Resistance Genealogy // we got the records, we have the receipts

Their Own Two Feet

As the new public face of the Trump administration’s draconian immigration policies, acting USCIS Director Ken Cuccinelli has wasted no time stirring up collective ire. Most notably, he set off a firestorm of criticism by rewriting the iconic Emma Lazarus poem that has long functioned as a kind of unofficial American immigration mantra. “Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge,” he proudly told NPR’s Rachel Martin, who somehow resisted the urge to burst out laughing and/or slap him upside the head...

Ken’s grandmother Josephine Policastro Cuccinelli was also the Jersey-born daughter of Italian immigrants: Gaetano Policastro and Maria Ronga...

A teenaged Maria Ronga (her birth certificate indicates she was 17) arrived at Ellis Island in November of 1903 with her widowed 48-year-old mother... The “Record of Aliens Held For Special Inquiry” list indicates the reason they were held, abbreviated as “L.P.C.;” it stands for “Likely Public Charge.” So yes, the great-grandmother of the man now beating the drums to tighten the public charge rule was…labeled a likely public charge herself...

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Hey, Joe Arpaio! Your Grandma Was a Chain Migrant!

Notorious former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, currently running for a Senate seat in Arizona, has made no bones about how he feels about illegal immigrants. Let's say he is a bit — how shall we say? — hard core. But what of Arpaio's own immigrant roots?

Total number in family chain: 13 (14, if you include Donato himself)...

Arpaio routinely punished immigrants for not speaking English — “They are in the United States, and they should start speaking English,” he said in 2006 — given that his own father belonged to a fraternal organization in Massachusetts that was still keeping records entirely in Italian in 1931...

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Trevor Noah Uncovers The Immigration Status Of Steve Bannon's Ancestors

Noah then explained that his team had hired a professional genealogist to dig into the immigration history of Bannon's ancestors. They discovered that "Bannon's great-great grandfather Lawrence Bannon arrived in the U.S. from Ireland by the 1850s, at a time when America's borders were so open that Irishmen could just walk into the country with no passports, no visas, no background checks of any kind."

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The Immigrant Ancestors Ann Coulter Wishes She Didn't Have

All eight of her paternal great-great-grandparents (four couples) came to America from Europe. Six of these eight were Famine-era arrivals from Ireland, while the other two were from Germany. Her Irish ancestors wouldn't have been welcomed with open arms as can be seen from these typical 19th century political cartoons...

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Why Are Children and Grandchildren of Immigrants So Eager to Keep Immigrants Out?

As soon as I realized that Carl married Kentucky-born Marguerite in 1914, my memory bank sent out a flare. Wasn't this that time period when …? Yes, it was. By marrying a foreigner, Marguerite had lost her American citizenship. Thanks to bad timing, Goodlatte's grandparents had fallen into one of the pitfalls of the Expatriation Act of 1907...

On October 30th of that year, [Goodlatte's grandfather Carl] petitioned for naturalization, but in so doing, lied in his paperwork. One of the requirements for citizenship — dating back to 1795 — is five years of continuous residence in the United States, but as we've just seen, the Mentzendorff family spent a chunk of 1919 in Europe...

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Tomi Lahren, Meet The Great Great Grandfather Prosecuted For Forging His Citizenship Papers!

I ordered the court file, which included Dietrich's grand jury indictment, in all its 14-page glory. Tomi Lahren's great-great-grandfather was indicted on two separate counts, for “willfully, unlawfully and knowingly” making a false affidavit in connection with a naturalization proceeding, and for forging a naturalization document, in violation of the Naturalization Act of June 29, 1906.

The grand jurors accused him of swearing falsely to the date of his declaration, and of altering the original papers (“with a knife or steel eraser or other instrument unknown to the Grand Jurors”) to make it look like his declaration of intention to become a citizen had been executed in 1911 rather than 1909, apparently because he'd let too much time elapse before completing the naturalization process.

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Jason Chaffetz' message for those seeking refuge? "Don't make this journey. It will kill you.”
Good thing no one told that to 15-year-old Celia Kessel Chaffetz when she came to the US by herself in 1898 from Lithuania.

You'll notice she had no money or job.#resistancegenealogy pic.twitter.com/P1Rk7Ha8OL

— Jennifer Mendelsohn 🇺🇸 (@CleverTitleTK) December 20, 2018

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Mike Pence's Immigrant Saga Makes a Case for Compassion

Although Mike Pence claims that he “grew up on the front row of the American dream” thanks in part to his Irish immigrant grandfather, he's not keen on migrant workers or chain migration. Other positions he holds on matters as wide-ranging as pregnancy prevention and government-provided safety nets were shared by many in the era of Richard Cawley, the grandfather he's so fond of mentioning, and the consequences for his family were far from trivial...

Turning to the family's Ellis Island saga, his grandfather and four of his siblings came to America (only the eldest remained in Ireland). They were so orderly that they immigrated in age sequence with James starting things off by going to an aunt in Illinois. He then helped Richard who helped Thomas who helped the sisters — one of tidiest set of chain migration links I've ever encountered...

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In 1917, younger brother Maurice joined him in Ohio. And then in 1920, 17-year old brother Jack joined the other two. Jack lists Samuel as his point of contact. Note that Jack's occupation is listed as “none.” He was allowed to come simply because he wanted to join his family. pic.twitter.com/Kwoe676drr

— Jennifer Mendelsohn 🇺🇸 (@CleverTitleTK) March 2, 2018

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Friendly Fire: The Unexpected Family History of the NRA's Spokesperson

To summarize, research shows that Loesch's:

• father lost his father to gun violence
• paternal grandmother lost her husband to gun violence
• maternal grandmother lost her father to gun violence and almost lost her mother
• maternal great-grandmother lost her husband to gun violence after surviving his attempt to shoot her

This doesn't include Loesch's own account of her aunt who narrowly escaped being shot by her husband. And all of this was essentially friendly fire in the sense that every incident occurred on home turf and involved family members and patrons.

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Meet Your Great-Great-Grandmother, Ron DeSantis

On February 5th while they were at sea, the U.S. passed the Immigration Act of 1917 which was intended to limit undesirable southern and eastern European immigrants such as Luigia and her family. Fortunately, it wasn't implemented until May 1st. Otherwise, she and her daughters could have been denied entry due to the freshly imposed literacy requirement. They had squeezed in with a margin of ten weeks...

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I wonder what semi-literate Irish immigrant laborer Michael Quinn — who in 1862 set down a “family rickerd” for his “dier children” warning them to “shun all bad company,” and in 1865 lost 2 kids to cholera in 10 days — would've thought of his great-great-great grandson Jesse... https://t.co/GooFqByFyG

— Eric Moskowitz (@ELMoskowitz) July 31, 2018

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Why Hasn't Devin Nunes Assimilated Yet?

One of Nunes's grandfathers was born in Tulare in 1919 to Maria, the sister who had arrived with her whole family in 1908. These tight bonds were surely comforting, but likely made it harder for immigrants to assimilate. Here's Maria again in 1930 — 22 years after arriving in America — still unable to speak English...

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...

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So Dan. Let's say Victor Scavino arrives from Canelli, Italy in 1904, then brother Hector in 1905, brother Gildo in 1912, sister Esther in 1913, & sister Clotilde and their father Giuseppe in 1916, and they live together in NY. Do you think that would count as chain migration? https://t.co/m25mrJHjcT

— Jennifer Mendelsohn 🇺🇸 (@CleverTitleTK) January 11, 2018

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...and one more. The 1940 census which shows that both of Paul Gosar's immigrant paternal grandparents only had a 5th grade education. (I can come back and look at his maternal side later.) pic.twitter.com/q3Oq8083Nr

— Libby Stigaard Ilson (@TheAllergicKid) January 31, 2018

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Kanye, Meet Your Great-Uncle

Like countless others, I was confounded by your recent comment about slavery being a choice, so I decided to explore your family tree (as a genealogist, that's my instinctive response to many circumstances)...

Whenever your travels should next take you to Louisiana, I hope that you might consider squeezing in a visit to pay tribute to this great-great-great-uncle of yours because he was far more heroic than his modest headstone might suggest. You see, Pvt. Daniel A. West was born free and made a deliberate choice to help those who weren't.

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The Sullivans then took refuge again, in a second country.

Here's Catherine and kids arriving steerage in New York in 1872. And here they are in the 1880 census in Providence, RI.

Would you call them invaders? I call them your great-great-grandparents. #resistancegenealogy pic.twitter.com/XId5QKSCi5

— Jennifer Mendelsohn 🇺🇸 (@CleverTitleTK) May 8, 2018

They spoke out against immigrants. So she unearthed their own immigrant ancestors

If you think the ongoing immigration debates don't apply to you, Jennifer Mendelsohn has some news: They probably do. Mendelsohn, a journalist, author and passionate genealogist, has been using people's public family history to beat back some of the uglier claims about immigrants and how they fit into US history. She calls it #resistancegenealogy, and it only takes a few online tools and some instinctive sleuthing for her to call out public figures who oppose common forms of immigration.

[CNN - Jun 23, 2018]

Your Grandma Was a Chain Migrant!

Jennifer Mendelsohn, a freelance writer based in Baltimore, has a low tolerance for bad faith. Last summer, after Stephen Miller, the White House senior policy adviser, went on television to support a bill that would penalize immigrants who didn’t speak English, Mendelsohn took to Twitter. “Miller favors immigrants who speak English,” she began. “But the 1910 census shows his own great-grandmother couldn’t.” Her tweet, which included a photograph of a census document indicating that Miller’s ancestor spoke only Yiddish, went viral. “It’s hilarious how easy it is to find hypocrisy,” Mendelsohn said. “And I’m a scary-good sleuth.”

[The New Yorker - Feb 5, 2018]

So You Want to Take a DNA Test...

There's been nothing short of an explosion in consumer DNA testing of late. How do you decide which test to take and with which company? Before you start, it's important to clarify why you're taking a DNA test. If it's just because you're curious about your ethnicity, you might want to test at whichever company is having the best sale.

[Medium - September 13, 2017]

No, You Don’t Really Have 7,900 4th Cousins: Some DNA Basics for Those With Jewish Heritage

When I first got my results, I excitedly reached out to many of those listed as probable “second to third cousins,” certain I would soon be trading kugel recipes with them. Over time, I became increasingly puzzled and frustrated why I couldn’t connect a single one of them to my known family tree. I quickly discovered that Jewish DNA is, well, different from other DNA. If you are expecting that your DNA test will create a clear-cut breadcrumb trail taking your family tree back to the days of King David, think again.

[Medium - May 23, 2017]