a grand jury for forging his naturalization papers.

Every one of us is a child of immigrants - many of them were "illegal", or refugees, or unwanted. Many of them took the low-paying jobs just so they could have a shot at the American Dream, and they were resented for it. But they stuck to it, and today we get to claim our natural-born citizenship because of them.

Actually, I'm an immigrant, too. Brought here as a child when I was 7 years old. Wanna make something of it?

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