Kelly’s vile ‘fit’
Says ‘low skill’ immigs don’t mesh in U.S. society
WHITE HOUSE chief of staff John Kelly claimed Friday that undocumented immigrants entering the U.S. “don’t have skills” and would not “integrate well” into American society — something his own ancestors appeared to struggle with.
Kelly’s cringe-worthy comments appeared to counter President Trump’s oft-repeated claim that his heightened border security and proposed wall are all about safety.
“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 (right) told NPR’s “Morning Edition.” “But they’re also not people that would easily assimilate into the United States, into our modern society. They’re overwhelmingly rural people.”
The former Marine made the xenophobic claims as he defended a recently announced Department of Justice “zero tolerance” policy of separating undocumented children from their parents.
Kelly, a 68-year-old Boston native and third-generation American, comes from a family of Irish and Italian immigrants — some of whom could not speak English even after living in the U.S. for 18 years, according to census records.
But Kelly didn’t see the irony of his forebears’ adversity as he continued to dump on the disadvantaged. “In the countries they come from, fourth-, fifth-, sixth-grade educations are kind of the norm. They don’t speak English; obviously that’s a big thing . ... They don’t integrate well; they don’t have skills,” Kelly said of the laborers and families caught crossing the border. Several studies have shown that Latino immigrants, such as the majority of those coming from Mexico, actually learn English at a faster rate than past migrants from European societies. Critics took Kelly to task on Friday, accusing him of harboring deeply bigoted views. On WNYC Friday, Mayor de Blasio noted that his own grandmother came from rural Italy, spoke no English and had limited skills and now her grandson is mayor of New York City.
“It’s very striking,” he said of Kelly’s remarks. “It’s deeply troubling because it’s an attempt to rewrite history in this administration. It’s nativism out of hand.”
Two of Kelly’s paternal greatgrandparents were born in Ireland and emigrated to the U.S. in the late 1800s.
One of his great-grandfathers’ jobs was listed as only “sewer.”
According to the 1900 census, John DeMarco, one of his maternal great-grandfathers worked as a day laborer. He could not read, write or speak English and was not a citizen after living in the U.S. for nearly two decades.