Luck of the Irish

Posted: October 21, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Your Stories | 1 Comment

We post your testimonies when you send them to us, and we’ll add them to the yourStories page too. Email selfdeport@gmail.com. This one is from new Repatriot David’s blog GoodBadFree, check it out:

Wow, what a week. Some of you may know that I recently became a geneaology fanatic. I mean, fanatic! I never knew there were so many online resources to help someone research their family tree. I started with ancestry.com, but then I found others, too. I even dug into the boxes in the attic– grandma always wanted me to take an interest in the dusty old photos and documents, and now I can see why.

I knew that grandma’s side of the family was from a wide-spot in the road called Martin, Michigan, just south of Grand Rapids where I grew up. That’s the kind of town that America is made of: wholsome, patriotic, apple pie. Grandma always talked about the “luck of the Irish” we had, so I knew that we were from Irish stock. I didn’t know we were also English– I guess Grandma liked the wearin’ of the Green better, because she never mentioned that.

Turns out, and this is where I was shocked, there was no record of Grandma’s mother’s birth. I found Grandma Betty’s birth certificate and christening certificate from right here in Michigan, but where was Great Grandma Mary born? So, using Ancestry.com, I looked for her arrival– I didn’t know our Irish ancestors came so recently. Ancestry.com didn’t have any record of her coming through Ellis Island! So, I dug out the dusty boxes in the attic and I found letters between Great Grandma and her best friend back in Tipperary. She jumped ship with Grandpa Lawrence! They were on the boat coming over, about 20 years old and thinking they’d make a better future stateside than back in old Ireland, and guess what? They fell in with a guy from their town on the boat who’d been living in Boston. This guy was getting off the boat in Boston (it stopped there before continuing down to NY Harbor). He had papers to allow them to get off wherever they wanted. He offered Grandpa Lawrence work in Boston– you know how the Irish mafia works– and I guess Lawrence couldn’t refuse. Instead of continuing on the boat down to NY where they would have been processed at Ellis Island, they hopped right off there in Boston, ran past the check point (and we thought the border was full of holes now– Grandma wrote in one letter the officials on the dock didn’t even notice, they just skirted right around them!). Her friend loved that! Grandma went on and on about how Tipperary makes ’em clever and how grandpa Lawrence was sly as a fox. They lived there in Boston five years before they made his way to Michigan started a family.

Seriously now, this is a big problem. You see, my whole life I thought we came from a background of legal immigration. When I joined the movement, that was why: why can’t people come the right way to the United States like my family did? Now I find out my own great-parents were illegal just like all of these we’re dealing with here in Michigan. If I am going to praise ICE for finally rounding some people up and getting rid of them, what do I do with knowledge about my own family history?

Well, then I heard about Patriots for Self-Deportation and the answer became crystal clear. Patriots don’t scrimp on ethics, they don’t make excuses and they don’t whine about “rights” and “entitlements”. The law is the law. That’s why I’m using this blog post to announce, Tipperary, here I come! I already sent letters to the addresses where my family used to live. I gave notice at my job, and I’m on my way. Walk the walk, baby. Who’s with me?

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Back to the USSR? I’m stuck, help.

Posted: October 21, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Your Stories | Leave a comment
My name is Natasha Rostoff. I am here to declare my will of self-deportation, as my humble respect to the law of this country, that I love with all of my heart as my real fatherland.
I am here also to ask for legal and psychological support in this deed of patriotism and true respect to our democracy, which is the only just rule on the earth.
I need your support against alien forces and evil regimes, that in the past had been acting against our democracy and in the present they still continue to consolidate their dark powers against us.

I believe that the laws of the US are to be respected and followed strictly in order to keep democracy alive. I believe only true Americans should live at this land to keep it clean and free. As for my deep regret I am not a real American. To keep the land clean I must be deported to the country where I was born which is the Soviet Union, republic of Estonia and my rights are restricted as a person from Russian ethnic origin.

Unfortunately I have realized there is no legal way of deporting me to the Soviet Union, because it doesn’t exist any more. Estonia doesn’t consider me its citizen, because this country didn’t exist at the time I was born. Estonia came into existence only after I came to the US.

I am catched by these circumstances and I thereforen not being able to follow the laws that I repsect. The communists are to blame for this situation. They had created this country Soviet Union, where people from different ethnicities had to live together. Now we see the cosequences of this undemocratic regime – if there was not Soviet Union I would have been born in a country that sustains itself within its borders and represents one pure ethnicity, and my deportantion from the US would have been much easier.

I would like to ask you, people representatives of the only true democracy, to help me with connections with human rights organizations and international authorities like UN to make Estonia allow me to deport myself into the country and thus respect the only democratic laws which are the laws of the Unites States of America.

Illegal Italian

Posted: October 7, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Your Stories | Tags: , | Leave a comment
Why I am self deporting:I am a decendent of Irish and Italian immigrants, both of whom were considered the least desirable European nationalities- and the most numerous and fertile- to enter the US at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th.  My Irish ancestors were often stowaways or indentured servants, mooching off the tax dollars of law abiding citizens and preying on the social services of the state.  The Italian side- especially the Sicilian half- had last names that ended in vowels and had branches of the family that were not talked about in polite conversation, if you know what I mean.To top it all off, my Sicilian great-grandfather was never naturalized.  My grandmother and her nine(!) older siblings were born to two non-English speaking immigrants who never even took the time to become citizens of the country they finagled their way into.When I really think about it, as a law abiding patriot, I cannot stand to think that my relatives, just two generations removed, took such advantage of the misguided border controls of the early 20th century.  My family has been benefiting from a misinterpretation of the 14th amendment ever since!  I have been the beneficiary of illegal immigration.  I am an anchor great-granddaughter.

While I appreciate my grandmother’s desire to assimilate to American culture and society- she never wanted to draw attention to her heritage and purposefully did not use her Italian or teach her child, my mother- I cannot ignore her illegal beginnings.  We never should’ve been here in the first place.

Now, as I can’t trace the Irish side of my family back far enough to definitively say if they were naturalized or not, and as my Italian genealogy is so clearly full of legal inconsistencies, I can only conclude that I must be deported back to the island of Sicily, now a fully annexed part of the country of Italy.  Luckily for me, Italy is a country with a shrinking population and accordingly has very relaxed citizenship requirements.

Repatriate!
-Mary