If Ron DeSantis Believes His Own Bullsh*t, He's Gonna Have To Self-Deport

Sorry to Italy.

On Monday, Ronald Dion DeSantis released his hypothetical immigration plan for when he is definitely not president, titled "No Excuses." Unsurprisingly, the gist of his plan is "build the wall, deport everybody, don't let anyone else in and don't be afraid touse 'deadly force' against suspected drug traffickers or anyone trying to come through the borders."

"DeSantis will take action to end the idea that the children of illegal aliens are entitled to birthright citizenship if they are born in the United States," the plan reads. "Dangling the prize of citizenship to the future offspring of illegal immigrants is a major driver of illegal migration. It is also inconsistent with the original understanding of 14th Amendment, and DeSantis will force the courts and Congress to finally address this failed policy."

The 14th Amendment, by the way, bestows US citizenship on “all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” and thus has, since its inception, been understood to mean that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” are US citizens.

If Ron DeSantis believes, truly, that the 14th Amendment does not and has never meant that those who were born here were granted birthright citizenship, then he almost definitely needs to self-deport back to Italy — because there is almost zero chance that he would even exist in the first place were it not for birthright citizenship. I'm not saying it's impossible, but given the way things operated back then, it would be incredibly unlikely.

DeSantis's family came here from the Mezzogiorno (southern Italy) region around the turn of the 20th century, same as mine did, along with about 4 million other people. The reason for this diaspora, which occurred largely between the years of 1880 and 1924, was that after the unification of Italy, the south, which had always been less well-off than the north, was pretty much economically devastated.

The thing is, those who came over here largely only intended to come temporarily, to build up some wealth and bring it back to their families in Italy — in fact, about half of those who came here during the diaspora did go back to Italy. It was for this reason that many did not immediately go through the process of naturalization. According to the 1911 US Immigration Commission (Dillingham Commission) report,  Immigrants in Industries  , Italians were the immigrant group least likely to naturalize and only 17 percent of Italians who had been in the country for 10 years had become citizens. By 1920, another report by the commission determined that even by then, only 31 percent of Italian men and 27 percent of Italian women had naturalized. On top of that, the naturalization process, at that time, took at least five years — they had to live in the United States for two years before even applying, and then at least three more years before they could officially become citizens.

This is also why many Italian-Americans, myself included, have or are eligible for dual citizenship in Italy. Long story short, Italy has something called jure sanguinis (right of blood) citizenship and citizenship is passed on through blood unless it's specifically rejected through naturalization. So, for example, my great-grandfather didn't become an American citizen until after my grandfather was born, which means he passed on his right of citizenship to my dad, who then passed it on to my sister and me. This also means that my grandfather was, in modern parlance, an anchor baby. He was a US citizen specifically because of birthright citizenship.

I'm only half-Italian. DeSantis, despite his glaring lack of personality and sex appeal, is 100 percent. All eight of his great-grandparents came from Italy. I obviously can't say for sure, as I am unwilling to cough up $21 to renew my Ancestry subscription, but I can tell you that it would have been extremely unusual for all eight of them to have been US citizens at the time of his grandparents' births. If even one pair of them wasn't, and the 14th Amendment means what Ron DeSantis thinks it means, then he needs to leave. Now. It's just the decent thing to do.

We do know, by the way, that at least one person in the DeSantis family got their citizenship through birthright, as his great--great-grandmother gave birth 17 days after arriving in the United States. 

This runs contrary to his assertion that his family "waited" to get into the United States legally . This would not have even been possible at that time. They got on boats and they headed over and that was it — it's hardly as if they were able to send advance notice, and if they could, who would they have even sent it to?

Now, I don't like it when anyone is horrible and unwelcoming to immigrants, but I really do find it particularly insidious when Italian-Americans are horrible and unwelcoming to immigrants. In fact, I believe that we have a special obligation to be their champions. We were, without question, one of the least popular immigrant groups of all time. Absolutely no one was happy to see our great-grandparents, who they thought were superstitious, criminal, hypersexual, left-wing radicals who would never be able to assimilate into US society.

Indeed, the previously mentioned Dillingham Commission reports, which ranked various races and ethnicities of immigrants, repeatedly ranked Southern Italians among the least desirable. Over and over again, in the reports, Italian immigrants are described as being violent, ignorant, and prone to crime and terrorism — and that was the government talking. Individual people were a lot worse. The similarities between this nonsense and DeSantis's repeated attempts to connect immigrants to drug cartels are, well, entirely blatant.

They hated us just as Ron DeSantis hates immigrants today, they wanted us out of the country just like Ron DeSantis wants today's immigrants out of the country. And I'd like to think that we can all agree now that if they had gotten their way, the United States would be the worse for it. Sure, we could all do without Ron DeSantis, but could you do without pizza? No, you could not. You would be sad all of the time, and probably sitting around eating casseroles and Jello salads with far more regularity than any reasonable person would desire. You are welcome for pizza .

I believe we are also better off with today's immigrants, who may bring us other good things and contribute to our country in other incredible ways. People still want to come here to find a better life for themselves and their families, and while that largely seems like the result of an incredibly effective PR campaign, we should consider that a huge compliment. People who are willing to go through such incredible adversity to come here are only ever going to make us and this country better.

If Ron DeSantis doesn't believe any of that, then he should stand by his own goddamn principles and get the hell out of here.

 NOTE: Please, for the love of God, refrain from any "And Italians didn't even used to be white people!" nonsense, because it really is ahistorical as hell. While some individuals may not have considered us fully white (and yeah, some ultra Aryan types still don't), we were always legally white, and that mattered. It mattered in terms of where we were allowed to go, what kind of opportunities we got, who we were allowed to marry and even the roles we were able to take in Hollywood movies. That is the difference between individual prejudices and systemic racism, which is far more harmful and has much longer-lasting and far-reaching effects. 

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