June 30th, 2018

Some stuff about John Kelly's statements on illegal aliens (edited 7/10):

originally posted on 5/12, deleted on 6/30, and re-posted on 6/30.  (Edited: 5/13, 6/30, 7/4, 7/22.)

“ ‘The vast majority of the people that move illegally into United States are not bad people. They're not criminals. They're not MS-13,’ Kelly said in the interview. ‘But they're also not people that would easily assimilate into the United States, into our modern society. They're overwhelmingly rural people.
“ ’In the countries they come from, fourth-, fifth-, sixth-grade educations are kind of the norm,’ he continued. ‘They don't speak English; obviously that's a big thing. ... They don't integrate well, they don't have skills.’ ”  - quoted by Avery Anapol in The Hill from an interview on NPR’s, Morning Edition.
 
The reaction to Kelly’s comments have been, ah, passionate:
When I was young I worked with illegal immigrants, and Mexican Americans, Central Americans, from farm work to other physical labor, from the San Jacinto Valley to the Sacramento Valley.  I was also locked up with some when I was a kid (I'm not a felon).
I found that most of the people I knew that were or likely illegals, worked with, spent time with were cordial, hard working, tough, decent, and that they might, outside of the barrios, have a tough time assimilating into some communities in California; that they spoke Spanish and not always English, that they were brown-skinned and not generally white; that they weren’t criminals -- not MS-13 -- that many were from rural communities in Mexico and further south.  I found that some were so poor, had lived such tough lives, that a few days in jail might be an improvement in living conditions; clean sheets, enough food…  Some might not have had much of an education but were bright, some did work that was rugged, unskilled, that a lot of folks didn’t want to do.  It was a pleasure to have known many of these illegals…

As a child in Northern California some of my earliest friends were Mexican-American.

The Spanish were in California before the English, Mexicans before Americans, Spanish was spoken before English. 
California was a Spanish possession until 1821 when it became part of an Independent Mexico, until the Bear Flag Revolt in 1846.  For awhile California was an independent nation: The Republic of California.  It became a state in 1850.  - my memory of California's history was made more accurate by History.com and Wikipedia.

I understand why some folks have an issue with Kelly’s statements but in regards what was stated, or what was quoted above, I don’t.

posted 6/30:
As awful, as sad, as wrong as it is that families of illegal immigrants, children -- socio-economic refugees -- have been separated from their parents, to compare the counter productive policy predicated on law that was unable to regulate the humane treatment of children to the internment of Japanese Americans in World War ll -- families that lost their homes, land, properties, companies, jobs, that were rounded up as if they were our enemies and taken away and interned for the duration of the war -- seems unbelievable.  (Many of the interned Japanese-Americans chose to fight in the Army's 442 Battalion against the Nazis.  It was the most decorated battalion in American history.*)  To compare our actions on the border to what the Nazis did in the systematic mass murder of 6 million Jews in World War ll is unfathomable.
​*Wikipedia


The Mexicans have a proverb, which offers hospitality; food, friendship: Mi casa es su casa.  My home is your home.  I've known people who believe in this proverb; American, Norwegian -- Jewish, Unitarian, Muslim, Buddhist, Baptist, Catholic, Atheist -- Japanese, Irish, Mexican, Nigerian, etc.  

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