Drawn From Today’s Headlines:
My grandfather came to this country as a immigrant when he was 16, and didn’t speak any English. He came here on a boat to join his sister, who had already immigrated. He changed his name, learned English, and moved across the country. He made some money and moved to Canada.
He ran a bawdy house hotel and restaurant there for 3 years, and returned to his native land with a good sized nest-egg. He got married to a local girl, but he fell into some legal trouble there about his military service status and was deported, so he came back to the United States again.
My father was born in New York in 1905. He went into business after my grandfather died in 1918. As a young man of age 22, my father was arrested at a rally, but he had a lawyer and was never charged with anything, so that worked out ok. He married my U.S. non-citizen mother in 1936.
My mother was an immigrant born overseas in 1912. She had 8 brothers and sisters. She met my father on a trip to the United States and married him in 1936.. After she came to this country, she had 5 children here. She became a U.S. citizen in 1942 at age 29, six years after she was married to my father.
My first wife was an immigrant. She was a model and very beautiful. I married her in 1977. She was 28 and I was 31. We had three children. She became a naturalized US citizen in 1988. We were divorced four years later.
My new wife was an immigrant born in 1970 She came here in 1996. She was a model. I married her in 2005, when she was 35 years old and I was 59, and we had another child in 2006. She became a permanent US resident in 2001. She became a citizen in 2006. She is very, very beautiful.
I am a native U.S. citizen born in New York in 1946. I am running for President as a Republican in 2016. I am a winner and a unifier, and I tell it straight.
Who am I?
The answer of course is Donald Trump. His family history, filled to bursting with immigrant stories for more than 100 years, including one as recently as 2005, is actually rather typical of a modern American family.
If Donald Trump’s new found zeal about being so tough on immigrants had been applied in America a few decades ago, chances are he wouldn’t be be here to tell his story or run for President.He might be a wealthy businessman and winemaker in his ancestral Germany, still using the original family name of Drumpf.
It’s always easy to look with harsh suspicion on foreigners, strangers, people who don’t look like us, those who don’t speak English, those who don’t have much money. It is quite something else when we talk about our own families. Our families are different, they’re special. America needs them.
What Americans really need is a full-bodied immigration debate based on real stories, not cartoons, starting with Donald Trump.
What a country! *
Partial List of Sources for Trump Family History:
Trump Biography (Trump Organization)
Donald Trump ( video by John Oliver)
*Yakov Smirnoff is an American citizen born in the Ukraine, known for the phrase “What a Country!” He is a comedian and performer. He was an actor on the TV series What a Country! From 1986-1987.
Listen to an extended NPR interview from 2013 here.
NPR Interview with Yakov Smirnoff (2013)