Dude, How Many Barlettas Were On The Mayflower?
Republican Congressvarmint Lou Barletta of Pennsylvania didn’t get the memo from headquarters that Republicans should tone it down about Hispanics.
Not content to let Alaska congressfool Don Young stand alone in stark bigotry, Barletta weighed in on immigration.
“Why are we even talking about a pathway to citizenship when our borders aren’t even close to being secure?” Barletta told The New York Times during a discussion on possible outcomes of the immigration reform debate currently taking place in Washington.
“Let’s not take on any more water on this sinking ship,” he said. “Let’s patch the holes. Then we’ll decide what do we do with all this water that’s here.”
Cheeezzzz … that made “wetback” seem positively moderate.
With every study saying that a path to citizenship would spur economic development, Barletta stands in a pile of manure complaining about the rain.
Thanks to EMoon for the heads up.
We need to talk paths to citizenship simply because they’re here. And they aren’t going back because they have roots here. So the rest of us should recognize that fact and start making adult decisions. Figure out what the path to citizenship will be, enact it into law, and let’s all get on with living our lives.
1Barletta is an Italian name.
Being half Italian, I can tell this without worrying about being politically correct. Italians are called WOPs because when they arrived in America at Ellis Island, they typically had zero papers – hences WOPs (without papers).
Mr. Barletta’s ancestors most likely were undocumented at first.
2“didn’t get the memo from headquarters”
That stirred my old friend, “Fryer” Tuck, out of his nap on the front porch he tacked onto his double wide to say: “That boy’s usin’ his hindquarters as his headquarters.”
My cousin, Jesus Hachecristo, can’t grok the word “wetback.”
“It’s not like we actually SWAM from anywhere, much less did the back stroke. I mean, have you SEEN the Rio Grande? People go on about Roe vs Wade, but really, that’s always been the two options our people had to cross. You oughta call us wetknees.”
“Just not to our face, ‘mano, if you know what’s good for you.”
3A few years back, on a train between Austin & Chicago, I was in the dining car (random seating) with a couple from Up North. They were Italian–his parents immigrated; her grandparents had. He was vehemently anti-immigrant, and especially anti-brown-immigrant. His arguments were exactly the ones leveled at Italian immigrants–and he did not get it. (Dirty, lazy, have gangs, stupid, don’t speak the language, etc. etc.)
On another trip (this one sideways, so to speak–New Orleans to Atlanta) I met a couple of Hispanic women who were also anti-brown-immigrant despite…having been born in El Paso of parents who had just come over from Mexico. (They live in the Deep South now. Was their distaste for their own people a way to survive among the people of Mississippi? A way to say “THEY are the bad ones; WE are assimilated and safe”?)
It is to tear the hair. To wish to do a headdesk into one’s Amtrak hamburger.
4Doesn’t he know that securing borders isn’t going to fix it? I guess not.
5And another one bites the dust.
6Given the plummeting birth rate in Mexico, the rising education rate, their improving economy and the risks of crossing the border, our current immigration problem is how to get enough immigrants to come here to pick our crops.
7Lynn… Mexicans are being supplanted by Latinos farther southern Central & northern South America, e.g. El Salvadorians, Columbians, etc. Landscaping & sheetrocking crews around here & up into the Carolinas are almost all Salvadorians. Like earlier immigrants, they pool their resources to live here & send money back home. One of these days, they’re going to return home with the trades they learned. Can’t imagine what US citizens will be willing to pick up those jobs then.
8Georgia experimented with legislation that knocked out most of the undocumented farm workers, replacing them with former prisoners on probation, who were provided with transportation as well as jobs. They were told they’d earn min. wage or could more by the basket of produce. Yep.. you guessed it… they quit after a couple days of that hard work for min. wages. Unfortunately, the crops rotted in the field so there went that social experiment. Less produce supplies meant higher cost for consumers.
9Barletta is no surprise. He represents the Pennsylvania 11th, one of the most depressing, corrupt, Rust Belt congressional districts in America. Frankly, he should have nothing to worry about because no self-respecting immigrant would ever want to set down roots in that pathetic corner of decrepit ugliness. He achieves his power by exploiting the misery of his poverty-stricken and unemployed constituents, making immigrants his scapegoats. One of our sons and his family endured several years in Barletta’s district before fleeing back to the Midwest last summer. Know how you get a job in a local public school system in Lucerne County? Give a bribe or a kickback to a school board member. If you didn’t have political connections, the going price about two years ago was $1,500. The corruption crosses party lines. Two former Luzerne (Wilkes Barre) county judges are currently serving decades-long federal prison sentences following a “kids for cash” scandal, where they managed to shut down a public juvenile incarceration facility and then took millions in kickbacks for sentencing kids to a private detention business. Imagine being a 15-year-old and being sentenced to three months for sassing your high school principal; that kind of thing.
10@EMoon – My history is poor. But is it true that Italians were also discriminated on the basis of the color of their skin (i.e. they weren’t considered “white”)?
11Ah, Pennsylvania, home to the Orie sisters. One was a State Supreme Court judge and another a State Senator (Republican). Both have been convicted of campaign violations and sentenced to jail. Used to be that the cream rose to the top, but now it seems the crap just bubbles up.
12Congressman Barletta you’ve made it to the top.
How did his ancestors get here?
13How do we know that Barletta is really a US citizen? Were his parents illegals, is he an anchor baby?
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