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Attorney General-nominee Merrick Garland nearly broke down in tears this week during his Senate confirmation hearing. The cause? The recollection of his immigrant roots.
“I come from a family where my grandparents fled antisemitism and persecution,” Garland emoted. “The country took us in and protected us, and I feel an obligation to the country to pay back — this is the highest, best use of my own set of skills to pay back. I want very much to be the kind of an attorney general that you are saying I could become.”
New Jersey Senator Cory Booker celebrated Garland’s background for giving him the power to confront “hate and discrimination.” Rarely do native Americans (the real ones, not Indians) talk about how their grandparents’ experiences make them good public servants. But if the grandparents or parents happen to be immigrants, it’s a fundamental element for why a figure must be supported.
The constant invocation of immigrant roots browbeats us into accepting that new arrivals define this country. Immigrants are more American than the natives, and we must adore those public officials who can tout some recent migrant in their background. It reinforces our contemporary fetish for immigrants and open borders. America depends on migration — just look at our noble leaders and their humble roots!
Garland was not the only Biden cabinet nominee to bring up his immigrant heritage. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said his immigrant background made him understand national security during his Senate confirmation hearing. “The principles of homeland and security have been tremendously important in shaping my life,” he said. “My father and mother brought me to this country to escape communism and to provide me with the security, opportunity, and pride that American citizenship brings to each of us. I was raised to appreciate each day what this country has meant for our family, and the blessing it is to know it as our homeland.”
When he was nominated back in November, he insisted immigration informs his worldview. “When I was very young, the United States provided my family and me a place of refuge. Now, I have been nominated to be the DHS Secretary and oversee the protection of all Americans and those who flee persecution in search of a better life for themselves and their loved ones.”
Mayorkas, like Garland, is Jewish. The Washington Post described his background in these glowing terms:
Born in Cuba to Jewish parents and a mother who escaped the Holocaust, Mayorkas was raised in Southern California, painfully aware of the losses undergirding his family’s American success story. Through his Romanian-born mother, whose relatives were murdered by the Nazis, Mayorkas discovered the horrors that can unfold when refugees cannot flee to safety, friends and former colleagues say. Through his Cuban-born father, he learned someone can love a country and still feel compelled to leave it forever.
The man most responsible for enforcing immigration law favors the refugee over the natives. The white settlers weren’t part of the huddled masses yearning to be free.
Neera Tanden, Biden’s pick to lead the Office of Management and Budget, also highlighted her immigrant background to demonstrate her superiority. “I owe my presence here to their love and support and to the grit and resilience of my mother, an immigrant from India who was left to make it on her own in America with two young children after her divorce from my father,” the Indian progressive said during her Senate testimony.
When Biden announced his nominee for Associate Attorney General, Vanita Gupta, he emphasized that she’s the “proud daughter of immigrants from India.” It was a nice biographical fact to a speech praising Gupta’s fight for “greater equity.”
Secretary of State Tony Blinken promoted his immigrant background with the additional flourish of a Holocaust connection. “Among my parents and grandparents are immigrants, refugees, a Holocaust survivor. For them and many others, America was the last best hope on earth. Their stories inspired me to serve,” he said in a December tweet. “America at its best is why I’m here — that’s what I hope to help restore for future generations.” When first announced as Biden’s nominee, Blinken told the dubious story of his Holocaust-surviving father-in-law being rescued from the Nazis by a black tanker. That was likely a tall tale, but Blinken sees it as the true expression of American identity: a black guy rescuing a Jew from white supremacists.
Vice President Kamala Harris was also the daughter of immigrants — a fact she never fails to mention. Her parents — Indian mother and Jamaican father — met through the civil rights movements and shared its commitment to overthrow the historic American nation. Harris credits her parents’ background for her political outlook. In the opinion of the New York Times, immigrant-raised Harris is “the face of America’s demographic shift.”
The entire Biden administration represents that shift. It joins South Asian strivers with the Jewish old guard in the shared devotion to the Statue of Liberty poem. Mass immigration and opposition to the historic American nation define who they are and what they want for this country.
Immigration hagiography is not just for cabinet picks. Nearly all political figures engage in this rhetoric. It even pervaded Donald Trump’s first impeachment hearing. Several witnesses called by the House emphasized their immigrant backgrounds, even though the case had nothing to do with immigration. The British-born National Security Council Advisor Fiona Hill declared immigration is the “essence of America” when she testified. “This is a country of immigrants,” she elaborated. “Everyone immigrated to the United States at some time in their family history. And this is what, for me, really does make America great.”
At least three other Deep State lackeys who testified brought up their immigrant background to score points with the press and lawmakers. It’s unclear how someone’s grandparent immigrating to America clarifies Ukrainian policy, but, unfortunately, we don’t have the tremendous wisdom of foreign policy apparatchiks.
A deep sickness lies within the American public consciousness. Immigrants are seen as inherently virtuous and the epitome of our country. Even many so-called conservatives uphold this belief in the nation of immigrants. Excising it is a necessity. The European settlers made this country, not the Ellis Islander fresh off the boat. The new arrivals only became good Americans when they joined with the native stock. Now the native stock are only good Americans if they assimilate to the newcomers.
We can never win if the majority persists in this stupidity. The people need to recognize that when someone like Merrick Garland says his immigrant grandparents motivate him to serve, it’s not a selfless calling. It confesses his desire to rule on behalf of his own malignant class.
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18 comments
Garland is an Obamaloser.
And this is his participation trophy. 👎
I though that DEM LEFT IDEOLOGY predicated that AMERICA was never that great, rather AMERICA is racist, fascist, war mongers. IMMIGRATION is the crucial key issue that will define the core being of the USA/AMERICA facing the 21th Century. It seems that these new Bidens picks are ultra liberal FREE/OPEN borders that will destroy the social, cultural, civic fabric of the AMERICAN republic. IT seems that the main task, mission, objective of the thenew DHS/ICE officers is WIPED OUT the “white” people …making them a marginal, excluded minority politically castrated, economically supress, culturally irrelevant…whats next WHITE RESERVATIONS like the old indian reservations…anti white Jim Crow. Whites will become like nonjewish whites in SAfrica. Opress, supress, criminalized, politically, economically disposses..
First of all, is everyone aware that the poem attached (years later, and not by the French) to the Statue of Liberty — that poem enshrining the “poor me” immigrant forever — was written by a Jewish woman, Emma Lazarus, a full-blown ‘poor me’ whiner, in 1883, before anyone had even been assaulted full-on by the sob story schtick of the Jewish Diaspora. Hers was the opening salvo of that attack. Lazarus was an immigration activist in New York on behalf of the ‘destitute Jewish immigrants ‘arriving at that time from Russia’s pogroms in the “Pale Settlement” in the 1870s. Why is it that nearly every country has a ‘I’ve had it with them’ moment in their history?
Secondly, in case you IQ-challenged White people have forgotten, nearly all White Americans have White ancestors who were “fleeing their own oppression” in their homelands in Europe, which were giving them grief every bit as horrid as experienced by the Jews — the Irish Potato Famine comes to mind. Whites were either fleeing on their own, or were being rounded up like cattle for crimes such as sleeping rough on the sidewalks of London, and were brought here against their will as “indentured servants (translation: slaves) from 1600 onward — even before the slaves from the already-existing slaves markets throughout Africa began arriving at the whims of English entrepreneurs wo believed they’d be ‘useful’.
So, we have every bit as much right to present our own ‘poor me sob stories’ about our ancestors fleeing here for freedom, etc., as anyone else. And there are a whole lot more of us, and if we all whined and fumed in chorus, it would be deafening. And, please pardon me if I am not crying any crocodile tears over Garland et al., and neither am I buying into the ‘Critical Race Theory’ hullaballoo being raised nationwide. Open borders now, from the overpopulated Third World, as being advocated by this wreck of an administration, will completely kill the “European Goose” which has laid the Golden Egg that is America today.
Second that. Well stated. Thank you for explaining the source of the Statue poem and its agit-prop, America-distorting motivation.
The original America was a Western nation, designed by Westerners for Westerners, and intended by the Founders to provide a haven for other Westerners seeking refuge from the corruptions and oppressions of diseased monarchial regimes such as Britain.
That photo of Garland is just begging for whiskers and a long, hairless tail to be drawn on it.
LOL! Good one!
Dont be so anti semitic! He is much more “mouse faced” than he is “rat-faced”
Just how many ‘holocaust survivors’ can be left on planet Earth !? The shake downs never end with these people.
I’m afraid I have bad news: There are now self-described ‘second-generation Holocaust survivors’.
The madness will never end.
Hey! As I am of Saxon lineage I must be a 30th-generation Norman Conquest survivor. Any chance of some reparations?
Immigrants are simply better than heritage Americans at this point. They could not have built this country, but they can take it over and do what they want with it.
You know, if you go to the Statue of Liberty, you will learn they had certain eugenic filters for admitting immigrants. They sent people back sometimes. They would give tests like “how would you wash stairs?” I couldn’t answer them. It wasn’t 100% accepting.
I emigrated here from Germany in 1963 – perhaps I should ask for a cabinet position in the Biden regime. One might say, “but you’re a white heterosexual male”! My reply is that “I self identify as being a black non-binary female”! So there you have it – I’m a negro sexually ambiguous woman who emigrated to this country to be freed from generations of slavery in Germany! Furthermore, I also self identify as a twenty something progressive and am constantly astonished at AOCs brilliance. Now how about that cabinet position?
To think we have a person that clearly values the wellbeing of all immigrants, especially illegal ones, over the native population running homeland security is shockingly telling. If all immigration was shutoff tomorrow it would still be years before everyone that wanted to work could find it. Leftists require the constant importation of an underclass for their corporate overlords. It’s why they refuse to delve into the facts of economics that poor don’t stay poor forever. These people in power don’t seek to protect you and me, they seek our destruction. There’s no other way to see it.
Those little personal origin vignettes are so maudlin you just can’t make up this stuff.
“Merrick Garland.” Could there be a more Anglo name?
This kind of Jewish name-changing crypsis really burns me.
“Donald Sterling.” “David Gregory.”
The list is enormous.
The examples of this practice are ubiquitous. It does represent quite the spiteful niggle against those of us actual Americans.
As always, thank you for the great essay Robert Hampton. To finish becoming the American Nation we were and are destined to be, it’s important for us to remember our roots and common bonds.
Gene Simmons is my favorite example. He was a rockabilly musician from Tupelo and, like Elvis, recorded for Sun Records. The other “Gene Simmons” was born Chaim Witz, from Israel. In their eyes this country is a tacky amusement park, that they both run and criticize for being too trashy. When it fails to make enough money, they not only abandon it, they send hired goons to burn it down.
In Baltimore years ago we had a call-in radio talk show host whose stage name was “John Sterling”.
Someone found out his real name was Jacob Schloss, and called in with “c’mon John, what’s your real name?”.
This was also the same radio station where another talk-show host was forced to resign LIVE and ON-AIR by the local Jewish philanthropist-bully after the host exposed the horrible treatment of Palestinians by Israel.
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