I’ve always been proud to be an Irish and Italian American and I’m grateful my ancestors came over here to enjoy the privilege and opportunity of being an American. Only in America would an Irishman and Italian woman meet and make me. Only in America would I meet and marry a Filipina. I’m a little embarrassed that some of the most prominent anti-immigrant voices in this administration share my heritage, but forget our roots. Forget that once we were “without papers”. Forget that once we were the ones with the funny religion, who didn’t speak the language, who weren’t considered fully white or fully American, who were taking the jobs away from the people who were born here.
The reason I love teaching history is because the past always feels alive to me and ready to teach us something new. We should never forget our past, not only to avoid repeating its mistakes, but to learn from what worked. Immigration built America. Immigration will continue to rebuild and reshape America. Only in the new world have we broken down the barriers that divided the old. This American success story should continue. We welcome the hustlers, the dreamers, the entrepreneurs alongside the hungry refugee. It’s what we do. It’s what makes us America. It’s what made us all American.
My ancestors came here from Ireland and Poland. My family name is May because my paternal grandfather changed it from Latosinski, presumably to hide the fact that he was from Poland. To be from Poland or Italy or any of the non-English speaking nations put one at risk. I even remember as a young boy, my father trying to get a membership into a golf club and hoping they did not find out he was Polish. Polish jokes were a “thing” back then, portraying Poles as stupid and gullible.
Few people know that the largest single mob lynching of immigrants was of Italians.
Yes, Immigration is American but so is racism and white nationalism.
Today I work at a food market. My co-workers are from the Dominican Republic, Poland, China, Brazil, Syria, and one young man who is Palestinian; he has no country.
My neighbors across the street at from Guatemala and El Salvador. Two doors down, they are from India.
I would not trade anyone of these people for all the white supremacists in the USA. The white supremacists need to go back to where they came from, and they came from Hell.