Illegal Italian

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

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