Genealogist Jennifer Mendelsohn and other good folks over at #resistancegenealogy are veritable fonts of information about the family histories of those true blue blooded uber Americans of the clueless right who love to wrap themselves American flag and cast aspersions on the families of recent arrivals to our nation of immigrants but have less than Mayflower worthy credentials of their own.
Here are some samples of the fascinating things you can learn there:
About Fox News airhead Tomi Larhen, author of the crackpot statement — “You don't just come into this country w/low skills, low education, not understanding language b/c someone says it makes them feel nice. That's not what this country is based on.”— we learn….
(click documents for a larger view)
And the Racist-in-Chief’s Chief of Staff John Kelly?
Bet Giuseppe the wagon driver had an easier time of it with his oxen than Kelly does with the orangutan.
And speaking of the Orange maestro of mendacity, what about his other staff and fanboys?
“On Thursday, Politico‘s Jennifer Mendelsohn wrote that many of President Donald Trump’s staunchest anti-immigrant allies are descended from immigrants who would not have been eligible to remain in the U.S. under the administration’s current policies.
As Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials conduct a massive roundup of undocumented workers, Mendelsohn said that it’s worth pointing out that Tucker Carlson, Dan Scavino, Jr. and other anti-immigration figures have ancestors who would have been forced to leave the country under the Trump administration’s policies.
“From White House adviser Stephen Miller to Fox News commentator Tomi Lahren, many prominent anti-immigration voices advocate for immigration policies like merit-based systems and language-based preferences that would have barred their own families from coming to the United States,” Politico said.”
But my personal favorite pruning of a family tree comes from Genealogist Megan Smolenyak who points the way to her article on Medium.com about nobody’s favorite Trump suck-up Devin Nunes.
“There’s a lot to digest in Jason Zengerle’s New York Times Magazine feature, “How Devin Nunes Turned the House Intelligence Committee Inside Out,” but, as a genealogist, one aspect jumped out at me more than it probably would for most. A healthy chunk of Zengerle’s exploration is devoted to the California congressman’s ties to Portugal and his curious efforts to establish American intelligence operations at Lajes Field on the Azorean island of Terceira, despite the notion being deemed impractical by many in the upper echelons of the U.S. government. Zengerle cites the frustration of those caught in the middle of Nunes’s agenda, like Jim Townsend, who served under President Obama as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (DASD) for Europe and NATO:
“Nunes created so much rancor over the issue that some American officials came to question his motives, and even his patriotism. “I was having a hard-enough time being beaten up by the Azoreans and the Portuguese, but it was even harder seeing a congressman being in cahoots with them,” Townsend says. “It was like, ‘Whose team are you on?’” A former Pentagon official suspects that during the Lajes negotiations, Nunes was making the Portuguese privy to things they should not have known. “We would have a conversation about some proprietary matters with Nunes,” this official says, “and then the next day, somehow, Portugal knew some of that.”It’s no secret that Nunes is of Portuguese — more specifically, Azorean — descent, so why should this grab my attention — aside from the fact that it would be peculiar behavior for any congressional representative and that the President of Portugal namechecked Nunes in a chat with Trump even before his inauguration?”
Megan even provides some telling graphics:
Nunes’ great-grandmother Maria was unable to speak English after 30 years in America.
“It also seems that becoming an American citizen was not a priority for Nunes’s family. Some of the nine immigrant relatives listed in the initial chart never went through the naturalization process, but here’s a summary of those who did. Collectively, they took an average of 30.8 years from their date of arrival to do so.”
I haven’t really done justice to Megan’s article or to resistancegenealogy, you should click over there and explore yourself.
Twitter users there also tell the inspiring stories of there own immigrant families journey to America…
...just great stuff!